comments on my own comment

                                           
                                                 
  I frequently visit Poetry Foundation's Harriet,
and late last night when I was there I felt a need to
respond to Kenneth Goldsmith's "Charles Bernstein
Recants" post.  [ Have never figured out why I often
find myself reading and/or composing when I ought to 
be in bed. ]  Others had made brief comments; but I
knew mine would be considerably longer, and that it
would be difficult to write, not only because I was
tired but also because my thoughts had not yet been
consciously formed.                                 
                                                    
As June began last year, I conceived the task of   
making three poems each day for that month--I made
85.  My intent was to further explore styles which
were not, as Ron Silliman has said, my "cup of tea"
and (for the most part) I succeeded.               
                                                    
My comment at Harriet shows as having been posted
on June 1, 2008 12:05 AM.  Made five minor fixes
today.  This is the repaired version:                       
                                                 
 My thought chamber's been clocked askew 
 over this.  Isn't Charles Bernstein a poet of        
 irony/parody/satire, a probable Alexamder   
 Pope for our time?  It may well be he was   
 being on the horizontal at the symposium in     
 Arizona, but for me/ only the photo of him     
 here is an indication of that.  If so, my   
 feeling is--from what it is said he said--      
 he went too far.  Saying that "the only       
 real difference between the work of the    
 post-avant and my neighbor across the hall   
 at the university, Carl Dennis, is in the    
 way it is received and written about. . . ."
 (thank you, Annie Finch) doesn't indicate   
 a solid position one way or another.  Given      
 the number of poets now writing, each one      
 with a personality at a different location     
 on the personality scale at any one moment,     
 and given that the same is true for those     
 who read poems, chances are there are        
 audiences for poems made from a myriad      
 of aesthetic stances.  Saying that "only          
 poets working in solitude and individually    
 can produce poems of enduring value"        
 suffers from a similar vagueness.  Even      
 in a collaborative effort, each poet is    
 working alone in her/his own solitude,     
 such as it is; and there is no reason a    
 collaborative effort can't produce an   
 enduring poem.                             
                                             
 To mess with Gertrude Stein's
 "A rose is a rose is a rose"
 by changing it to:
 "Creativity is creativity is creativity."
 I honestly do not get into Stein's work,    
 not yet anyway; but that doesn't make     
 her work any less creative.                 
 -                                           
 To mess with Elizabeth Barrett Browning    
 by changing one word:                       
 "How do I love thee?  Let me create the ways."
 Her famed sonnet is not made less thereby.         
                                                      
 From my perspective, there is room for  
 as many ways of working with words as can
 be imagined.  Each maker of poems finds      
 her/his own comfort zone.  What else can    
 one do?  Each maker of poems learns from    
 other makers of poems and from anyone       
 and any thing.  I do agree that becoming        
 too attached to one's own way of making       
 is dangerous and ultimately pompous like     
 a tyrant king or tyrant president.  Backing    
 away from such a self-important attitude is      
 an honorable move, but ceasing to follow               
 one's own lights is not.  Perhaps Mr.      
 Bernstein's lights have phased to a new     
 color.  If they have, then they have.       
 I, like Whitman, like most humans, am likely   
 to change my view of something at any       
 moment.  Positive inescapability.  For years   
 I mistakenly spelled Rilke's first name  
 "Ranier" because I didn't pay close enough    
 attention to what was entering my eyes,    
 and because I liked the sound of it.               
                                              
=======                                          
                                             
On thinking about it, it seems normal that those     
at the forefront of a movement would project     
nonconciliatory attitudes.  After all, they firmly    
believe in their agendas.  If they seem pompous,    
therefore, it may be they are or it may be their    
convictions just make it appear they are.  Pound?          
                                                    
I still am unable to tell Charles Bernstein's stand
now, and I am not sure hearing him read his lengthy
Recantorium poem would dispel my uncertainty.  From   
reading a few of his poems, I doubt reading his work
would be of use since I often have trouble catching  
the tone in a word passage.  The GRE exam I took in         
1984 had two tone questions.  My answers?                                           
                                                 
And what aesthetic am I advocating?                  
                                                   
See my It Poetics post.                                                      
                                                 

                                                                
                                                    
Rho00084