Corey's Post-Mainstream

One could, if one cared to, construct a map          
of 2008 poetry aesthetics.  Approaches to         
poem-making these days are nearly as varied      
as are those who make poems.  There are,      
however, fields of interest.  Examples:       
Simon DeDeo has defined an anarchist poetics.
Visual poet, David-Baptiste Chirot, labels    
himself an Anarkeyologist.  Joshua Clover
(a/k/a Jane Dark), in an interview, forwarded
a possible totality poetics.  John Latta has
developed an engaging centrist aesthetic      
which uses its own lingo--note, for instance,   
the contractions in his poems and prose--and  
easily accommodates whatever is blinking in   
his brainbox at that time.                    
                                                 
Tight forms.  Loose forms.  Accessible.          
Impenetrable--without special knowledge.
A formalist's poem can be as easy or as         
difficult to grasp as a non-formalist's poem.      
~                                          
                                        
But read Corey's post, and do not skip or zip         
over the quote from a Ron Silliman post/          
inserted near the essay's conclusion.  The   
word "secret" in that quote reminded me of           
Andrew Shields' translation of an essay by 
Durs Grünbein which was printed in the             
January 2007 issue of Poetry: "The Poem      
and Its Secret"--an essay that awards reading     
and rereading.  Here is one sentence: "For me,      
what makes up the constituency of poetry's          
secret is twofold: a mix of love of this world    
with curiosity about metaphysics."                
                                                     
Most of my poems are rooted in silence, and I    
see I wrote in the white space beneath this     
translation: 
01/26/07 
If you cannot understand my silences,         
you cannot understand my words.
-                                         
In recent months my aesthetic has become          
poem-centered rather than centered in a        
preconceived aesthetic.  Therefore, I prefer
to "engage with a poem on its own terms"--   
see Katy Evans-Bush's response to the first   
set of 10 Questions at Nic Sebastian's     
Very Like a Whale.              
-                                          
Anyone for/ leaping off the margin's edge?                        
                                                 
Given that we live in a world riddled with     
the incessant intersectings of seeming          
happenstance, one could see forms of poetry           
aesthetics based on chance as being the          
dominant forms, but I wouldn't guarantee it.
                                             
                  
                        
Rho00033