Update: go here for a definition of Oral and Visual Poetry
He mentions that he chose the term "School of Quietude" to piss someone off. That he was hoping a young buck (or doe?) would do the work of defining the "movement."
Lots of people say there is no "Quietude" movement. I would agree with them but add that there's not really a post-avant movement either. There are several schools within each group.
But each group can be more easily and accurately divided by a name change.
the "School of Quietude" writes oral poetry
"Post-Avant" folk write visual poetry.
The difference is pretty simple. Oral poetry can survive without the page. It may have some interesting graphical trickery (like Dante's acrostics) but it fundamentally sounds like a poem. It sounds good.
Visual poetry may also sound good but has part-to-all of its meaning tied into its existence as physical text. Take Johnson's Radi Os, for instance. Even the parts of the poem that work out loud are dependent upon Johnson's erasure of Milton. The work can't leave the page. All the work on Ubu fits this mold as well, likewise flarf and all the myriad things you can learn about by reading Silliman.
I don't wish any ill-will on the visual poets. I'm simply not one of them. I tried for a while -- if I still had my high school poetry notebooks you could see juvenilia rife with visual traps and tricks. Perhaps that's where my low opinion of visual poetry came from -- it was something I could do (with panache) at 15.
But come, those of you who felt "School of Quietude" as an insult. Tell the world we are oral poets. Noisy poets. Poets out loud. Poets of voice.
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16 comments:
Thanks to Silliman for the direct link to this article. w00t!
For those of you reading -- do you think this is a more useful way of framing the current poetic divide, whether you view the whole things as divorce or simply mitosis?
It's an interesting idea. I think it might as overly-simplistic as the SoQ/p-a divide in its own way, however.
For example: If I took your proposed taxonomy to look at my own poetry, I would fall into the post-avant camp: arrangement on the page matters a great deal to me. I have been a professional graphic designer and typographer; I even think about ligatures. And my roots are as a composer, so I have explored the idea (as did John Cage, an influence I acknowledge) of arrangement on the page being a kind of notation for performance, wherein spacing and punctuation give cues for timing and expression when reading.
But I've been rejected by the post-avant, also, because my poems ARE expressive. Not "lyrics," but not texts without meanings.
My thesis has been that poems that succeed, as individual poems, need to work both on the page and as read aloud. That they're an integrated unity that work in two ways of reading of being read. So I do agree with your assessment that "visual poetry" or "page poetry" is often incomplete because, as you say, it can't survive without the page. On the other hand, much Slam poetry doesn't work because it's SO oral, as poetry, that it falls flat when read on the page, sans the oral performance.
If you're using the page in the same way as a musical staff, you're still composing for orality.
That is, you intend your poem to be listened to. The same simply can't be said of something like Johnson's Ark.
I'd also agree with Art that the division is overly simplistic (as binary divisions inevitably seem to be). If you look at the range of poets that would fall into one or the other of these categories, I think you'd find that most fall somewhere in the middle. The division might be more usefully (or perhaps merely logically) seen as the extremes of a spectrum.
What seems more important than wondering what to call these "two camps" (scare quotes) is to question what the utility of the division of really is. Seems like the division only reinforces an intense enmity between groups that do, admittedly, exist. Struggle and tension are obviously important to creation, but this whole debate can get repulsively intense (as evidenced in many of the comments on Zapruder's recent essay about the need for more poetry criticism). Seems to me that if the division were to be useful in any way, it'd have to be useful to critics.
I also think that the distinction's a little too fundamental in that it comes down to medium, as if it were attempting to partition ... whatever it is you want to call the work you don't do ... away from 'real' poetry.
Also, it would elide a whole, admittedly small, group of people working in a field that's already termed visual poetry, people like Geoff Huth, John M. Bennett, Miekal And, Karl Kempton, etc.
Finally, Art, I don't think many in the post-avant would accept your assertion that their work is "text without meaning."
