Matthew Zapruder objects:
Dear Mr. Silliman,
I was one part amazed, and one part appalled, to read the recent
entry featuring the disagreement between Noah Gordon and the organizers of
the reading to protest the war in Northampton , MA
Where to start? Well, how about with what the hell does
the "aesthetics of dissent" mean? That's the mother of all straw men
if I've ever met her. Is the implication of the use of that term that the
organizers were trying to make (or were the unwitting victims of, in which case
policing seems like the wrong, yet perfectly passive aggressive, term) firm categories
about what kind of poetry is acceptable to protest the war, and what isn't?
Come on, does that really seem plausible, or to the point? Isn't it more likely
that they were doing the best they can to hold an event with a bunch of readers
for an audience probably not used to listening to poetry, and making the
judgment (to which Noah is of course, since we still live in a democracy,
entitled to disagree) that his poem wasn't going to work in this particular
situation?
"Policing the aesthetics of dissent?" Holy
unnecessary jargon, Batman! It seems that the organizers were pretty clear, not
to mention polite, in expressing that they just thought that Noah's poem wasn't
going to work in that context, because of its "density" (i.e. the more
elusive relationship it has than your usual anti-war poem to protesting the
war). Agree or disagree, but they are the ones who are responsible for throwing
the event, and making it work, and they honestly seemed to think the poem
wasn't appropriate for the venue or situation, which seems like a very
reasonable thing to think about given the fact that this is not a poetry
reading for Noah, but a WAR PROTEST. If I wanted to get up and read a ten page
poem about a wilting flower as an allegory for this war's effect on democracy,
I think the organizers would be pretty well within their rights to tell me to
go find something a little less brilliant to read.
And holy naked act of self promotion, Batman! Call my a cynic,
but I don't think that the fact that at least one of these parties (the other
being dragged in clearly against his will) is willing, if not eager, to share
his correspondence (not to mention his poem) proves anything about anyone's
"best possible intentions." For, lo and behold, in the guise of a
discussion on the "aesthetics of dissent," we end up discussing ...
Noah's poem! I also love the repeated reference to Sean Bishop as a
"student" organizing a reading against the war. Whose student? Noah's? Noah Gordon also happens to be a student, of the MFA
Writing Program at UMass, which is a very fine thing
to be, and certainly doesn't stop anyone from being a good poet and publishing
worthy poems long before getting a degree. Yet I have the inescapable feeling
that what really pisses Noah off (in a polite and patronizing way) is that a
student had the gall to judge his work, or at least its potential effect on an
audience. Frankly, the politics of that situation seem a lot more hierarchical
and problematic than worrying about anyone "policing the aesthetics of
dissent."
This is particularly evident in the part of Noah's letter
which discusses the abstraction of the war. This just seems like a clever point
to make, with at best tenuous relevance. Is the fact that people in the U.S.
tend to apprehend the war as an "abstraction" (i.e. something that's
not "real," but just an idea, which in a way seems the exact opposite
of the problem -- people aren't thinking ENOUGH about the ideas and rationales
for this war, and just accepting the given terms) somehow a justification for
Noah reading an "abstract" poem, whatever that means? What a weird
kind of mimeticism.
And does Noah really accept the definition of his poem as
"abstract" (which it isn't, as you correctly point out)? Those of us
who teach know that when a student says a poem is "abstract," what
they really mean is, "I don't know what you're talking about, and/or why
you've bothered to say it." It's mainly a word to hide the word "bad"
behind. In this case, to give the organizers credit, what I think they meant
was that they felt the relationship between the anti-war sentiment and the
imagery and general mechanisms of the poem wasn't clear enough for the
situation of this particular reading.
They may be right or wrong in their judgment (I personally
think there's some good stuff in the poem, but it's kind of histrionic and
self-righteous ... it seems to treat the whole war as a personal problem for
the poet, which is the thing that makes writing political poetry really really hard). But here's the real point: if the motivation
to read at a war protest is, in fact, to protest the war -- and not to read our
latest poems to a lucky, albeit captive, audience -- then I would think that
even if the organizers were so horribly misguided as to incorrectly judge the
possible effect one of our brilliant poems would have on said audience (which
by the way, they have taken the time, responsibility, and trouble to assemble),
then perhaps we could put up with their lamentable short-sightedness and
stupidity and figure out another way to put our queer or otherwise shoulders to
the wheel.
The fact that Noah decided not only not to read another
poem, but not even to attend, makes his whole motivation more than a little
suspect. I don't want to sound crude, but what's more important to Noah: Noah's
poem, or protesting the war?
