Stephen Burt in n+1, Number 4

Excerpted from the symposium on "American Writing Today:"

Whom should more poets follow, or at least contemplate? Again, in poetry: George Herbert, Christopher Smart, pre-1937 W.H. Auden, Basil Bunting, Donald Davie, James K. Baxter, post-1964 Robert Lowell. Among living writers, maybe Thylias Mass, Juan Felipe Herrera, Laura Kasischke, Liz Waldner. In poetry criticism: William Empson, Donald Davie.

What current modes clog the pipeline and tire me out? (1) Quasi-automatic writing and a kind of comic quasi-surrealism, especially when the author wants to be winning, funny, "entertaining," and shocking at the same time. (2) Slack free-verse autobiography; chatty anecdote without interesting form. (3) Endless zeroxes of '50s formalist poems, copies of Anthony Hecht and Howard Nemerov. (4) "Spirituality," which, pursued as a primary goal, tends to make poems sound like bad translations.

Most poets today are writing either for a coterie of readers they know personally, who want to participate in the social circulation of new work (rather than in the rereading of old work), or else (in part) for an academic market in which the more you publish (as long as it's in semiprestigious venues), the more your chances for tenure and promotion.

Both paradigns encourage overproduction. Younger poets, in particular, seem to rush things, to make public ten pounds of cookie dough when, had they waited, they might have had five pounds of tasty cookies. I don't know what any of us can do about that, and for certain poets whose work is supposed to sound "raw" (such as Kasischke and Waldner) that may not even amount to a disadvantage.

Anything you can do 100 times in 100 poems without learning a new trick isn't worth doing more than twice. Sense is harder than nonesense; order is harder than disorder. But, as Stevens said, "A great disorder is an order"; as Dickenson said, "Much madness is divinest sense / To a discerning eye."

Something by Caleb Crain, somewhat less memorable, followed.

multiple choice

One would think that if you were a relatively well-read American political magazine, if one that has become in large part intellectually and almost entirely ideologically corrupt, and you decided to get all hip and whatnot and start a group "weblog," that you would make sure to keep your eyes on what is going on on your new hip website. You would, perhaps, have an editor or even a copy-editor every once in a while pass her or his eyes over the stuff being posted, just to make sure it was neither insane, inscrutable, factual wrong, or even stupidly and logically incorrect.

One would think all these things, right? But clearly, this is not the case over at the New Republic's Open University. I'm not going to go into detail here about how deep these problems run, but rather let's just look at a post from today. It's by Robert Brustein, and it deals with the ostensible decline of the study of Shakespeare in US English departments.

Just to set this up correctly, let's start at the end of the article, which tries to make a funny out of the rise of cultural studies and some half-assed cartoon:

"And at the University of Virginia," the report continues, "English majors can avoid reading Othello in favor of studying 'Critical Race Theory' which explores why race 'continues to have vital significance in politics, education, culture, arts, and everyday social realities,' including 'sexuality, class, disability, multiculturalism, nationality, and globalism.'"

A recent newspaper cartoon shows two young girls walking out of a school. One turns to the other and says, "I have two mommies." The other replies, "How much is two?"

So the joke is that we're so busy filling kids heads with relativist agitprop that there's no time left for teaching basic skills. Ha! That's hilarious. (Be better if they were nappy-headed mommies, but we'll leave that to the other contributors to work out...) But what is even more hilarious is that this moment of jocular jouissance comes at the end of an article that includes the following passage in the middle:

But the ACTA report is not about the torments of secondary school education. It concerns the fate of Shakespeare courses in colleges and universities. Entitled "The Vanishing Shakespeare," the report asserts that at three-quarters of the institutions surveyed, which is to say 15 out of 70 of our leading colleges and universities, English majors are no longer asked to take a single course in Shakespeare's plays. And if you think this omission only applies to huge state institutions, look at the Ivy League universities where Harvard alone still considers Shakespeare a requirement. "Thus," the report mournfully concludes, "55 of 70 schools we surveyed allow English majors--including future English teachers--to graduate without studying the language's greatest writer in depth."