The utility of the division is that there are two forces at work in the creation of both sorts of art.
At the most basic level you could say that OP could be appreciated by illiterates and the blind and VP could not.
But, though I am firmly in the OP camp, I don't want to denigrate the VP folks. There is a lot of interesting and important work they do,
but as you say, as a critic, one needs different toolkits to describe Guston's Poor Richard and Yezzi's Free PeriodAnd really, that's okay.
Think about the transition from painting and drawing to animation. At the beginning, it would have been possible to discuss both similarly -- but with the introduction of sound and computer processing, the two have moved in radically different directions -- while still being based on the same original art form.
This is what OP and VP have done -- a change has been made possible by technology (first printing, then computers) -- and the two forms are growing more disparate.
Talking about them separately will actually relieve a lot of the animosity, as you won't have two ever-more-distinct groups battling for the same ground.
I take your meaning; it would be a useful means to discuss individual works or oeuvres. In fact, I'd say that it's been a deeply underused division that would be extremely helpful in discussing a variety of works, and might even be helpful in assuaging some of the anxiety that some "visual" poetry seems to evoke in some "oral" poets. It could be a useful tool, but I still think applying "visual" poetry to the works of many artists that might be termed post-avant (and I gotta say I hate that term) would be a radical misnomer. Any sound poet, for instance ...
I guess there's a certain ambivalence in the "post-avant" to the thought of entirely losing the designation "poetry." Several months back I as much as eschewed the term entirely, mostly out of a feeling that there was nothing about the term that encapsulated what I was trying to do. And yet there's a certain incredibly evocative resonance to the term "poetry" that it's hard to let go of ... particularly as it was the medium through which we found our own voices ... whether another had to look to a page to hear it or not. And perhaps the thought that others might never discover poetry due to a preference for whatever 'post-avant' work might eventually be termed is saddening.
Seems to me that the popularity of poetry could only gain by accepting these two camps, thereby widening the field that might drawn new readers in.
... Sorry, might have gotten a bit off topic there ...
Naw, naw -- that's fine.
But a sound poet (even if they're post-avant) is an oral poet, not a visual one.
I'm not arguing for renaming SQ and PA directly OP and VP. I'm saying that's where the real division is.
Also, the problem with not dividing the forms while trying to promote poetry is that folks looking for OP tend to get turned off when they find VP (and vice-versa, though the former is the larger group).
But expanding the audience for poetry is an entirely different (though tangental) discussion (that starts with narrative poetry).
I don't think anyone in poetry should be afraid of people being turned off by finding one type when they were expecting another, personally. I doubt painting has lost many fans who found Monet when they were hoping for Picasso, and I'd hope that there were enough people out there with the necessary breadth of mind to accept examples of both fields.
But to get back to what I truly found objectionable about the distinction (like I said, it's a useful critical tool): it still treads roughshod over a preexisting generic division, one which is far older than the current bruja-ha re: school of quietude v. post-avant. Artists as far back as Apollonaire and Marinetti, and further, have happily worked in visual fields. The lettrists too explored the visual elements of the poem, and I think it would be a disservice to an expansive field of work to entirely conflate the work of the 'post-avants' with theirs. That's not too say that they don't share features ... indeed, they do, just as much as 'verbal' and 'visual' poets do.
I merely mean to assert that it would be a shame to employ a term that's already functional in another dimension in a way that ignores that functionality.
When i first heard the term "school of quietude" i thought that it applied to mr silliman and co. because of the lack of radical engagement with actual situations by so-called "radical poets"
i have come to extend this aspect of "quietude" throughout american poetry, which for the most part during this era in history,reminds me of this quote from M. Antonin Artaud in his Preface to The Theater and its Double: "And if there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in pour time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames."
Except, in the case of Americans today,one might change this to make sure the victims signaling through the flames are not "us" but "them."