Well, I can think of other reasons why a war protest in Northampton
Because first of all, as should be obvious, I disagree
with everything that Noah has said, and just find the hypocrisy and
self-righteousness really annoying. Also, when I see a poet self-righteously
complain in a public forum about whether his poem was suppressed or not, under
the guise of defending the right of poetry to be able to do whatever it is that
he thinks his poem is doing, while bombs are about to fall on Iraq, as a poet I
feel embarrassed. And third, because poets ought not
sit with our arms folded pretending that all poetry is equally apprehendable
(regardless or difficulty of syntax, or unfamiliarity of imagery, etc.), and
that anyone who can't see that is a cretin. On the contrary, it's our job to
try to help educate and prepare our readers for the next new thing. The way we
do that is by making an implicit contract with them: if you promise to listen
carefully, I will promise to make something that hangs together in some way,
and (here's what's important here) exists for a reason other than to promote
myself.
To turn this situation into a discussion on aesthetics, or
the nature of dissent, seems disingenuous and self-absorbed, which is
particularly upsetting given the stakes. For whatever reason, the organizers
didn't want Noah to read his poem. I don't think they're suppressing dissent in
the least: Noah could have read a different poem, or (god forbid) a poem by
another poet, one that would have been more easily apprehendable to the
audience at this reading. Or he could have just gone to the reading and clapped
when other poets read their poems. And if he thinks that this particular poem
is such a great way to protest the war, why doesn't he get up and read it in
the middle of Main Street
It seems evident that there is a time and a place to fight
this battle, and a war protest is neither. I realize
that with this last sentence I am going to open myself up to all kinds of
attacks ("when IS the right time to defend poetry?" "what's the real battle we're fighting here?" "isn't the struggle for clarity of language, versus easy
propaganda?"). In fact, I've listened to "My Back Pages"
probably too many times, as have we all ... here's to hoping we can all be a
little bit older, if not wiser, than that now.
Matthew Zapruder
Zapruder appears not to
agree with my presumption that Noah Eli Gordon is “motivated here by the best
possible intentions” – as in fact I think both sides in that exchange are. What
I found troubling – and the reason I thought to include the correspondence,
poem & all, in the blog – was precisely the point that Zapruder blithely
accepts with regards to the poem:
they just thought that Noah's poem
wasn't going to work in that context, because of its "density" (i.e.
the more elusive relationship it has than your usual anti-war poem to
protesting the war).
The problem – and this is why it was important to
include Gordon’s text – is that the claim of density or elusiveness patently
isn’t true. And, if it isn’t, then the rest of Zapruder’s argument more or less
dissolves into smoke. For the claim to be true, the Northampton
I agree completely with Zapruder – & I think
Gordon agrees also – that stopping the war is far more important than any
poetry reading. But I’m concerned about a practice that would edit out a poem
that would not have been either dense or particularly elusive at a protest for
World War I. What bothers me about it is how neatly this dumbing down of
density fits into a broader pattern of behavior that dates back decades now, of
treating progressive writing, from the modernists to the current post-avant
community, as though it were difficult – & thereby excludable – when, in
fact, that is not the case.
Such behavior is part & parcel of the (not very)
benign neglect that underlies not merely the sort of editorial malfeasance one
associates with the likes of a Helen Vendler, but even, alas, with the Poets
Against the War project. If one sees the broader
spectrum of poets who have contributed to its website, the poetry that is
part of its official “chapbook”
is notably skewed toward the school of quietude – the principle exceptions are Robert
Creeley , Phil Whalen* & a pair of
Beat generation chestnuts, Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Diane Di Prima. Even the project’s Poem of
the Day selection, intended to bring out a broader representation than
the chapbook’s ”selection of especially powerful poems and statements by prominent poets,”
to date has managed only one poet generally associated with the post-avant
world, Kent
Johnson. We wonder if the Poets Against the War editors recognize that Margaret Wise
Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon,
which Johnson’s poem gently parodies, saw herself as an
active follower of Gertrude Stein & was writing within a framework of
progressive educational theory.
This sort of intellectual
bad faith has become so widely & deeply associated with the broader school
of quietude that it, in fact, always needs to be publicly pointed out whenever
& wherever it shows up. Not only is such erasure profoundly anti-democratic
& inherently dishonest in & of itself, the process reinforces – just as
the establishmentarian poetics of the school of quietude do – the larger social
forces that argue always against social change & for a traditionalism whose
sole justification is inertia.** From the perspective
of the poets who commit such misdemeanors of editing, this dumbing down is
merely self-contradictory and self-defeating behavior. For the poets who are
consistently disappeared by this process, it’s invariably a painful reminder of
the structural inequalities at the heart of the “American way.”
* Whalen
deserves extra credit for submitting his work while dead.
** It’s no
accident that the great antiwar poet of the Vietnam Don ald Justice, all of whom also wrote
antiwar poetry.