In 1996, that number was 47 out of 70, which suggests that, at the present rate of attrition, in twenty years you won't find a Shakespeare course anywhere in the country. "I am dying, Egypt, dying," says Antony to Cleopatra. "I am dying, America, dying," Shakespeare could be saying to us.

Hmmm... "In 1996, that number was 47 out of 70, which suggests that, at the present rate of attrition, in twenty years you won't find a Shakespeare course anywhere in the country." Um, no, it decidedly does not suggest that. It might suggest that few colleges will require Shakespeare courses, but this study certainly can't predict what Brustein wants it to predict. This is basic, SAT-type problem solving, and Brustein is apparently not up to the task. (And then, of course, there's also the 15/70 = 3/4 further up the quote, but we'll give a pass on that one...)

Perhaps, in case Brustein stops by, we should set it up in a nice, clear format for him to print out and practice with:

If in 1996, 23 out of 70 universities required Shakespeare, and in 2006, 15 of 70 required Shakespeare, then:

a) the darkies have the run of the place now.
b) girls who like girls write books now, which is a little bit disturbing and a little bit exciting to think about.
c) course requirements are on the wane in our nation's universities, for both good and bad reasons.
d) is our TNR bloggers learning?

Apparently, to TNR, blog means unmonitored collection of worthless shit of questionable veracity... If it weren't for what has gone on with that magazine in the last decade or so, you might be led to think that the Open University is actually an ultra-subtle guerilla attack on the b'sphere on the part of the mainstream print media, beating us by disasterously joining us, as it were. But I'm pretty sure they're not really up to the task.

maybe ten years ago . . .

There's a lazy tendency to slander the past when something happens in the present. In today's New York Times David Carr writes that the firing of Don Imus for his racist remarks is a "sign of the times."

Mr. Imus is an old-school radio guy caught in a very modern media paradigm. When he started 30 years ago, if he made the same kind of remark, it would have floated off into the ether — the Federal Communications Commission, if it received complaints, might have taken notice, but few others.

Continue reading “maybe ten years ago . . . ”

Regarding the Scull Controversy

Rather than going away as an issue, the Scull versus the Foucauldians debate seems to be spreading. It seems odd to me that people are willing to get worked up over this issue. Afterall, standard periodizations of Foucault's work place The History of Madness outside his developed periods; viz., the archaeological, the genealogical, and the problematization. That is, within the Foucauldian corpus itself, The History of Madness is an outlier (not unlike his commentary on Kant's anthropology, his book on Roussel, or the disavowed Maladie mentale et personnalité). The question, then, appears not to be about the place of The History of Madness in Foucault's own oeuvre - a concept that should no doubt be question by anyone who takes Foucault's work seriously - but, rather, about what "Foucault," that is to say "Theory," signifies in the context of (primarily) (North) American disciplinary politics. (Although, it is worth pointing out that comparing passages from the "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" essay with The History of Madness is, at best, strange - it is wrong-headed to criticize a non-genealogical work for not being genealogical!) Scull is engaged in a territorial pissing match with rivals. His concern, it seems to me, is to reject the work of Foucauldians by nit-picking Foucault's major dissertation. (I guess it is easier to take on a dead guy's dissertation than it is to take on work published by Nik Rose twenty years ago.) Predictably, the "Theory" warriors - themselves derivative hacks of the worst sort - are all to happy to jump into Scull's boat in an effort to push their own agenda within the narrow perspective of American English departments.

(Cross-posted from theoria.)

swiped from crooked timber, but probably even more appropriate over here...

Try this out.

I'm wondering why my posts seem particularly apt to incite the masses. One of them has a sign that says "Continue Reading Adbusters," for instance.

I love the little guy with the beret who carries the "Perec" sign too... And the Baudrillardians seem to be truly pissed.

Finally, one guy is firmly with the Lacoue-ians, but. apparently, against the Labarthites.

dialectics at a standstill: bruce sterling as exemplary public intellectual, circa now

The current configuration of the fields of journalism, academia, and publishing - plus the advent of the blogsphere - have produced in turn a new configuration of public intellectualism. There's something of a long tail effect at work - there are probably more PIs listened to by fewer than any time in history. All manner of blogpundits, evangelists, and visionaries abound.