This is the first time i have read or heard the term post-avant applied to (Western) Visual Poetry, which has been in existence, depending on your base of measurement, for approximately 40,000 or roughly 115 years.
Visual Poetry need not have anything at al to do with letters, alphabets and the like, and still be performed not only orally, but also as dance, performance. The great Bob Cobbing and I used to sound and perfrom the carcksinthe sidewlk as we went along, and the shaodwson the sidewalk made by leaves chaning positions of themsleves and shadows with each chnagein the velocities and directionsof gusts of wind. Bob Had been performing "anything" for decades before that, sounding the haptic poetry, the tactile expressions, and from these launcihing forth into song. The Russian Zaum 9Trans-rational Poets) combined visual poetry, handwritten texts by artists of poet's texts with the influence of Speaking in Tongues found in various parts of Russia and among Siberian Shamen.
Orality, as in Sound Poertry, which often uses Visual Poetry notations as "scores"--doesnot need to be made up of words themselves.
"A poem can be made with anything," wrote William Carlos Williams, from "the common thing anonymously about us."
SDound Poetry, Visual Poetry, poetry made of commont hings about one--these ar all firmly of and in the world as well as taking flight to elsewheres, including those of the Non-Objectiviy of Malevich's Suprematism. (Malevich worked with Mayakovsky and Matyushin in 1913 on the Russian Futurist "Opera" "Victory over the Sun"
I think that by creating this dichotomy of "us vs. them" Silliman has sought to control the field of play so to speak, setting its limits and including only those poetries which he deems to be "on the same page" as himself and what he considers to be his opposnent.
Thisis a mentality born of the Cold War--remember the dreariness of those times--??? The oppressive leaden sense of non-Freedom, the looming BOMB--
The End Game, Brinksmanship and so on--
This approach is designed to taek into calculation only those facors it allows on the field--while the rest of poetry is ignored--not that a lot of it cares much!
I think these endless sub-divisions and "devleopemnts "extending "beyond" the "avant"--into the "post avant" and then the glowing radiance of Baroque Avant--not to forget the Studebaker Avanti!--al of this sounds so much like the planning out of those extensive "towns" "where the houses al look like ticky tacky" and "are al the same."
What are divisions and sub divisions for in the academic/poetic worlds but a way to create new anthologies, rebrandings, repackagings of collections of the "new" or "latest" or "favorite" or "greatest" poems from any number of choices given any number of names, divisions, sub-divisions and classifications.
What it all boils down in a way is simply the struggle for markets, the creation of marketing techniques, and securing a base from which to launch one's endeavors forth in the poetic /academic market place. "Pushing the Product" as they say in the music industry--"shipping x number of Units"--trucks rumbling through the night on lonesome "routes" long abandoned for the more glamourous freeways, stocked with crates and boxes of Units whoe main point of existence is simply that--that they exist and were shipped. How many were sold--usually conflated with those shipped--is a matter open to conjecture. The books, however, have long been cooked and "That's Entertainment."
With the competition for jobs i the teaching markts and the current hard times, it is especially important to make sure that one's marketing skills have been wel honed and one has a strategy, a plan of attack, a methodically worked out method for choosing which lists to join, which blogs to follow and which names to drop.
These decisions will in turn hlep one determine what lexicon to emply, what forms to champion, and what "niche" to be to present as one's "speciality."
