“Free association in poetry facilitates connection
with others.” So says Nick Piombino .
Do Poindexter & Ashcroft know about this?
Dear Ron,
Mrs. Freud, it is said, objected to Sigmund's practice of
psychoanalysis and considered it a form of "pornography." A more
contemporary form of repugnance – by, say an "innovative" poetry
writer – to a psychoanalytic approach finds objections perhaps more to its
confessional aspects or focus on the self. In a discussion I had about
psychoanalysis with a poet recently she said "Who wouldn't enjoy going to
someone just to hear yourself talking about
yourself?" The interest on the part of poets in psychoanalysis and related
careers appears to be growing. Kimberly Lyons, Joel Lewis and Kim Rosenfield are psychotherapists and John Godfrey is a
nurse. There are many others. More than one poet has asked me about the
suitability of social work and psychotherapy as careers for a poet and my quick
answer is that I feel that it is a very good combination. These professions,
like teaching, get you out there working with other people employing language
and ideas in a direct fashion which I find helpful in addressing some of the
emotional pitfalls of being a poet. But, unlike teaching, you actually have
less time to think and worry about whether anyone reads or understands what you
are writing or anybody else is writing.
What excited me about the poetry centered around such
poets as Clark Coolidge, Bernadette Mayer, Ted Berrigan, Frank Kuenstler, Joseph Ceravolo, John Ashbery, John Cage, Alice
Notley, David Shapiro, Hannah Weiner, Armand Schwerner, Vito Acconci, and
Jackson Mac Low, all of whom I read avidly in the 60's, I found also and more
in the circle of poets including you publishing in Barrett Watten 's This magazine back in the 70's and a little bit later in the 70's L=A=N=G=U=G=E here. This had everything
to do not so much with completely getting away from the personal or
confessional in writing but from getting away from doing it in a boring, corny
or unproductive way. The central technique Freud advocated in experimenting
with the unconscious had to do with free association. Confessional writing per
se is not free association but is autobiography which is not at all the same
thing. Barrett Watten discusses this in a way that
incorporates the associational process itself which may be challenging to some
readers but is the most valuable way to discuss this issue, in his book Total Syntax (Southern Illinois, 1985).
The typical academic gloss on L=A=N=G=U=G=E writing puts the spotlight on its
contribution to social and political philosophy which is apropos, but there is
another side that has to do with its origins in German romantic poetics like
Novalis and Schlegel, Russian Formalism, psychoanalysis, Dada and surrealism
all of which Watten addresses in Total
Syntax and elsewhere. In the debate between Andre Breton and Freud, Freud
was wrong and probably knew it. Freud was a control freak when it came to his world
wide movement, as leaders often are, until they learn it is not that easy or
perhaps even possible. Like Breton and others he had his secret committees,
etc.
American writing and American politics have been running
away from European influences since the ink was drying on the Declaration of
Independence. It's this very fleeing that brings on the later relentless
obsession we saw, for example, in the 70's and 80's with the work of Derrida
and his cohorts. The more academics embrace a philosophical approach the more
American poets in the field feel the need to define themselves in contrast to
it. Nobody wants to leave school and talk about the same things they did in
classes, with the exception of nerdy types who are so immersed in texts they
don't feel any need or desire to escape them. This does not characterize your
average American poet who is plagued by rock dreams. The first reading I ever
gave was with Patti Smith, but I was told when I went to the center for
translation in Marseilles
The so-called "language" poets had the curious quality
of actually being interested in writing about language. Where confessional
poets put the focus on being understood or understanding themselves, L=A poets
wanted the culture to be understood or to understand itself. But they weren't
adverse, in places, to any one technique or set of techniques in achieving that
goal. L=A writers often employed and still employ defamliarization
techniques. This term, from Russian Formalism, encompasses covertly the idea of
getting away from over-focusing on family. When I was judging a couple of
poetry awards a few years ago I read hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts. It
got to a point when I would intone aloud, "mother, sister, father,
brother" and toss the manuscript into the reject
box. Americans – specifically psychotherapists, for that matter – are obsessed
with talking about family to the point of nausea. This contributes indirectly
to some of the destructive forms of xenophobia we are witnessing throughout our
country today. Language poets get vilified for resisting this. L=A poets and
L=A writing may have been unconsciously bringing poetry closer to music, the
universal language of art. The issue is not only about proactively associating
with language to become free, but with proactively associating with all kinds
of other people to become free, even people who don't happen to live in the
USA! Working together closely on so many issues, as well as encouraging each
other not only by agreeing with each other but by energetically disagreeing
with each other these innovative poets helped move the poetry community towards
a new paradigm for poetic group formation, as opposed to poetic style. The core
group is still working together closely almost 30 years later. Is there a
precedent for this in American poetics culture? This has upset countless
writers and has energized countless writers as well.
Free association encourages conscious and unconscious
collaboration. L=A poets work as if they were each making music comparable to
the sounds of an individual instrument in an orchestra instead of trying to be
the whole orchestra. This may be why some readers find it hard to understand
how to track the voicing in L=A poetry. The reader has to imagine and supply
some of the associations and therefore some of the undertones and overtones.
These are often only suggested by consciously or unconsciously associating
related texts (which are often the only effective way to interpret complex
films, a similar process far more familiar to most people). Free association
can be "played" alone but very comfortably can be practiced in overt
or covert fashion with any number of other writers. This is one of the reasons
why so many American writers employ these techniques so comfortably now, and
why the numbers keep growing. As in psychoanalysis, free association in poetry
facilitates connection with others by emphasizing shared communicational
dynamics including avowing the limitations of language, the surfacing of which
might be curtailed, paradoxically, by over-focusing on the specific personal
details of one's daily or past life. In the work of other L=A poets what is
emphasized is the universal quality of such everyday details, as in much of
your own work, Ron. The very term free association has the latent meaning of
associating freely with other people. One of the primary goals of
psychoanalysis is to enable the analysand to understand the unconscious pull
towards interpreting current experience from the point of view of the
powerfully deterministic transferential dynamics latent in their early family
experiences. This is why one has to work so hard to surface and remember these
experiences in psychoanalysis – so these memories will not be so latent in
everything we think, say, feel and do. Freud said that "neurotics suffer
from reminiscences." So does inept poetry!
International group formation, philosophy, experimenting
with language – sounds too French for me – thinks your average American poet or
reader. But maybe this is about to change – as an outgrowth of many factors,
including desk top publishing, the internet – and a world wide antiwar movement
emerging at lightning speed.
With affection,
Nick
