I’ve read, or at least read at, the Tractatus; I’ve read the first third of Philosophical Investigations; Clive James captures in a few words the gist of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. I particularly appreciate that James understands the role of silence in Wittgenstein’s view of the world. Language is so powerful within its range of action that we easily forget the vast world that lies beyond it. The job of modern poetry — maybe all poetry always — is to point toward that vast range of experience it cannot grasp. Poetry is a necessary gesture toward the world.
Monthly Archives: April 2007
School of Quietude, Continued
I was critical of Ange Mlinko in this post in response to Tom Morgan’s thoughts about the so-called school of quietude in contemporary American poetry. But if her claim, in the letter Morgan quotes, that someone she knows graduated with an MFA in poetry from SW Texas State without knowing who John Ashbery is, mainstream American poetry is in worse shape than even Ron Silliman thinks. Here is the evidence, a Guggenheim for a professor in that program. My beef with Silliman is the style of his argument, I realize, rather than its substance. And the fact that it fails to recognize good poetry that falls outside the “post-avant.” [See comments.] Not that there is not a quietude, but that there are at least a few post-Modernist (post-post-Romantic?) poets who have produced important work over the last fifty years. Hayden Carruth & William Bronk seem paradigmatic in this regard. The “turn toward language” that Silliman celebrates (the phrase is Charles Bernstein’s, I think) has itself become a dominant mode, increasingly institutionalized, but that’s another argument. What drives me crazy is that Kathleen Pierce’s story is my story: NEA, AWP, Iowa & what have you. And yet, on the evidence of Pierce’s poetry available online, she writes from an aesthetic not only foreign to mine but hostile to my deepest sense of what poetry is. Her work strikes me as Georgian, the sort of thing Pound & Eliot & Dr. Williams & HD wrote against. Poetry is not a decorative art, nor primarily psychological, but an investigation of the world. Maybe I was just born under a bad sign, a man without a country. But even that sounds as if I am assuming an heroic stance & I assure you I detest the heroic stance. Mlinko, in her poem “Orders of Economies in New York,” writes, “Never mind the student loans that went for poetry, reimbursing itself with itself.” I am not charmed by the surrealism of Mlinko’s work, but I’ll take it any day over the soft Victorian pieties of poets like Pierce. I used to have a fierce protective attitude toward MFA programs — served on the AWP Board — but I don’t think their proliferation has done much good for the art. Whether that proliferation has done positive harm, I don’t know, but I am less sanguine than I used to be.
Work to Do
Despite the perfect weather, I have a great deal of indoor work over the next couple of weeks. I haven’t done a bit of it this weekend — I keep wandering outside to look at the river, ro see which birds are at the feeder, to see which plants are sprouting, which flowers blooming, which clouds drifting across the sky. In the next two weeks, though, we’d better have some bad weather because I have to:
- Do a bunch of grading. 115 short essays; 50 projects.
- Finish my on-line course for Summer Session (begins May 21st).
When that’s done I have to:
- Teach the on-line course
- Finish the second phase of the kitchen remodel we started last year: dining room paint & floor.
- Do the last spasm of paperwork associated with my late step-father’s estate.
- Plan next year’s courses. Have already begun this — it’s more enjoyable than finishing the courses I’m now teaching.
- Plan a series of workshops on blogging for next year for CU students, staff & faculty.
- Put together the core of what I think will be by next book of poems.
All right, bub, quit whining & get to work! Okay, alright! I’m going.
More Birds & Others
Yesterday I saw our wild turkey again briefly. And at the feeder a couple of house finches & some American tree sparrows & mourning doves. There are gray squirrels, red squirrels, chipmunks, & the occasional mouse or vole caught out of the corner of the eye. This morning walking the dogs on the other side of the river, we saw a large beaver swimming close to the bank. I’ve been paying attention to the details of the natural world because the news this week has been so universally grim. “The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.” From mass-murder to the naked political calculation of the Supreme Court & the remarkable, inarticulate stupidity of the president & the even more remarkable stupidity of the Attorney General, from Baghdad to Baltimore, nothing & no one has been making any sense this week. (Something bad no doubt happened in Baltimore last week, but I only picked the city for purposes of alliteration.) Last night our friend Amy came over for dinner & we grilled burgers — first of the year — then had a big bonfire down by the river, burning a lot of winter deadfall & old half-rotten logs. A big fire, a celebration of the real.
First Finch
I’m pretty sure I saw the first house finch today. It was over by the feeder in a spruce tree, but didn’t fly down to eat while I was looking. The weather has been awful these first three weeks of April (insert obligatory allusion to T.S. Eliot here), with low gray skies, freezing nights & last weekend a storm of heavy wet snow. That’s mostly melted now, but all the plants that stuck shoots up during the few warm days we had at the end of March have only now begun to grow again. With luck, we’ll have a few daffodils blooming by the weekend.
Just now — as I was writing this — I heard one of the terriers growling at the bedroom window. When I looked out, I saw a wild turkey coming across the road to browse under the feeders. I usually see them in flocks of six to twelve individuals, so it was unusual to see a solitary bird. We’ve seen several the last few weeks & thought for a while they were nesting in our woods by the river. I suspect the bird I saw this evening is a young male kicked out of the flock during breeding season. He even had a feather dangling loose from his breast as if he’d had a dust up with the dominant male. (Any ornithologists reading this who want to correct my speculation are welcome to respond — I didn’t find any information on flock dynamics in a quick internet search.)
All this gives me some comfort as the republic reels from the body blows of corruption inflicted by its current leaders.
Later: As I was letting the dogs in from the back yard just now, I heard the first spring peepers.
Update: Saw an evening grosbeak at the feeder this afternoon, the day following the post above. We have seen them in winter in years past, but not recently.