This is at least a possible reason for the endless divisions subdivisions and those anguyished decisions of mr silliman as he tries to reconnoiter why it is that so and so sounds oddly like the Max Douglas of Kenneth Irby yet seems to have been nurtured by the same lambs who suckled --of al people!--those moments in so and so when they appear to be at least momentarily the one existing american equivalent of something like john clare, or , that is, john clare as heard by american eras. Perhaps more like a Robert Frost crossed with say--a vintage edition from the Sand Dollar press of--and oh yes!! yes!! I know who it is!! It is the Kennth Irby of the early period meeting that of the later, and the two of them joining in an excursion with myself (El Silliman) and sundry other Grand Pianists on an outing to see the site of the last remaining (western) place in America that Gertrude Stein was known to have read aloud from her works at, with only a few close friends and family present, al of them dressed oddly like the mourners at Valentino's Funeral--and where there is said to be still living in the environs a very ancient person who was actually present for the occaision who has in recent years become a terrific fan of the works of Larry Eigner, the pre-California works as she calls them--gazing out to the Pacific with bleared blue eyes and a palsied hand clutching the Eigner text which she reads aloud to the trembling ocean airs--while the Poets all look on and listen, really listen, to her voice as it makes its way through the roaring of the surf and the wild Ocean sound poems as they smash into the pictographs--or is it grafitti-- incised into the rocks of the coastline.
You see, poems have lives of their own--
far more interesting no doubt than those ascribed to them by the endless subdivisions of a Cold War mentality carried over into the 21st century ceaselessly choosing a New Worst Monster in History to go to War with--
The poets may not notice or pay attention as their country slides deeper into corporate fascism, but the poems from their places tossed in the wild airs do--
as waves wash away the detritus of the left overs of the lunches hurriedly consumed and the Eigner readings are forgotten and everyone runs home to their blogs--
I have too many comments--mostly negative, I'm afraid--to try to put them into any coherent order.
1. It's highly unlikely that you composed visual poetry with panache at the age of 15. Saying so makes you sound like the idiots who claim a child could equal Jackson Pollock.
2. Basing a classification of schools of poetry on "the school of quietude" is foolish because the latter's lack of anything near a responsible definition. Moreover, it seems to cover too diverse a confusion of poetries, basically any kind that Ron Silliman fails to sympathize with.
3. Renaming "the school of quietude" "oral poetry" is absurd because much of Silliman's poetry is oral, in your sense, as is much of language poetry, which he contrasts to "the school of quietude." And what about performance poetry and sound poetry, both of which are entirely oral, and neither of which anyone considers "school of quietude" poetry that I know of? What about political poetry, and what I call contra-genteel poetry, neither of which is quiet.
4. At least as silly is calling poetry not in "the school of quietude" visual poetry. Much of it is lyrical and thus, for Silliman, would have to be considered in "the school of quietude." Visual poetry is a narrow sort of poetry--too narrow to call one of the two major kinds of poetry.
5. I divide poetries many ways, for instance, into knownstream poetry and otherstream poetry, the first kind being poetry just about every member of a college English department will be familiar with, the second poetry few in any such department will know more than the name of, it that. Poetry published in bigCirc magazines, discussed by the name critics, taught in colleges, given prizes, etc., versus poetry rarely published anywhere except in micro-zines or on the Internet, only mentioned by name critics sneeringly and briefly, taught or even mentioned in few colleges, and hardly ever awarded prizes.
6. My formal taxonomy of poetry begins with linguaesthetic and pluraesthetic poetry. This division, ironically, has points somewhat in common with yours inasmuch as linguaesthetic poetry would include your oral poetry since it is all poetry that is linguistically aesthetic only, whereas the main member of the pluraesthetic poetry group is visual poetry, pluraesthetic poetry being poetry making significant use of more expressive modalities than the verbal.
7. Thanks for starting this discussion however I disagree with what you said. I'm all for any attempt to classify poetry.
--Bob G.
Bob --
I'll take my tack at answering these:
1. It's highly unlikely that you composed visual poetry with panache at the age of 15. Saying so makes you sound like the idiots who claim a child could equal Jackson Pollock.Well, we'll talk about the Pollack later. But I haven't seen much work on UBU &c that is any better than what I was doing as a High School sophomore and junior. Sorry. Not that there isn't work better, just that, had I been aware of the "proper channels" I feel that a lot of that work would have been publishable. Irrespective, it probably wasn't a useful example.
