I’ll admit it: I don’t know much about poetry slams. I’ve never been to one, and even after thinking about it some today, I’m not sure I’d want to, or at least I’m not sure I’d want to compete in a slam.

That said, I discovered today that a coworker of mine is raising money for a trip to the National Poetry Slam, I believe as a member of the team from Buffalo. I honestly had no idea she wrote poetry, much less performed it, and so well. Check out her performances at The Nickel City Poetry Slam here (she’s Jennifer Elinge).

More percolation needed on my part, but I’m off for the weekend to rock out with some of my very best friends.

Thoughts on slam, anyone?

My questions about Language Poetry and Flarf and other movements are basically focused on the idea of the public intellectual and this dialogue. I wonder if these movements are simply an easy retreat into the academic bosom as not to be challenged by larger forces? Perhaps that is the critique? Do we retreat into our own epistemological system or do we engage with the world as poets?

Is what we are doing small or is it big? Do we exist among other artists? Or do we exist within the academy?

Read one of those sentences again: “I wonder if these movements are simply an easy retreat into the academic bosom as not to be challenged by larger forces?” And let that sink in. Then go read the whole post.

Now, I’m not sure I can say that the dichotomy presented (complicated, “academic” poetry on the one hand, and engaging with the world as poets on the other) is completely accurate. In fact, I’m almost sure it’s not. There have surely been plenty of poets who were extremely academic and complicated (think of all the big names you can, and I promise they’re all more complex than you think) who managed to engage the world; too, I imagine there have been less academic poets who were more than willing to present themselves as engaging (perhaps to cover up their academic failings?).

Perhaps a truer dichotomy, more representative of contemporary poetry (and I’m stepping way outside of my actual range of expertise, here) would be the truly innovative and perhaps slightly rougher around the edges (as mentioned by the first commenter) on the one hand, and homogenized “innovation” and academic specialization ad nauseam (and again, I’m sure there have been poets who defy that dichotomy, as well).

More generally, these questions need to be answered:

Are poets engaging the world as poets?

Are you?

Am I?

Here’s a tasty bit that closes the poem:

It’s clean.
A clean white shirt
nobody wanted to spoil
or soil
that shirt
much cleaner now but also
not the same
as the first before that shirt
got hit got hurt
not perfect
anymore
just beautiful

a clean white shirt

It’s hard to keep a clean shirt clean.

Something in there hit me hard, right in the soft, soulful part of my brain. I love the rhythm, I love the relatableness.

I had some things I wanted to say about poetry here, but I don’t have the time or energy just now. Soon, I hope. Soon.

None of that is to say, of course, that I would not like to suddenly find myself with significantly more time to read and study poetry & poetics, but that is unlikely, at least in the immediate future. At present, then, my concern for poetry, and the very existence of this blog, arise from the fact that one simply does not hear much about poetry, unless one chooses to hear (read: actively seek out) such things.

That makes me sad.

Something else that makes me sad: from my observation, I’m not sure people miss it.

I suppose the break between the public consciousness is too subtle a thing for me to dissect, but I am wont to believe it has something to do with schooling. That, too, makes me sad. School should help people love knowledge & learning, and it should help people love the arts, poetry included. I’ll wager educational experience, generally, is not currently achieving the goal of encouraging a love of poetry. (I can only hope my children will have a better experience, but my gut tells me I will be largely responsible for making sure they do not develop a distaste for poetry.)

Anyway, my point is this: I feel, within my poetic soul, a great conflict between the knowledge that poetry must change and grow and adapt over time, and my feeling that the path(s) poetry has taken have served only as roads away from the public. And, given where poetry is (still a burning question, I’d think, though I’ll take this “debate” between Flarf and conceptual poetry as a starting point), I am unsure as to how (if at all) the two (theat is, the continued evolution of poetry & the public consciousness) can be reconciled.

All that to say, the continuation of the “debate”: This is only going to get me into trouble, but…

Or, if you’re in a hurry, Autotypist (new to me) has the highlights.

No poem of the day, today; haven’t had the time to find one (but I’m open to suggestions).

1) total exploitation of the aleatory differend
2) rejection of any vulgar constructivist chauvinism whereby suture subtends torque
3) modal sensuousness over concretist heroics
4) occasional recourse to images of seagulls
5) at the baseline of practice, a constant shuffling of the predatory and the abject constitutive valences, so that “innovation” cannot be recuperated as “legitimacy”

[to be continued]

I’m too far removed from my college poetry studies to have understood, at first pass, a great deal of the entire post in question, though it is to the point that I should probably just call BS and be done with it.

Instead, I will satisfy myself by being amused by today’s poem (“poem”?), Nonconceptual Poem #4A7.E7

To be continued, indeed.

Aside: what makes me sad here is that it doesn’t matter if this is a joke or not. If it is not a joke, then I’d have to wonder if poetics hasn’t completely exited the realm of the culturally relevant & useful. If it is a joke, I’m not sure the “then” is any different, because this joke’s humor, like that of all jokes, would be dependent upon its relation to reality. And if this in any way resembles contemporary poetic reality, poetry is in bad shape.

Poetry used to be printed in major newspapers, people. It used to be relevant to large swaths of the public. It filled stadiums. Perhaps Nonconceptualism and its ilk are relevant to some small number of eccentric folk in an increasingly (and disturbingly) fractured postmodern society, but I’d like to think poetry is bigger than that.

I’m just saying.

I await the manifesto eagerly, but I’m not sure what to do with today’s poem: Nonconceptual Poem #4A1

Elsewhere, I’m not even sure what to make of this: Kureishi slams creative writing courses.

In that light, today’s poems are as contemporary as they come, from the current issue of Avatar Review. I come by this via the blog of Nic Sebastian (one of today’s poets), Very Like a Whale. Nic’s poetry, by the way, is lovely, in a sometimes dark, sometimes light, always visceral way, and you should definitely follow her blog.

Some linkage, then:

• The Widow Addresses Her Late Husband, by Nicolette Bethel
• The tangerine dreams of electric juicers, and
  The Sorrowful Tale of the Urban Woodsman (my favorites of hers here published), by Julie Carter, and
• underlying, by Nic Sebastian

I see nothing in these three poems that blows me away (after all, such poems only come along once in a great while), but they are all very solid, well-crafted poems I would proudly call my own (and I kind of wish I could, to be honest). I’m partial to The Sorrowful Tale…, with its dark & twisted ending, I must admit, but I enjoy them all.

I’m at work, so I don’t have time to go all English-major on these, but if you’ve got thoughts, let’s hear ‘em. And do tell me if the audio recordings do anything for you; can’t listen myself just now, but I hope to soon.

Question of the moment

What exactly is contemporary poetry, and where is it going?

Anyone?