The Third Letter

Dear Walrus Whoever You Are You Are

A few thoughts this Sunday afternoon.

i)

Taking T.S. Eliot first. Again, for me, it’s hard to separate the poetry from the context in which I first encountered it – i.e. the classroom and lecture hall. The reverential tones with which the texts were discussed precluded any real discussion or personal engagement. Little was made of the manuscript workings and Pound’s surgical interventions – things which, now, fascinate me and maybe even eclipse the poem! Subsequently, I’ve tended to steer clear of Eliot other than on the occasions when I’m called upon to teach him – usually ‘The Waste Land’ in a few hurried periods – and I’m aware that there’s plenty there that I’ve missed.

I remember reading a lecture by Berrigan where he speaks respectfully of ‘The Waste Land’ – I think arguing that so much of what came later was already figured there. There it is – not so much the text as the mind with which you approach it. And perhaps that is part of the US/UK issue. The US poets approaching Eliot pragmatically, trying to locate what was worth taking away, or what energy it possessed, as against the British establishment mummifying it, turning into literary heritage, trying to numb it. Surely one of the reasons Eliot – and Joyce for that matter – is so popular in the Academy is the way he encourages doctoral-style research: allusion hunting, text sourcing, etc. Wasn’t that W.C. Williams’ complaint against Eliot – that he’d sent poetry back into the library?

This then leads on to explaining why Duncan can exert such a fascination where Eliot does not (or hasn’t for me). Duncan, too, is digging into the Tradition – Grail legends, troubadour poetry, Dante, Blake ... – yet somehow it doesn’t feel like a museum collection. I’ll bring in Zappa who, for me, is always a good touchstone and his Project/Object and Conceptual Continuity. Zappa never presents it as a polished system but opens it up to the bittiness of things and life.* I suppose you could connect this to a ‘Junk’ aesthetic which (given my sketchy knowledge) was shared by people such as George Herms and Jess on the West Coast. A poem by Duncan is as likely to juxtapose the death of his cat or a new crop of fruit in the garden with some cosmic theory or citation from a Great Author. The work remains ‘open’ – on the page, to the energies working within its confines and out to the movements of the volume itself, life, the universe, whatever.

Eliot, by contrast, seems intent on the polished oeuvre, the masterpiece, the Grecian Urn. And, for my money, the poetry suffers accordingly. **

I would have said the same about Pound but now sense the Cantos are much more a work in process, much less omni-competent (but did Pound know this?) than first appeared – and thus of greater interest for what I’m after. And Ron Silliman’s recent entries on Rachael Blau Duplessis’ ‘Drafts’ have alerted me to her work.

ii)

Faber & Faber. Yes, there’s a whole conspiracy theory you could develop here. I think it’s again connected to teaching. The kinds of poets Faber published – say, Hughes and Heaney – wrote the kinds of anthology piece you could market to schools (‘Dragon’s Teeth’ was one I recall) and shape a generation’s taste. However, Alvarez’s ‘The New Poetry’ with Penguin was also a key volume – as much for who it included as who it left out.

It’s the type of writing that was decisive – I won’t repeat the sketch of my previous letter. To take it further, I think it’s a way of seeing the poem as anecdotal, of a time ‘now’ in which a memory or scene is being recollected. It had to have ‘feelings’ – but nicely tempered by linguistic devices. Irony would also be helpful – to counteract any accusations of sentiment, vulgarity and poor taste. And, very clearly, a large debt was owed to a Wordsworthian model. The language of the poem – for all the talk of poetic artifice – was still in the service of paraphrasable meaning. A short story to all intents and purposes. The locations of poet and reader were clearly maintained. And there are all sorts of socio-political extensions from this.

What a reader brought up on this kind of diet could not fathom would be the sort of writing where words were ‘simply’ words on the page and the complex energies they contain.

To give three very quick examples that occur to me:

Canto I where Pound writes “I mean, that is Andreas Divus, /In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.”

W.C. Williams’ ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’

Oppen’s embedding of (and changes to) the Henry James quotation in the first poem of Discrete Series.

In the Pound example, it is not so much the wild goose chase to track down the volume and compare translations. Rather, to see “Andreas Divus, /In officina Wecheli, 1538,” – the printed words (and date) for what they are, what they embody, their actual printed existence. (Perhaps a comparison can be made with David Jones’ idea of ‘anathemata’). To have noticed, to have selected, to have repeated and placed these words. That is ‘the meaning’ (a term which itself has to be re-thought).