2. Basing a classification of schools of poetry on "the school of quietude" is foolish because the latter's lack of anything near a responsible definition. Moreover, it seems to cover too diverse a confusion of poetries, basically any kind that Ron Silliman fails to sympathize with.Silliman is one of the most read voices in poetry right now. And since Paul Muldoon (arguably the only person involved in poetry with a larger circulation of readers) doesn't pontificate in the pages of the New Yorker, he's got the biggest critical voice.
He's the one who came up with "SoQ" so he was able to set the stage for the debate.
I have no problem engaging him and reframing the terms -- and I'm thankful for sending a lot of people here.
3. Renaming "the school of quietude" "oral poetry"Please understand that I am not redefining SoQ as Oral Poetry. I am saying that the division (schism?) developing in poetry is not along pre- and post-avant but along Oral and Visual poetry.
And that division is where we should focus our critical energies.
the rest of your point (and the first part of point 4) was due to the above misconstruction, and I hope I've clarified my definition. I think another post is likely in order.
Visual poetry is a narrow sort of poetry--too narrow to call one of the two major kinds of poetry.I'd disagree with this. And besides, if we view this in the light of the evolution of the animation / 2-d art critical division, we can understand that the newer art is necessarily more "narrow" than the older art.
5. I divide poetries many ways, for instance, into knownstream poetry and otherstream poetry, the first kind being poetry just about every member of a college English department will be familiar with, the second poetry few in any such department will know more than the name of, it that.Well, first of all, I'd like to start with poetry that every American reader knows (About 1/3 of the population) and go from there. I think putting poetry in "college English departments" is a very bad practice.
Poetry published in bigCirc magazines, discussed by the name critics, taught in colleges, given prizes, etc., versus poetry rarely published anywhere except in micro-zines or on the Internet, only mentioned by name critics sneeringly and briefly, taught or even mentioned in few colleges, and hardly ever awarded prizes.First off, the New Yorker is the only "bigCirc" magazine out there. The Nation and the Christian Science monitor and the National Review (the next three largest markets) make up maybe half of its circulation.
Secondly, that "otherstream" of work -- if you're talking about work that gets sneered at is ofter what Silliman would describe as School of Quietude.
Thirdly, neologisms almost never work -- and your otherpoetry/knownpoetry smack of Bakhtinian hapax legomenonism.
6. My formal taxonomy of poetry begins with linguaesthetic and pluraesthetic poetry. This division, ironically, has points somewhat in common with yours inasmuch as linguaesthetic poetry would include your oral poetry since it is all poetry that is linguistically aesthetic only, whereas the main member of the pluraesthetic poetry group is visual poetry, pluraesthetic poetry being poetry making significant use of more expressive modalities than the verbal.I'm not sure if you're using terms like linguaesthetic and pluraesthetic how and why you're disagreeing with me.
Oral poetry (or linguaesthetic if we have to make up words) is poetry that could still exist if the whole world suddenly went blind
and
Visual poetry (or pluraesthetic) is poetry that could still exist if the whole world suddenly went deaf.
Notice I didn't say "were" -- I think having both faculties is important to the appreciation of poetry.
However, visual poetry can't be sold at audible.com
7. Thanks for starting this discussion however I disagree with what you said. I'm all for any attempt to classify poetry.Well, you're welcome, and I think we agree more than you think we do.
--Bob G.
I'll take my tack at answering these:
**Thanks.
1. It's highly unlikely that you composed visual poetry with panache at the age of 15. Saying so makes you sound like the idiots who claim a child could equal Jackson Pollock.
Well, we'll talk about the Pollack later. But I haven't seen much work on UBU &c that is any better than what I was doing as a High School sophomore and junior. Sorry. Not that there isn't work better, just that, had I been aware of the "proper channels" I feel that a lot of that work would have been publishable.
Irrespective, it probably wasn't a useful example.
