I confess, this new adventure into literature and literary ideas as the basis for this petite meeting of the minds, is daunting. I'm not frightened by the idea of engaging texts and bitching about them, but I'm concerned that my blog-interests are off-topic, even when they're on topic. I'm sure that makes no sense.
Anyway, something that's been getting my goat recently is the idea of aesthetic. Though I'm aware we all have our own aesthetic (some things get us off and some things don't) I resent the idea that we have to bring this entire hierarchy worth of baggage to the stuff we consume and decide how things fit into those tight schema, or not. I constantly feel, in the poetry community, a need to be tightening my viewpoint, learning to better argue matters of taste until they mystically become matters of value. I feel poetry should be about expanding onto a larger and larger world, opening up to it and consuming what we find - like children wandering through orchids. Instead, a lot of the time, it's about walking through the orchid and saying, 'this tree is diseased', 'this tree is of little use to me' and 'there is neither a thing good nor strange' about some other tree. Though this is a criticism, I think it's also an impossible dream.
I think that most of the poets who want to be poets will continue to specify their viewpoints out of a desire to be taken seriously and produce recognized work. I'm not sure what the alternative is, nor how it can be achieved, but I think questions of aesthetic are running a muck and that reading a poem for the sake of enjoying it and saying, 'huh, that's fucking good' is becoming something of a lost art.
[the first draft of this post was riddled with grammatical errors, I've fixed a few - but to my defense, it was written at the zenith of my weariness.]
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6 comments:
word. you managed to specify exactly what i've been trying to communicate. I see nothing wrong with widening instead of narrowing and consuming everything, diseased or alive, so I will sit on my hands and wait for Kate or Alesia to tell us we're crazy.
last night I listened to "put your hands where my eyes can see" for the first time in 6 years. which is a shame. it makes me question the evolution of hip-hop production if a low key 1996 creepy groove is more of a banger than the latest Timbaland production. Usually I fall on the modern side of 'tings, but not this time. the song almost makes busta's vocals sexy. which is a mammoth task.
I guess this has always been my main complaint about the "poetry community", whatever that means. If we have an entire universe full of topics and temptations, and a medium that is very close to infinitely comprehensive & malleable, why do some spend all their time staring at flowers and living in the corpses of dead sexual relationships? I know Kate never posts to this kinda thing, but I'd love to know her opinion.
p.s. I just got the white background/boiled chicken thing. Grossly awesome.
oh, an' 'nother thing,
everything in writing is an impossible dream. if one pursues aesthetic and topical tightening, in order to present the thing itself, it will never be able to communicate that thing itself. The poets interpretation of it may spark a empathic recall in the reader of the object or situation, but it can never actually be the thing itself. Might as well write about imaginary things, like me. It's all a dream.
I don't know about you, but when I pick up a collection, if the topics are totally homogenous and the style and syntax is similarly so, I might not pick up the book again. I've been trying to figure out how to make this position defensible for years now. So wanna join in? considering that i've got the critical literary mind of a 9th grader, I could use assistance.
one more:
'there is neither a thing good nor strange'
you're killing me, you realize this? my heart can't take much more.
before I read Jon's epic series of posts.. right on Bendi, as always.
I didn't mean to make rules for this blog, I just wanted to get us to post.. daily. There are three of us posting regularly...and I'm a strong believer in writing every single day, even if it's a sentence saying "yo, Marlowe is the shit and Shakespeare is largely confusing."
And screw aesthetics. No really, screw 'em. I write what I want to write and I read what I want too. I like things that sound familiar and beautiful and strange all in the same moment. I like things that are overtly weird and sexual. I like gender bender slams with lots of crazy onomatopoeias. I like most things and I write most things, and that should be allowed..that IS allowed.
OH JON, I SO RESENT THE "wait for Kate or Alesia tot tell us we're crazy." Let me say what I'm going to say, then you can laugh..don't gimme that preemptive laugh. And stop preemptively laughing at yourself "critical mind of a 9th grader" Pshaw. We aren't critics of literature, poetry, life, whatever, we are living the thing.
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