One of these (actually, he's officially the Visionary in Residence at the Art Center College of Design in California) is Bruce Sterling, who has recently produced his very own youtubed guide to Belgrade:

Let me clip in what I think is the key passage here:

OK. so bear around the corner of the street, and this Tito-era workers housing building with its crumbling substandard concrete, we have what's basically an ideological declaration here: business, technology, communication. You notice it doesn't seem to be actually selling much of anything, it's more like a placard for the 21st century way of life. Just a layer, a thin layer, on top of an older building. But it is this layer, this thin layer, that actually allows me to live within this particular city and earn a living here... via internet. Oh but what kind of person am I? Well, you know, look at my clothing. Look at my possessions. Business, technology, communication. What are these objects, actually attached to my body. This one in particular, wireless communication, completely changes people's physical relationship to the city grid. In order to assemble my crew here on this street corner, we had to make about 30 different wireless phone calls just this morning and this afternoon. And yet, thanks to wireless communication, this is it. Thanks to the internet, that's what allows me to be here.

Dear Christ. So, let's consult the scorecard. The public housing of the old regime sucked, sure, but now there's, what, a weird placard and Sterling with a fucking cellphone. For a proper celebration to ensue, you'd think we'd catch sight of all the fabulous new housing for the underclasses since the arrival of the free market chez Belgrade. After all, one guesses that there still are, like, people living in the crumbling workers housing building. Just as the failure of the American welfare state doesn't mean that no one has to live in towering projects, it's just that the idea of building new residences for the working class has been abandoned.

I suppose it does change "people's relationship to the city grid" to have a well-paid speculative fiction writer cum freelance consultant strolling the streets of your city, making 30 calls a day on his phone, escorted by a movie crew. The rise of communism. The death of Tito. The fall of the Wall. The arrival of Bruce Sterling in your city. It all makes sense now, no?

More seriously: the illogic of the paragraph I've typed in speaks to the strange situation of the nearly-depoliticized public intellectual in 2007. The past, its utopian politics, are recognized and then derided. Guffaw, guffaw. But when the part of the paragraph arrives when you're meant to explain why you're smiling and carrying on, the part about the world actually being a better place now that the nasty specter of communism has slinked back into the grave, you simply stare into the face of your cellphone, or flip it out for all to admire. You register the amazingness of the fact that you're actually here, wherever you are: a post-communist city that still bears the scares of US bombing, or a Pizza Hut in Bangalore, or the Department of Defense media center in the green zone, wherever. Your voice rises, you get excited, but there's nothing to show but a civic-boosterist information economy poster splayed across the face of a Worker's Residence, gutted into condos.

In short, the past and its potentialities are everywhere confronted, but only to be at once disowned with a shrug....

Of fire and ice; speaking of the end is good

Some distinct and recent possibilities deserving of dignity:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, grouping 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also set to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilize greenhouse gas emissions [my emphasis].

To refrain from the mere alarmist hyperbole, note also:

The Gulf Stream bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic could slow, although a shutdown is highly unlikely, it says.

This is encouraging, as it would be hard for 'Europe' to oppose US-welfared corporate monarchs from under several feet of ice.  The related Boston Review article by Kerry Emanuel, meanwhile (via woods lot), is quite informative. 

Although, I'm personally a little disappointed that it neglects to mention either John Muir (for whom walking months on end upon glaciers in Alaska with wool blanket and a hunk of cheese was terrific fun), nor the distinct possibility that the gulf stream (also one of my heroes) may shut down (we don't really know) as it previously did, were Greenland to continue with its exponential melting (as all signs indicate it will, and inevitably it will, for at least half a century).