**UBU isn't the place to go for visual poetry, but I still doubt your work outdid it. I remember vividly reading an attack on E.E. Cummings's poetry with its author's parody of
Cu m, ings
in which he broke up words, scattered bits of text and insert some punctuation marks in weird places. He thought he'd shown how easy it is to make a Cummings typographical poem. Then there are all the rhymers who write a banal prose piece, then think they've really shown how stupid free verse is when they lineate it.
2. Basing a classification of schools of poetry on "the school of quietude" is foolish because the latter's lack of anything near a responsible definition. Moreover, it seems to cover too diverse a confusion of poetries, basically any kind that Ron Silliman fails to sympathize with.
Silliman is one of the most read voices in poetry right now.
And since Paul Muldoon (arguably the only person involved in poetry with a larger circulation of readers) doesn't pontificate in the pages of the New Yorker, he's got the biggest critical voice.
He's the one who came up with "SoQ" so he was able to set the stage for the debate.
I have no problem engaging him and reframing the terms -- and I'm thankful for sending a lot of people here.
**You ignoring my point. Who cares who Silliman and Muldoon are. "The School of Quietude" is a meaningless term. You should simply have said that dividing contemporary schools of poetry into "The School of Quietude" and some opposition school is dumb because the first term is undefined, then shown, as you did, how you would divided contemporary schools, but with no further reference to "the school of quietude."
3. Renaming "the school of quietude" "oral poetry"
Please understand that I am not redefining SoQ as Oral Poetry. I am saying that the division (schism?) developing in poetry is not along pre- and post-avant but along Oral and Visual poetry.
And that division is where we should focus our critical energies.
**Okay, but I have trouble with your division, as I showed in my previous post and will show again here.
the rest of your point (and the first part of point 4) was due to the above misconstruction, and I hope I've clarified my definition. I think another post is likely in order.
**Okay.
Visual poetry is a narrow sort of poetry--too narrow to call one of the two major kinds of poetry.
I'd disagree with this. And besides, if we view this in the light of the evolution of the animation / 2-d art critical division, we can understand that the newer art is necessarily more "narrow" than the older art.
**Seems to me visual poetry is to the whole field of newer poetry about as formal verse is to the whole field of older poetry.
5. I divide poetries many ways, for instance, into knownstream poetry and otherstream poetry, the first kind being poetry just about every member of a college English department will be familiar with, the second poetry few in any such department will know more than the name of, it that.
Well, first of all, I'd like to start with poetry that every American reader knows (About 1/3 of the population) and go from there. I think putting poetry in "college English departments" is a very bad practice.
**Matter of personal preference. I'm focusing on the poetry that supposedly knowledgeable poetry people know about and the (good) poetry they don't know about. If you want a third category covering poetry just about anyone at all interested in poetry knows about, fine, but I see no use for it.
Poetry published in bigCirc magazines, discussed by the name critics, taught in colleges, given prizes, etc., versus poetry rarely published anywhere except in micro-zines or on the Internet, only mentioned by name critics sneeringly and briefly, taught or even mentioned in few colleges, and hardly ever awarded prizes.
First off, the New Yorker is the only "bigCirc" magazine out there. The Nation and the Christian Science monitor and the National Review (the next three largest markets) make up maybe half of its circulation.
**By "bigCirc" I mean in comparison to the magazines that publish interesting poetry--roughly the magazines like The Atlantic and even The New Criterion that bookstores might carry and that are often in libraries. Also newspaper inserts.
Secondly, that "otherstream" of work -- if you're talking about work that gets sneered at is often what Silliman would describe as School of Quietude.
**Right. I think that was one of my points.
Thirdly, neologisms almost never work -- and your otherpoetry/knownpoetry smack of Bakhtinian hapax legomenonism.
**Neologisms are required for non-bullshit. (However much they are also used for it.) For one thing, they specify distinctions too often blurred over. For another, they're new, so not yet corrupted by misuse.
