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Okay, here's my most reccent essay, written for Contemporary American Poetry class which focuses on L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. Someone once said that this era represented 'the death of the author' and the consequent 'birth of the reader'. There are some typos and it's a bit dense but let me know what you think...
3. 'Writing doesn't need to satisfy itself with pulverising relations…
In his essay 'Writing: Social Work and Political Practices' (from Paradise and Method, 19) Bruce Andrews criticizes the poetry and literature of past generations as unimaginative and ‘derivative (sublimate) of previously established connections’. The ‘pulverising relations’ he cites refers to convention-based writers whose work can only describe, summarize or record, who can only engender a one-way relationship between actions and words. What Andrews cares about is a productive reciprocity between words and ideas, that ideas can inspire words, but with equal validity words can inspire more, new and different ideas.
He states that poetry can employ ‘the word as “the dwelling place” where meaning will insist on spinning out of the closed circuit of the sign, to reach or act on the world’. Andrews and other language poets try to break the ‘closed circuit’ of elicit denotation that is historically celebrated in the literary tradition. Drawing attention to word choice and language structure (often by breaking normal patterns and usages), the poet ultimately declines authority and allows the reader to devise his or her own interpretations and connotations. It is the development of interpretation from each individual reading that makes poetry productive. The questions that can be produced by poetry are more highly esteemed than the telling of a definite answer or some absolute truth.
Both Bruce Andrews’ and Charles Bernstein’s writing is designed to awaken and empower the reading audience. They believe that conventional or ‘genteel’ writing hypnotizes the reader and craftily transmit an agenda, which may be poignant and persuasive but not actually productive. In order for writing to produce rather than retell and ‘pulverize’ old ideas, the writer must provoke the reader to think actively. Traditionally, readers ingest the polished material produced by a writer, but Andrews and Bernstein intentionally make their work difficult to understand and therefore provocative and a catalyst for open interpretation. Confrontational writing, multi-faced narrators, fragmentation, and self-awareness are all used to unsettle the reading audience.
With regards to confrontation, Bernstein's poem 'Thinking I think I think' begins by directly asking a question ‘What are aesthetic values and why do
there appear to be lesser & fewer of them?’. Bernstein forwardly asks the reader to ponder the classical notion of aesthetics. We wonder, are there really less aesthetics than before? And before when? And why are there fewer? With aesthetics on the table, Bernstein then strays far from mainstream poetic aesthetics such as rhyme and meter throughout the rest of the poem.
He is even more confrontational by putting the reader on the spot, ‘Quick: define the difference between arpeggio & Armani’, as though the audience is taking a pop quiz or on a game show. We can't help but wonder what is the difference between arpeggio and Armani? Are they somehow connected anyway? An arpeggio is the successive playing of tones in a chord which is a traditional convention in western music. Giorgio Armani is a well known Italian fashion designer whose work is usually progressive but quickly considered classic. The difference between the two could be that arpeggios are undeniably classical in nature while Armani’s designs strive to be more avant-garde. Perhaps there is no difference between Armani and arpeggios because they are both associated with some universal aesthetic pleasure. Perhaps Bernstein simply chose the two ‘a-words’ because of their alliteration or the rhyme between Giorgio and arpeggio.
Similarly, in 'O, My Arms Catch on the Nails', Andrews directly asks 'What's your state bone?'. Italicizing 'your' emphasizes the reader's role in the poem. Some readers’ reactions might be to worry or feel embarrassed that they don’t know their own state bone. I immediately think of my state bird. Which leads to more questions: Are there state bones? Who came up with state birds, state flowers and state slogans anyway? Aren’t they just another form of patriotic propaganda? And if there were state bones, what would my state's bone be? The femur? The clavicle? The funny bone? All of these questions are merely my personal example of possible reactions to these poets confrontational writing. Questioning and confrontational writing encourages the reader to think, even if only in self-defence. With every reading, a new reaction to the writing is formed.
Another method that Andrews and Bernstein use to get their readers to create new meanings is to resist the convention of continuity. These poems are without an easily identifiable plot, narrator, or setting. The voices in the poems are not those of the poets, at least not for long. I doubt that whoever says 'I want exhaust pipes directly connected to the President's mouth' in Andrews second paragraph is the same speaker in the fourth, 'I wanted an ant farm without the picnic'. This evocative plurality of perspective holds true to the earlier generation of post-modern artists.
Granted there is some constancy with regards to theme: content often centres on politics and images of mass consumerism. But beyond such motifs, the writing lacks continuity so completely that the reader must realize there is no secret message to be decoded. There is no hidden truth or linear agenda. What the poet is saying, if he is saying anything in particular, is not easy to discern. He does not hand the reader a tidy package with a clear message so the reader is left to find his or her own meaning.