In the Williams example, a way of looking at the poem as an attempt to confront the reader with actual words on the page (and not, as it is often read, as a way to summon up a visual scene in the mind). The refusal of the poem to relinquish its printed and composed state. That is the ‘meaning’.

In the Oppen case, a tension felt between the source text and the citation’s current position. We cannot (or do knowing it’s a bad old habit) read ‘through’ to the James text. Our eyes are glued on the words here on the page, of meanings being suggested to do with transitions of prose to poetry, of meanings internal to the mechanism of the poem.

I’ll throw in another example – Zukofsky’s Poem beginning “The” especially the prefatory remarks and ‘references’.

iii)

Another angle of approach – the possibility of creating ‘communities’. Maybe the US – the Land of Plenty – was more conducive to opting out, getting by on part-time work which allowed time for writing, low rents and tolerant tenancy laws. I’m thinking of the groups that emerged in the late 50s in New York and carried through into the 80s. (I saw a recent interview with Ted Greenwald in which he argued high rents have killed the New York ‘scene’). There’s the group around Duncan and Spicer. In the UK there seems to have been a happy time in the 60s allowing poets like Raworth and Harwood to juggle the life:writing equation. I’m wondering where in the UK it would be possible to do the same in 2008? Rents, taxes, unemployment benefits, health charges, food prices – it would be near suicidal! Maybe Sean Bonney has managed it.

iv)

Experimental US & British poetry and Comedy. I’ll just leave this as a tantalizing sentence for now (the kids will return any minute). However, I reckon this is a fruitful avenue of research ...

Yours as rain hammers on the Velux

The Carpenter


* a lot of my ideas on Zappa derive from discussions and correspondence in the 1990s with Ben Watson (aka ‘Out to Lunch’, Professor of ‘Poodle Play’ and J.H. Prynne disciple).

** Manny Farber’s ‘White Elelphant Art vs Termite Art’ essay is useful here.

Grand Slam!

What else to blog about tonight?

Whatever half or quarter or sixth or eighth of myself feels proud.

The Second Letter

Dear Walrus

I’m getting used to this new keyboard which seems also to dictate a new rhythm and style of thinking.

The days are still too disrupted to give any considered thought to your e-mail but here are a few thoughts in lieu …

1. Where I’m coming from … to be honest the January silence was a period of reconsideration: what was this Blog for? Why blog? Who was – might – be reading it ‘out there’. It coincided with – on the one hand – listening to Bernadette Mayer describing how she made a choice given her domestic life: to read or write? I turned this question on myself: to write (ie creative work or the daily blogging/critical work?). Quite simply I don’t have time for both. A sentence which leapt out at me in the Duncan piece was:

“Yes, I was running away from work, from the only real work to do.”

You speak of a thesis – implying a joint project – and I’m wondering what I’m doing veering back into critical discourse.

On the other hand, a nagging sense of footling around. I read Ron Silliman, other bloggers who seem to be launching 3,000 word entries a day. How could I presume to issue thoughts on any subject given my dispersed reading habits, erratic jumps of idea, periods of inactivity due to the day-to-day demands of teaching & other stuff? Would it be better to just shut up shop and confine my ideas to Moleskine notebooks?

2. “Writing poetry criticism during the late sixties was to associate oneself with an academic world, and a tone of voice, which was considered inimical to the life of poetry itself. It was more important to look out of the window, to feel the light coming in, or the way the whole world seemed to collapse around you and rearrange itself as you stepped off the curb, than to think about poetry in a way that might improve other people’s lives. There was the poetry of being alive and there was the poetry on the page. The word “poet” was often used generically to describe the way you lived your life, whether you wrote anything or not.”
Lewis Warsh, ‘Introduction’, The Angel Hair Anthology.

I like this.
I like the phrase “the way the whole world seemed to collapse around you and rearrange itself as you stepped off the curb” – its fusion of urban walking and limit-breaking.
I like “there was the poetry of being alive and there was the poetry on the page”. Surely this relates to what you’re trying to locate in terms of the US/UK divide? That poetry is not simply what ends up between the covers. Rather, it implies an entire politics of living. Thus, the community around Duncan and Spicer; the New York generations of poets; what – I assume – has been generated within Cambridge, or the London-Brighton-Wales nexus of the 60s? Those poets who lived what they wrote as against those who separated the life from the writing?

What pact did Raworth make? “intelligence/ shall not replace intuition”.