6. My formal taxonomy of poetry begins with linguaesthetic and pluraesthetic poetry. This division, ironically, has points somewhat in common with yours inasmuch as linguaesthetic poetry would include your oral poetry since it is all poetry that is linguistically aesthetic only, whereas the main member of the pluraesthetic poetry group is visual poetry, pluraesthetic poetry being poetry making significant use of more expressive modalities than the verbal.
I'm not sure if you're using terms like linguaesthetic and pluraesthetic how and why you're disagreeing with me.
**Just an example of what I consider rational classifying. But my division of poetries is different here from yours. Much different. For instance, school of quietude is in both, and innovative poetry is in both.
Oral poetry (or linguaesthetic if we have to make up words) is poetry that could still exist if the whole world suddenly went blind
**Actually, there are (in my poetics) poem that are all words but need to be seen on the page fully to work. You would call them visual poems, I would not.
and
Visual poetry (or pluraesthetic) is poetry that could still exist if the whole world suddenly went deaf.
**You wuz deaf when you read my definition. Mathematical poems and sound poems are not visual poems but are pluraesthetic poems, in my poetics. There are recordings of sound poems with a fair circulation among those those few who like sound poetry.
Notice I didn't say "were" -- I think having both faculties is important to the appreciation of poetry.
**We certainly agree here (and some on both sides don't)--except that I claim there are more faculties than two that can be important for poetry-appreciation.
However, visual poetry can't be sold at audible.com
**Mostly but not entirely true. Certain poets compose visual poetry and work out ways to audibilize it. The result is not the same as the original, but as close (I think) as, say, a Dylan Thomas reading of a poem is to the original (which won't have his voice and declamatory overlay).
7. Thanks for starting this discussion however I disagree with what you said. I'm all for any attempt to classify poetry.
Well, you're welcome, and I think we agree more than you think we do.
**I usually agree more than disagree with most people in poetry on most subjects having to do with the art. But one tends to discuss areas of clash much more than areas of blend. I look forward to your next post on this.
**Oh, and be aware that I'll probably re-post this at my own po-X-cetera blog. No big deal: it's rare that more than seven or eight people visit what I write there.
--Bob
Bob,
Again, thanks.
I did want to point out this though:
"Who cares who Silliman and Muldoon are."
Well, kind of everyone (working in poetry) really. They're certainly two of the larger players in poetry right now
and while I'd like to think that the internet can solve all problems, personality and popularity are still important in getting ideas out there.
UBU's certainly the most popular storehouse of VizPo -- where do you say I should go?
M
2. Basing a classification of schools of poetry on "the school of quietude" is foolish because the latter's lack of anything near a responsible definition. Moreover, it seems to cover too diverse a confusion of poetries, basically any kind that Ron Silliman fails to sympathize with.
Silliman is one of the most read voices in poetry right now.
"Who cares who Silliman and Muldoon are."
Well, kind of everyone (working in poetry) really. They're certainly two of the larger players in poetry right now.
####Yes, but if it's stupid to use "The School of Quietude" as the basis of a discussion of varieties of poetry, as I maintain, it remains stupid even if a bigName like Silliman has discussed it. You ought to choose ideas to discuss on the basis of their value not on the basis of whose ideas they are.
As for where to go for visual poetry, it's scattered all over the Internet, but the best single place for it is light&dust. But a person serious about understanding it, needs books like Writing To Be Seen, which I edited, and should study particular poets, browsing until he finds a few he connects with. Some I think at the top of the field are Scott Helmes, John M. Bennett, K.S. Ernst, Carol Stetser, Karl Kempton, Guy Beining, John Vieira, Geof Huth.
--Bob
Russian Futurist "Opera" "Victory over the Sun" --
let's make the reconstruction of the opera, there are costumes and decorations
"What it all boils down in a way is simply the struggle for markets, the creation of marketing techniques, and securing a base from which to launch one's endeavors forth in the poetic /academic market place. "
Is that really what it 'all boils down to?"
Let's hope not. Good discussion.
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