Perhaps the most effective way that Bernstein and Andrews inspire connotation rather than denotation is by playing with units of language. Puns, rhyming and breakdown the rules of grammar and syntax spawn new ways to use words. A striking example of this practice is the slight alteration of a familiar expression. Andrews writes, ‘come over sometime so I can apocryphally fall on your brownies’ which is funny because we are surprised. He uses familiar colloquial language in ‘come over sometime’ but replaces some expected pleasantry with an apocryphal fall. Normally you might invite someone over for tea or dessert but falling on someone else's baked goods is a little absurd. And how can one fall apocryphally? If ‘fall’ is taken literally to mean stumble accidentally, then is this an intentional act of brownie sabotage? Is the guest’s cooking notoriously horrible?
Other manipulations of familiar phrases in Andrews poem include 'state bone' rather than state bird and 'zip coda' rather than zip code, Bernstein's include 'cube steak on rye amusing twist; rather than rye bread, 'pools rush in rather than fools, and 'the actor aborted the fable' rather than another two syllable f-word fetus. Both poems are incredibly rich with more complex word play. Along with irony and absurdity, this word play brings humour to the dense poetry. By not being overly serious when dealing with often heavy material, Bernstein and Andrews encourage their readers to think for themselves. They model that it is appropriate to play with your words.
Andrews also toys with misunderstandings and misprints, ‘No presses will stop at the news that the princes are… prisons are the spanking machine’. Of course, we chuckle at the confusion between princes and prisons because besides beginning with the same three letters, they couldn't really be any more different. Then again, with a small stretch of the imagination we might consider that prisons represent government institutions and princes represent monarchical government so maybe a prince could be a spanking machine.
By bringing up press and the printing process, Andrews show signs of self-awareness. As a writer, it is almost sacrilegious to poke fun at the mistakes made by the press. In addition to being confrontational, the title of his collection of poems, No I don’t have any paper so shut up, hints at a literary reference. Assuming that paper is needed for literary creation, the request is answered with shortness.
The title of Bernstein’s poem, ‘Thinking I think I think’ is also decidedly self aware. Though it may not be serious, when Bernstein writes ‘I’m here strictly on business, literary business’ he shows a detachment from his writing. The narrator defensively states that poetry-making is strictly for business and is not at all personal nor is it pleasurable. And so we wonder what exactly is literary business or the business of literature? Is it just a n entrepreneurial pursuit? For Bernstein and Andrews, I think their business in literature is to innovate, in this case to inspire independent thought amongst their audience. Both poets’ self consciousness of their role proves their disdain for the authority of authorship. By jesting with their positions in the literary world, they minimize their own positions and let the reader shoulder a bit of the creative responsibility. It furthers the hope to make their words a beginning for extensions rather than a narcissistic exercise.
What makes language poetry exciting is its interactive nature. The poet is not painting a picture. The poet is not preaching. The poet tinkers with words, what they have meant and what they could mean someday, and offers them back to the reader or listener for interpretation. Of course, this cannot happen successfully without an intelligent and engages audience. Andrews and Bernstein write to inspire: confrontation, humour, absurdity, discontinuity and irony all break the hypnotic spell of genteel writing with the aim to shock and inspire the audience. Seeking to make 'the words the basis of extensions', the poet steps out of the spotlight to the benefit of language. Andrews combined love of language and preoccupation with power has led him to decline the authority of the writer.
Still what exactly is produced by this sort of writing is not entirely clear. An emphasis on reading and values is apparent. Creating new meanings for units of language is one focus but how are they significant. In a 1995 interview Bernstein asks Andrews ‘Do you think poetry is a place that can change political values?’. Andrews replies ‘I think it works on the writer, and it works on the reader, probably more as a kind of reinforcement of more fragile beliefs or attitudes that were getting formed, that need more support. So I don't think it's so much a matter of mobilizing large numbers of people… But if you're trying to reinforce some attempt at change, then it is going to be modest, and it's going to take place in the actual experience of the work’. So perhaps the productive relationship between poetry and the world lies in the smallest affirmations a reader can gain through reading. These reinforcements come from knowing that the issues that concern us have concerned a writer as well.
Bibliography
Post Modern American Poetry, ed. P. Hoover. London: Norton & Co, 1994.
http://www.fencemag.com/v1n2/work/charlesbernstein.html, C. Berstein, ‘Thinking I think I think’, Fence Magazine Volume 1 Number 2, 1998.