3. Standing by your words.

Why I began the Blog was an attempt to break out of a timidity brought on by years of academic/ teaching-related preciosity. Having conducted a correspondence with Lisa Jarnot I realized that ‘Poetry’ – in the broader sense – was a matter of ‘going public’. Again: risk, vulnerability, putting it ‘out there’. You’ll have seen my rather gauche playing around with who-is-Belgianwaffle-really in early posts which also owes something to my compromised position as a teacher in a school. There are things one can/cannot say. In turn, I pose the question why you – U.P., Walrus, whatever nom de plume you wish to assume – “prefer not” and elect for Bartlebian anonymity. That way leads to the Dead Letter Office – unless you can convince me otherwise?

(The Harry Lime theme plays, the cat crawls over the shiny shoes, a light falls upon the face, an eyebrow raised … )

I’m asking myself is this a tease or a professional hedge?

In other words - where are you coming from?

Yours sincerely

The Carpenter

New Baby

Height: 1.08 inches

Weight: 5.0 pounds

Arrived this afternoon and has already made its first words.

I will put it to sleep soon.

*

I've had a headache since midday. The impending Oral exams and attendant admin. fuzz the brain.

*

Got two volumes of Rachael Blau Duplessis' Drafts project in the post plus Joni Mitchell's 'For the Roses'.

*

Dear Walrus: thanks for the reply. You'll gather I'm not really in the best frame of mind to make any intelligent response this evening. However, there's plenty more to say. D'you know the 'Gnostic Contagion' volume about Duncan and the strange illnesses that spread amongst the students who heard him lecture? Something in the voice and/or the intensity of his ideas.

N.B.

"Along with some passages from Boehme's Incarnation of Christ which I copied out, I'm sending a new piece of my own, written after a dream - "The Carpenter" had some references to Christ and that is the first appearance of him in my dreams, I think. (I've many times had appearances of Satan or of Demeter and of God the Father ...)"

The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, Letter 141, September 1959, p210.

*

This, in turn, led me to 'Roots and Branches' (1964) and the text you, Walrus, are after (poem, text, letter - the categories dissolve).

"I want to tell you why I ran away, hiding everywhere when you came after me. I knew you needed help in your carpentering and that you were good, but you were inexorable ... " ('A Letter', pp 16-21)

*

This volume has stood - until now - unopened on my shelf. It is stunning.

I am very grateful for you having drawn my attention to it.

Dear Walrus

"Maybe this is what is being constructed: a kind of ‘out building’. Not part of the main house but attached in some ways. It has windows through which the passerby can peer. Something’s going on in there but no one is quite sure what."

(Belgianwaffle, 19 May 2006)

*

So, I am the Carpenter? Then 'you' - Youpi - must be the Walrus.

OK. I’m happy to enter the looking glass or play in a hall of mirrors. The idea of the Blog from the outset was to set off some kind of correspondence – and a Walrus is as good a correspondent as anyone else. So let’s go …

*

Dear Walrus

Today, Tuesday 11th March 2008, I’m prepared to go on record as saying I think a major contributing factor to the US/UK poetry ‘split’ is down to teaching (good, poor, outstanding, misguided), full stop.

My own experiences of being taught poetry (by fabulous English teachers, don’t get me wrong) was largely under the shadow of I.A. Richards and the legendary ‘Practical Criticism’ paper. A poem became an exercise in mental agility. You had an hour in which to ‘process’ the poem through a series of machines – alliteration, metaphor, etc. Success reflected the extent to which the poem had been reduced to certain predictable features. The poem became a vehicle for cleverness. Crack it, solve it, explain it away. Next?

I think many English teachers are afraid of poetry (not just their students). I have had some colleagues who don't read it, prefer not to teach it, and others who believe it cannot be taught. If they do teach poetry, the poem tends to be diluted into prose (paraphrasable meaning, rhyme and rhythm as obligatory – but annoying – aspects to be discussed). Novels and plays are much more available to the kinds of analysis – and thus assignments – upon which 'good' teachers rely.

In a broader context – and moving to university level – poetry comes under the sway of the Academy. The teacher-professor is the Authority, thinks of his/her career trajectory, valuing letters after the name more than, perhaps, in the text. Professor X becomes the ‘authority’ on Blake, on Wordsworth, on Yeats. This, translated, can often mean they have staked their career (plus mortgage, plus kids’ school fees, plus down payment on the holiday villa) on this corner – and will defend it with their teeth. Papers are issued as much in the spirit of ‘disinterested’ research as as assertion of intellectual property rights. “Hands off – he’s mine!” Henry James anticipated this in several of his short stories.

I think I'm right in saying that Robert Duncan never got a degree. That Berrigan asserted that he was the "master of no art". And I remember an e-mail by Peter Riley ridiculing poetry competitions and their judges - who has the audacity to sit in judgment?