Kerry's leaf analogy is striking.  It may be accurate to say, "Prediction beyond a certain time is impossible," but surely there is still ample room for informed speculative thinking about the future (without which, one should certainly argue, there is no future – by very definition – at all).  Again, the mere realization of the fact of a forty-year delay is profoundly world-shattering.  Recall what Chad Harbach wrote recently:

It takes forty years or more for the climate to react to the carbon dioxide and methane we emit.  This means that the disasters that have already happened during the warmest decade in civilized history (severe droughts in the Sahel region of Africa, Western Australia, and Iberia; deadly flooding in Mumbai; hurricane seasons of unprecedented length, strength, and damage; extinction of many species; runaway glacial melt; deadly heat waves; hundreds of thousands of deaths all told) are not due to our current rates of consumption, but rather the delayed consequences of fuels burned and forests clear-cut decades ago, long before the invention of the Hummer.  If we ceased all emissions immediately, global temperatures would continue to rise until around 2050.  &nbep;  This long lag is the feature that makes global warming so dangerous.  Yes, this is how we would destroy ourselves – not by punching red buttons in an apocalyptic fit, but by appropriating to ourselves just a little too much comfort, a little too much time.  Like Oedipus, we've been warned.  Like Oedipus, we flout the warning and we'll act surprised, even outraged, when we find out what we've done.

Well I'm no scientist, and if these facts are in any way inaccurate, then I'm all ears.  In any case though, one thing is crystal clear:

Continue reading “Of fire and ice; speaking of the end is good”

Having just begun

Gabriel Josipovici on Borges, Poe, the novel, Kierkegaard, Wallace Stevens...:

It may be that Borges’ mode of writing is not such as to engage fully with politics and history, like that of Sartre and Malraux; yet I would suggest that despite this his central contrast of the melancholy and resigned translator and the idealist world of Tlön is more deeply political than Sartre and Malraux could ever be, and that it helps to bring out something that is often overlooked in studies of literary Modernism:  that to write about politics without recognising the complicity of forms of writing with the formation of political consciousness is to betray the cause one thinks one is serving, and that writers  like Eliot, Stevens, Beckett and Borges may in the end be better guides to the times than Malraux, Sartre, Camus, Silone and the rest...…

Actually, I think my favorite sentence is this:

...But there’s this deplorable confusion in that modern times have incorporated ‘actuality’ into logic and then, in distraction, forgotten that ‘actuality’ in logic is still only a ‘thought actuality’, i.e. it is possibility.

 

Thoughts anyone?  Certainly a must-read essay.   (Also via RSB, readers may be interested in the new journal, Affinities:  "a web-based journal that focuses on groups, movements, and communities that set out to construct sustainable alternatives to the racist, hetero-sexist system of liberal-capitalist nation-states.")

Intern-ment

Naked Punch Magazine is looking better every quarter, I must say (they even have a very decent new blog!).  Warm welcomes all around.  From some of the front matter, here is a funny bit by Nadim Samman in the latest issue:

Nietzsche rightly points out that 'what makes people rebel against suffering is not suffering itself, but the senselessness of suffering'.  If suffering is given a 'sense', or justification, then it is easier to bear–and may even be sought out–provided that the justification is powerful enough.  Our mustachioed friend claimed that 'early man' invented gods to perform this function.  The gods acted as 'divine audience' or witnesses to the spectacle of mankind's torments, redeeming them through their regard.  What is the Curriculum Vitae if not a secular god, bearing witness to the misery of the Intern?...
I plead with you, recognize the will to power–the pseudo-employer's 'sense of function'–in the exhortations 'It'll be good for your career', 'It'll be good for your CV', and 'It'll be good experience'.  Remember that an exhortation is not the same as promise, or a contract.  Beware!  Such exhortations are calculated appeals to vanity.

...the Intern should be characterized as someone undergoing internment–detention.  By detention I mean separation from 'good' where you are.  In the realm of pseudo-employment 'good' is elsewhere; deferred.  Such is the ascetic–life-denying, career-denying–principle of work experience...

If you must suffer, let your 'good' elsewhere be something other than a list–mere sheets of paper.  Let your 'divine audience' reflect your deepest sense of function.

Continue reading “Intern-ment”

appropriate background music

If current predictions hold, Republicans will need appropriate background music this coming Tuesday to help them emote in a way consonate with their new status. I would like to suggest the well-loved Albinoni Adagio in G Minor, for Organ and Strings. Turn on the TV, leave off the volume, and watch election returns with that in the background.

But what about other voters who are not Republicans? And even some Republicans who have decided the Bush Presidency has written checks its competence can't cash? Don't they need background music?

Continue reading “appropriate background music”