This essay also appears in print in the Forum pages of Issue #40.
- Mono-Sectoral Poetic Myopia
If we put together a pie chart graph indicating the percentage of economic sectors given expression in poetry journals, presses, conferences, prize dispensations, there would be very scant representation from, say, the service industry, or manufacturing, homecare, construction, retail, warehousing, etc., including many informal sectors. Instead, we’d see a yawning over-representation from one single industry (of the sixty-four sectors listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics): Higher Education. A crucially consequential sector to be sure, and a literary majoritarian one for reason of its central role in knowledge production.
The bald truth is that most MFA programs are besieged by the same finance overlord class that troubles other sectors (I’ve gleaned this from hundreds of conversations with poet colleagues living out that sector’s conditions). The problems are multifold and merit an extended discussion on their own. But a fundamental question can be posed: how can a mono-sectoral American national poetics have the authority to represent the breadth of poetic imaginaries not yet informing the field as a whole? And what current precepts and vocabularies of that sector have currency outside of it? The “Latinx” moniker having virtually no resonance outside of cultural-production milieu, is just one example. What if most of the precepts of that sector constitute an echo chamber of concerns, mainly expressing that sector’s pressures on its subjects? Already, by my putting it that way, we can hear hearts thumping furiously, ready to misconstrue what’s being proposed here, some, perhaps, tempted to ascribe to it a retrograde politic. Should we be cowed? We do, in fact, celebrate cultural diversity at all levels. Radical inclusion is central to the Greater American Project (from Alaska to the tip of Argentina). But the question of mono-sectoral poetics should concern us all. For, didn’t we commit to a life in poetry to listen to and produce a rare kind of “news” (either by narrative or sub-narrative strategies)? And by the lack of having it, risk dying miserable lives “for lack of what of what is found there”? Let’s not willfully die for lack of inter-sectoral poetic perspectives.
- What’s your poetic foreign policy?
“Don’t have one? That’s unfortunate, because there’s forces providing you one, day after day, constraints, and forms of agency that you operate under, and actively channel, by not thinking about it”
–– warbly voice from the fiery cave (funking out)
How many poets still operate under a subconscious bi-polar geo-political landscape (1945-1991)? And its forms of freedom and squelched possibilities.
How many poets still operate under a subconscious uni-polar geo-political landscape (1991-2001)? And its forms of freedom and squelched possibilities.
How many poets are operating under a subconscious provisional multi-polar world (2008-2021)? And its forms of freedom and squelched possibilities.
How many poets are operating under a subconscious provisional neo-bipolar world (2022)?
How many poets are operating under a nascent subconscious neo-multi-polar political world (2022)?
Which poets kinda work for the United States?
Which poets kinda work for China?
Which poets kinda work for Russia?
How many poets are carrying water for the E.U.?
How many poets are channeling a spectral Greater Americas Union?
Wait. You’re attached to, or dream of other formations? Or no formations? Ok! No worries. Speak freely.
But all these positionings are baseline quandaries for contemporary “American” poets to mull over. Their consequences are either already tucked into your poetics or kept at the gates, ready to pop up in your face, arresting the Forms of Freedom you’re reaching for.
So, mull we must, no?
- Me! Me! Me! Mine! Mine! Mine!
Why must every multi-variate social phenomenon be turbo-ground into egocentric assertions of Authentic Self™?
“Paying students shall not be aesthetically or politically made to feel de-selfed!”
(The invisible paper poster strewn across every Creative Writing department hallway)
Words as mere lily pads for Brontosauri to PLASH ABOUT.
Dr. Bobo Banes, scurrying to room 110, coffee splashing onto 12 ft. scarf, blithely unaware of code-red self-fulfillment centurion in room 110, crouched in pounce mode.
Lecture?
Words are people too
Reaction?
Apoplectics (conforming to current HR policy standards)
Reaction to reaction?
Conformity
Result?
Debt
“See you at the conference”
Pterodactyls in beautiful circles
- Submittable
Why aren’t fees through Submittable™ partially reimbursed for multiple rejections, say 10? Where’s that logarithm? Are these Lit Taxes trivial alms for the monied, but neo-liberal, value-extractive crawl spaces for everybody else? Why not One Writers Contract with One Lit industry? Under these conditions, is it even accurate to think of journals as individual publishing “houses?” The cut rate is set. This unbargained-for agreement needs to be reassessed. The House always wins (for now).