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/andrews/interview.html,
‘How poignant that sounds, even as you read back the transcript
an interview with Bruce Andrews’, 1995.
3. 'Writing doesn't need to satisfy itself with pulverising relations…
In his essay 'Writing: Social Work and Political Practices' (from Paradise and Method, 19) Bruce Andrews criticizes the poetry and literature of past generations as unimaginative and ‘derivative (sublimate) of previously established connections’. The ‘pulverising relations’ he cites refers to convention-based writers whose work can only describe, summarize or record, who can only engender a one-way relationship between actions and words. What Andrews cares about is a productive reciprocity between words and ideas, that ideas can inspire words, but with equal validity words can inspire more, new and different ideas.
He states that poetry can employ ‘the word as “the dwelling place” where meaning will insist on spinning out of the closed circuit of the sign, to reach or act on the world’. Andrews and other language poets try to break the ‘closed circuit’ of elicit denotation that is historically celebrated in the literary tradition. Drawing attention to word choice and language structure (often by breaking normal patterns and usages), the poet ultimately declines authority and allows the reader to devise his or her own interpretations and connotations. It is the development of interpretation from each individual reading that makes poetry productive. The questions that can be produced by poetry are more highly esteemed than the telling of a definite answer or some absolute truth.
Both Bruce Andrews’ and Charles Bernstein’s writing is designed to awaken and empower the reading audience. They believe that conventional or ‘genteel’ writing hypnotizes the reader and craftily transmit an agenda, which may be poignant and persuasive but not actually productive. In order for writing to produce rather than retell and ‘pulverize’ old ideas, the writer must provoke the reader to think actively. Traditionally, readers ingest the polished material produced by a writer, but Andrews and Bernstein intentionally make their work difficult to understand and therefore provocative and a catalyst for open interpretation. Confrontational writing, multi-faced narrators, fragmentation, and self-awareness are all used to unsettle the reading audience.
With regards to confrontation, Bernstein's poem 'Thinking I think I think' begins by directly asking a question ‘What are aesthetic values and why do
there appear to be lesser & fewer of them?’. Bernstein forwardly asks the reader to ponder the classical notion of aesthetics. We wonder, are there really less aesthetics than before? And before when? And why are there fewer? With aesthetics on the table, Bernstein then strays far from mainstream poetic aesthetics such as rhyme and meter throughout the rest of the poem.
He is even more confrontational by putting the reader on the spot, ‘Quick: define the difference between arpeggio & Armani’, as though the audience is taking a pop quiz or on a game show. We can't help but wonder what is the difference between arpeggio and Armani? Are they somehow connected anyway? An arpeggio is the successive playing of tones in a chord which is a traditional convention in western music. Giorgio Armani is a well known Italian fashion designer whose work is usually progressive but quickly considered classic. The difference between the two could be that arpeggios are undeniably classical in nature while Armani’s designs strive to be more avant-garde. Perhaps there is no difference between Armani and arpeggios because they are both associated with some universal aesthetic pleasure. Perhaps Bernstein simply chose the two ‘a-words’ because of their alliteration or the rhyme between Giorgio and arpeggio.
Similarly, in 'O, My Arms Catch on the Nails', Andrews directly asks 'What's your state bone?'. Italicizing 'your' emphasizes the reader's role in the poem. Some readers’ reactions might be to worry or feel embarrassed that they don’t know their own state bone. I immediately think of my state bird. Which leads to more questions: Are there state bones? Who came up with state birds, state flowers and state slogans anyway? Aren’t they just another form of patriotic propaganda? And if there were state bones, what would my state's bone be? The femur? The clavicle? The funny bone? All of these questions are merely my personal example of possible reactions to these poets confrontational writing. Questioning and confrontational writing encourages the reader to think, even if only in self-defence. With every reading, a new reaction to the writing is formed.
Another method that Andrews and Bernstein use to get their readers to create new meanings is to resist the convention of continuity. These poems are without an easily identifiable plot, narrator, or setting. The voices in the poems are not those of the poets, at least not for long. I doubt that whoever says 'I want exhaust pipes directly connected to the President's mouth' in Andrews second paragraph is the same speaker in the fourth, 'I wanted an ant farm without the picnic'. This evocative plurality of perspective holds true to the earlier generation of post-modern artists.
Granted there is some constancy with regards to theme: content often centres on politics and images of mass consumerism. But beyond such motifs, the writing lacks continuity so completely that the reader must realize there is no secret message to be decoded. There is no hidden truth or linear agenda. What the poet is saying, if he is saying anything in particular, is not easy to discern. He does not hand the reader a tidy package with a clear message so the reader is left to find his or her own meaning.
