Robert Bly
I am notorious for getting distracted from my studies, even in libraries. Last week I decided very resolutely to search for material on Achebe and Achebe alone. What I did instead was to happen upon an anthology of American poetry — The Best American Poetry, 1999 edited by Robert Bly – and then ignore the rest of the world and my, well, academic obligations. I copied down a poem by Russel Edson taken from The Prose Poem (it begins “She had fallen in love with her doctor’s stethoscope; the way it listened to her heart…”; stunning, don’t you think?)
Then I read Robert Bly’s introduction to the anthology, which is interesting and rather scathing. Here’s the relevant bit:
When the irreplaceable flavor of a given decade disappears, our language loses its vigor and becomes merely useful. Sven Birkets, in his new book of essays Readings, points directly to the decline of intensity that results from the shift from the page to the screen. “We are losing our grip, collectively, on the logic of complex utterance, on syntax; we are abandoning the rhythmic, poetic undercurrents of expression.” He suggests the “postmodern” merely means the destruction of all style. Postmodern novelists have fallen headfirst into this release from period style, producing novels that contain only the melancholy emptiness that follows from the longing to become universal. When language cools, it becomes a corpse.
American poets are fighting against this cooling in several ways. Not all poets, of course. One group of poets who call themselves “Language” poets work very hard to drain all the meaning out of the words they use, and in this way resemble those eighteenth-century doctors who treated all problems by bleeding, occasionally failing to notice that the patient had died from loss of blood. All of us, poets, essayists, and fiction writers alike, are being pressured by example to remove flavor from our work, along with our idiosyncrasies. We are fighting a front-line action against the cooling of language…
Some thoughts:
At first, I loved the line, “When language cools, it becomes a corpse.” It’s just the sort of cool (no pun intended) thing you can quote out of context. In context, it’s quite a striking statement on poetry and what it should do. It got me thinking about what Bly meant by “heat”. Throughout his essay, he describes the poems in the anthology as exhibiting some sort of heat. At first, I thought he meant “excitement” or “surprise” or “energy” — the usual thing you expect of poetry. Then, I looked at this more carefully:
One group of poets who call themselves “Language” poets work very hard to drain all the meaning out of the words they use…
So if it is meaning that’s being drained out, then maybe heat = meaning, or possibly, intent? It’s too easy an equation, I know.
The anger towards L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry is pretty remarkable. He doesn’t even write it the way it’s supposed to be. I’ll be honest: I haven’t quite gotten the hang of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. I’m going to blame it on age and lack of experience. In other words, no opinion really.
But what a gruesome analogy! I don’t think readers are as helpless as patients having their blood let.
As for postmodernism, I have read a few things, all right. A few novels at least, and Birkets’s view is pretty reductive. I’m also tempted to say that the destruction of all style is a style in itself. But then the postmodernists I’ve read have a very distinctive style that isn’t merely an absence of something else.
Does anyone have any, well, insight into this “war” between L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and the other kind(s)? Something more than Wiki, please.
I seriously question the accusation of Language trying “very hard to drain all the meaning out of the words they use”. It’s easy to posit a strawman and argue against it, but I am certain that few would willingly accept being told that their poetry is purposely meaningless: quite a different goal is to /diffuse/ meaning, and decenter it from any poet-imposed standpoint (or “center” it, if you can use the expression, on the linguistic usages of its readership taken as particulars). Meaning is not lost but multiplied. Not “draining the blood”, but rather “becoming a donor” could maybe be a better metaphor.
Postmodernism as a paradigm, though many flaws it certainly has, isn’t really harmed by these invented propositions. Take for instance “Postmodern novelists have fallen headfirst into this release from period style, producing novels that contain only the melancholy emptiness that follows from the longing to become universal.” — This is just something that could pass for a catch-all phrase– if it weren’t so off-point, really. I mean, longing to become universal? Postmodernism? Are we really talking about the same thing?
“It’s easy to posit a strawman and argue against it”
I’m glad you said that.
“Meaning is not lost but multiplied.”
And that.
He seems to be inventing his own postmodernism and describing it. But I wonder if, when he says “longing to be universal”, he is referring to the breakdown of metanarratives and the general discomfort people may have with the loss of universal truths. That discomfort however doesn’t imply that one is “longing” for a return to universal truths.
I don’t have much to contribute in way of the language poetry thing.
But just to say I chanced upon that book earlier! And I loved it. Particularly the introduction.
I made the mistake of reading one of the poems in it to the poetry group.
I definitely like the poems in the book, but the introduction was way too one-sided for me to like. I think he would have done better to not talk about postmodernism and Language poetry at all. Why did you like it?
OK, I think “love” is not so appropriate as is “was excited by”. Gosh I use that word loosely
Yes, it was one-sided…I mainly loved the introduction because of all the different kinds of heat he spoke about, which is something I hadn’t ever thought of (in the specific sense of heat), but it seemed so appropriate.
Which were your favourite poems from the book? For some reason, the first one – “The Selfishness of the Poetry Reader” really appealed to me, and I was all excited about it for a day or two until I read it in class and everyone was bored.
[...] Robert Bly on heat and cold in poetry | Blotting paper By Aditi Not all poets, of course. One group of poets who call themselves ?Language? poets work very hard to drain all the meaning out of the words they use, and in this way resemble those eighteenth-century doctors who treated all problems by bleeding, occasionally failing to … She won the Toto for Creative Writing Award in 2009 and recently joined Mimesis, an international journal of poetry, art and opinion, as non-fiction editor. Contact: aditimachado(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)in … Blotting paper – http://www.toothsoup.com/blottingpaper/ [...]