Writers vs. Publishers. No conflating the relation, however friendly.
- Pareto Principle Prizing
“The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the ‘vital few’). For example, 15% of all baseball players last year produced 85% of the total wins with the other 85% of the players creating 15% of the wins. Perhaps 20% of all the artists on iTunes are responsible for 80% of the sales. Maybe 20% of an artist’s fans purchase 80% of their gig tickets.”
––Wikipedia, “Pareto Principle”
And in American Lit?
Pareto ++
85%? 90%? of awards follow other awards. Institutions crawl on all fours after other institutions, themselves crawling after others. Safe and secure wagers by The House.
Result?
Mega Blow Up of authors that, indeed, many folks agree, suck up too much bandwidth.
The need for alternative valorization structures has never been higher. There’s hundreds of poets doing vital work in extending the range of what poetics can do. What those structures look like or might look like, requires ongoing engaged conversations. Perhaps journals can stop acting as warehouses for “we only publish high quality work” and aim to create more lasting poetic dialogues that lead to more traceable aesthetic-political tendencies. Tendencies contrasted against other tendencies can create healthy creative tensions that might spawn more authentic hybridities. What does that mean? Bringing the social-structural pomp to the front of poetic practices instead of stowing them away in the attic of professional forgetfulness.
What’s your pomp? Is a valid question.
- Global Existential Poetic Horizon
Are we (in this hemisphere) in a post-post-colonial predicament? And are all the material-social contradictions contained in that term preserved and operative?
Think about it…what if we’re all currently slogging through this post-post-colonial fog by way of our poetics? Have we suddenly become conscious of this fog, but deny its existence, wanting to live in the sunny tragic climes of post-colonialism forever?
Where are those poetic guides that can lead us to a meta-politic that clarifies a political path to new possible futures? How do we journey out of this valley of dolorous dwelling? Will our emergence churn out new poetic mysteries and rites?
Two grand oceans relegate us into two giant islands separated by a very thin isthmus. Four grand empires had designs on the rocks, plants, beasts, and peoples therein, peoples hereabouts.
Appalachians, Rockies, Sierra Nevada, Sierra Madre Occidental, Sierra Madre Oriental, Andes, the coupe, the cradled edges of
The Convergence.
It’s true. There’s rituals making many feel further alienated from these lands, with (in most cases, but not always) the exception of self-identified indigenous peoples. Aren’t matters that directly impact those peoples best directed by those peoples? Respecting their deliberation on these matters is key in building solidarity. But, for the rest, further alienation is mere further alienation, and its opposite is not liberation, but stasis. Aren’t those land-affirming rites meant to somehow rattle the nation-state (through its subjects) into “acknowledgment”, an acknowledgment that’s supposed to be an anti-alienating force helping to close the gashes left by colonialism. The House is only too happy to oblige, but not when, say, it comes to actual affordable housing for urban native peoples. In this way, the land acknowledgment event commencement spiels of today are peak ‘post-colonial’ affirming rites. They are meant to conserve a given set of conjoined dialectical possibilities. They are conservative, in other words.
Colonial: brute force; uni-lateral narratives; rites of the victor.
Post-Colonial: Latent and lingering brute force; uni-literal narrative as bi-literal narrative; rites of the survivors, but also rites on behalf of the vanquished.
Post-post-colonial: lingering brute force repurposed to new brute forces (i.e., neoliberalism); multi-lateral narratives (ours) intent on a uni-lateral counter-narrative to system; rites of the currently suppressed and aspirational, side by side.
*
You are at the edge of a polluted waterway. The water is darkest green, oily sheen. The thought of fishes under there, makes it even spookier. Nonetheless, it’s summer, and yes, the moon is out, and your sweaty friends’ faces are gearing up to complete the 5-mile run at an easy 8:00 pace through Bulbancha (aka New Orleans).
Is the activity ‘colonized’ and ‘colonizing’?
Yes, and yes; no, and no.
[early 70’s] When Zhou Enlai (first Premier of China) was asked about the French Revolution and what he thought of it, he said, “it’s too early to say.”
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it” – Yogi Berra