Perhaps the most effective way that Bernstein and Andrews inspire connotation rather than denotation is by playing with units of language. Puns, rhyming and breakdown the rules of grammar and syntax spawn new ways to use words. A striking example of this practice is the slight alteration of a familiar expression. Andrews writes, ‘come over sometime so I can apocryphally fall on your brownies’ which is funny because we are surprised. He uses familiar colloquial language in ‘come over sometime’ but replaces some expected pleasantry with an apocryphal fall. Normally you might invite someone over for tea or dessert but falling on someone else's baked goods is a little absurd. And how can one fall apocryphally? If ‘fall’ is taken literally to mean stumble accidentally, then is this an intentional act of brownie sabotage? Is the guest’s cooking notoriously horrible?
Other manipulations of familiar phrases in Andrews poem include 'state bone' rather than state bird and 'zip coda' rather than zip code, Bernstein's include 'cube steak on rye amusing twist; rather than rye bread, 'pools rush in rather than fools, and 'the actor aborted the fable' rather than another two syllable f-word fetus. Both poems are incredibly rich with more complex word play. Along with irony and absurdity, this word play brings humour to the dense poetry. By not being overly serious when dealing with often heavy material, Bernstein and Andrews encourage their readers to think for themselves. They model that it is appropriate to play with your words.
Andrews also toys with misunderstandings and misprints, ‘No presses will stop at the news that the princes are… prisons are the spanking machine’. Of course, we chuckle at the confusion between princes and prisons because besides beginning with the same three letters, they couldn't really be any more different. Then again, with a small stretch of the imagination we might consider that prisons represent government institutions and princes represent monarchical government so maybe a prince could be a spanking machine.
By bringing up press and the printing process, Andrews show signs of self-awareness. As a writer, it is almost sacrilegious to poke fun at the mistakes made by the press. In addition to being confrontational, the title of his collection of poems, No I don’t have any paper so shut up, hints at a literary reference. Assuming that paper is needed for literary creation, the request is answered with shortness.
The title of Bernstein’s poem, ‘Thinking I think I think’ is also decidedly self aware. Though it may not be serious, when Bernstein writes ‘I’m here strictly on business, literary business’ he shows a detachment from his writing. The narrator defensively states that poetry-making is strictly for business and is not at all personal nor is it pleasurable. And so we wonder what exactly is literary business or the business of literature? Is it just a n entrepreneurial pursuit? For Bernstein and Andrews, I think their business in literature is to innovate, in this case to inspire independent thought amongst their audience. Both poets’ self consciousness of their role proves their disdain for the authority of authorship. By jesting with their positions in the literary world, they minimize their own positions and let the reader shoulder a bit of the creative responsibility. It furthers the hope to make their words a beginning for extensions rather than a narcissistic exercise.
What makes language poetry exciting is its interactive nature. The poet is not painting a picture. The poet is not preaching. The poet tinkers with words, what they have meant and what they could mean someday, and offers them back to the reader or listener for interpretation. Of course, this cannot happen successfully without an intelligent and engages audience. Andrews and Bernstein write to inspire: confrontation, humour, absurdity, discontinuity and irony all break the hypnotic spell of genteel writing with the aim to shock and inspire the audience. Seeking to make 'the words the basis of extensions', the poet steps out of the spotlight to the benefit of language. Andrews combined love of language and preoccupation with power has led him to decline the authority of the writer.
Still what exactly is produced by this sort of writing is not entirely clear. An emphasis on reading and values is apparent. Creating new meanings for units of language is one focus but how are they significant. In a 1995 interview Bernstein asks Andrews ‘Do you think poetry is a place that can change political values?’. Andrews replies ‘I think it works on the writer, and it works on the reader, probably more as a kind of reinforcement of more fragile beliefs or attitudes that were getting formed, that need more support. So I don't think it's so much a matter of mobilizing large numbers of people… But if you're trying to reinforce some attempt at change, then it is going to be modest, and it's going to take place in the actual experience of the work’. So perhaps the productive relationship between poetry and the world lies in the smallest affirmations a reader can gain through reading. These reinforcements come from knowing that the issues that concern us have concerned a writer as well.
Bibliography
Post Modern American Poetry, ed. P. Hoover. London: Norton & Co, 1994.
http://www.fencemag.com/v1n2/work/charlesbernstein.html, C. Berstein, ‘Thinking I think I think’, Fence Magazine Volume 1 Number 2, 1998.
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/andrews/interview.html,
‘How poignant that sounds, even as you read back the transcript
an interview with Bruce Andrews’, 1995.
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