Lisa Jarnot describes classes with Robert Creeley: apparently he'd come in and read a poem and then pause and say something like "that was great wasn't it" and left it at that. (Obviously that relies on a pretty conducive atmosphere!).

Getting back to typical UK school teaching of poetry, there tends to be a very reduced sense of what poetry is. Ideally, for class purposes, it has to be of around twenty lines, possess a clearly separable 'argument' or narrative, some distinctive features and avoid any unpalatable language or issues. The sort of poem produced by - say - Duncan or Jack Spicer (the poem in series) is necessarily 'off limits'. Students form their taste based upon discrete poetic entities, usually 'well-crafted' (an unexamined concept), and displaying over-rich sounds (onomatopoeia being a favourite). Imagine a wine expert drinking nothing but thimbles of sweet port. O, for a draught of Chablis!

I'm more and more of the opinion that poetry makes you vulnerable. Not in the sentimental sense of liable to burst into tears. Rather, that you are confronted by something that challenges your assumptions, values, prejudices and habits of thoughts to the core. Start to talk about it (let alone write it) and yawning spaces open up. Each word is a chasm, the (w)hole you fall into. For me, Blanchot is absolutely right - the encounter with language enacts some fundamental encounter with the Other. (And why, in a sense, writing 'out' to an undisclosed walrus is perfectly apt). Certainly such un-certainty runs counter to what academia depends upon. How could one justify a Chair of Unknowing, a Faculty of the Dispossessed?

We're back to that great venomous phrase of Spicer's: the English Department of the Soul.

More and more I see parallels between the Church's suspicion and suppression of Gnosticism and Academia's relationship with Poetry. To simplify: the direct experience of the knowable-unknowable. Therefore, I think it runs deeper than simply a transatlantic poetic divide. Why, for instance, did Iain Sinclair, Lee Harwood, John James, Bill Griffiths, Tom Raworth not appear on any syllabus - or the shelves of Blackwells (at least as far as I can recall)? Yes, the mysterious J.H. Prynne was muttered about but then who had a copy?

That's enough hammering for today.

Yours faithfully,

The Carpenter

Distant voices

"Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you."


(The first telephone call, March 10, 1876)

Open invitation

"as the letters by which we spell words compel
magic refinements"

(from 'A Poem Slow Beginning', Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field)

look also at 'Spelling, Passages 15' in Bending The Bow.

*

There's a moment in one of Zappa's concerts when he addresses the audience:

"I don't know who you are - but I know you're out there"

which is rather how I feel. So, I invite "U.P.:up" to come out of the shadows and maybe we can start up a proper conversation? Don't be shy ...

(That this Blog has one reader is one more than I was beginning to assume back in January).

iBook update

The iBook is currently in intensive care. Will it pull through?

One good thing: I've been given a refund on the power cord I bought last week. I think that's very decent of Taco Systems, Waterloo.

(I think that counts as the first advertisement carried by this Blog.)

iBook RIP?

Looks like I might have a dead iBook on my hands.

That's what comes of trying to tweak a 2002 model with an Airport Express Card.

Stage one: iBook won't start up with Airport Card installed.
Stage two: iBook starts up when Card is removed.
Stage three: iBook won't start up with or without the Card.

I suppose I should have known better.

In the Eye of the Beholder

Once upon a time, I played Dungeons & Dragons. Hours were spent (wasted?) hunched over graph paper maps and filing cards devising dungeons. Certainly, my 'O' levels suffered. However, I remember with fondness the early conventions at Chelsea and Fulham Town Halls, chatting with Steve Jackson and Dave Livingstone before Games Workshop went commercial, long afternoons with friends until the unconscious symbolism of disappearing down tunnels in search of treasure dawned on my acne-ridden 15-year-old mind.

This book - Greyhawk - haunted my imagination and the cover in particular. The creature is a Beholder if my memory serves me right. It's not ridiculous, perhaps, to see some anticipation of my fascination with poetry - labyrinthine quests and spelling (see Robert Duncan for the double sense). And the wonderful world of elusive publications: Lee Gold's 'Alarums and Excursions' coming out of California, crudely photocopied, side stapled, full of typos; Hartley Patterson's 'News From Bree'.

Ironic, too, that my first students were far more impressed to hear that I was the creator of the Volt (a nasty little electrical beast with horns and prehensile tail) than any academic claims to fame. A salutary lesson in perspective.

So, yes, today I'm sad to hear that Gary Gygax has died - the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. That name had a magic for me - the double 'g' the 'y' and 'x' - well, it was like a Word of Power in itself.