Interesting indeed. Robert Bly, that was harsh. I’m going to concede here, before I comment further, that I have not read much of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets themselves, but have a general grasp on their concepts and some of the predecessors that they idolized and am going to piece that together with Bly’s words and make my remarks. (This means I might be a bit off from what they actually did themselves, just warning you ha).
I’m most familiar with Gertrude Stein, specifically Tender Buttons, and Robert Creeley and their styles, both of which have been mentioned being major contributors to the language movement. True, some of these poems are pointedly created to not contain meaning that can be easily dissected from the rest of the piece, but that does not necessarily make them cold and lifeless. To me, it is more about working on a different aspect of the language then referents and content/meaning. The phonetics of Stein’s work is, in my opinion, the center of that style, and her poetry is very much alive and filled with “heat” in that regard–though perhaps not the way Bly is using that word. Abandoning the tradition of writing poetry to contain meaning does not make the language dead. My question is would he then have argued that Surrealists who searched for deeper meaning by the use of word games that were slightly scientific in design and created metaphors that did not carry the traditional and expected meaning of words were also making the language cool? I personally tried writing plenty of poems based off of Surrealist games, and more recently the Oulipo with things like n+7 and other mathematical replacement games and have found it didn’t hinder or destroy the meaning, only changed its original intent.
This is turning into a long rant back, and I don’t mean for it to be, but I’m just disappointed in him for failing to see the good that can come out of poets who have realized that meaning is not the only important part of our language.
“But I wonder if, when he says “longing to be universal”, he is referring to the breakdown of metanarratives and the general discomfort people may have with the loss of universal truths.”
Maybe, but even then you’d have trouble arguing. Even the much talked “return to spirituality” (which is the only thing that could possibly be pinned as a search for universal truths) takes the road of opening up variegated personal (or rather: culturally centered) paths towards this “universal”. And this is just the only way I could argue for it. Otherwise it’s all from lauding anything /but/ universality of any sort, rather particular shapes of identity that are ephemeral and most of all specific.
Bottomline: Metanarratives have certainly broken down, but Postmodernism doesn’t try to counter that with their restoration. He seems keen on honest longing at best, or conservative doomsaying at worst.
Anyway, everyone seems to own the book but me. I checked my uni’s library, and nothing. Sate this poor poet’s thirst with a few verses?
@ Neha
Other than the Russel Edson poem, I really liked what I read of Dorianne Laux. I didn’t get to borrow the book unfortunately, so I don’t remember the names of the other poets.
@ Brett
Thanks for the comment. I agree about Oulipo. I’ve Perec’s ‘Life: A User’s Manual’, which is not poetry, true, but it makes use of an absurd number of mathematical constraints, and the novel is brilliant for more things than just that.
@ Miguel
“Bottomline: Metanarratives have certainly broken down, but Postmodernism doesn’t try to counter that with their restoration. He seems keen on honest longing at best, or conservative doomsaying at worst.”
Yes, that’s what I meant by “That discomfort however doesn’t imply that one is “longing” for a return to universal truths.”
And also for Miguel and anyone else who wants to read, here is the Russell Edson poem I liked:
Madam’s Heart
She had fallen in love with her doctor’s stethoscope; the way it listened to her heart…
The doctor said, would you like to honeymoon with my telescope? You should see how it extends itself and looks into the night for the heavenly body.
Oh, but your microscope is so nearsighted…
Then how about my periscope? It rises out of the mattress with a cunning eye for backdoors.
That’s even more disgusting than that kaleidoscope; the way it fixes me with its fractured cyclops eye.
Finally the doctor holds up his stethoscope and wiggles it at her and asks, is madam ready?
Oh, yes, she sighed…
A quick reply:
‘”Language” poets work very hard to drain all the meaning out of the words they use, and in this way resemble those eighteenth-century doctors who treated all problems by bleeding, occasionally failing to notice that the patient had died from loss of blood. ‘
From what I know, no one bled out to death due to leech therapy. Any death was caused due to poisons secreted into the blood by the leeches (usually because they were fattened on horse or cow blood before being used for treatment). The analogy still works, I guess, in that Language poets do not drain meaning from words so much as taint them with a very subjective, very contextual use. Like what is said about language in this essay on Lacan ():
“Words as patients use them in Freudian analysis take on multiple meanings, reach back to a plurality of determining factors, and are available permanently for new uses. So is language, our everyday social language… we cannot insulate it from the discourse of the unconscious. By its very nature, language forms a web of ever-elusive meaning, a free creation which provides no stability, ground or ultimate truth, even for itself.”
I’ve read very little Language poetry though and don’t remember what I made of it, just responding to the leech comment.
Coming into this a bit late but from the little I know (Charles Bernstein’s views on it mostly), Language poets were not trying to “drain” words of meaning but rather move away from assumed meanings, among other assumptions like structure, form etc. I think their emphasis was on exploring alternative ways that words can be used, combined, make meaning etc. Which is not quite the same thing as stripping them of meaning altogether. I think some of the experiments he recommends (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/experiments.html) also shed light on this approach.
Anindita,
Thanks for that. I think you’re right about them not wanting to drain out meaning. That’s just Bly being silly and ignorant.
[...] that, and why use my name? Is that plagiarism? Then there was this Russel Edson poem I had posted in the comments section of a previous blog post of mine that was reposted on the allpoetry account on the very same [...]