Poetic Communities Author(s): Gerald L. Bruns Source: The Iowa Review, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 1-38 Published by: University of Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20155050 . Accessed: 03/11/2014 17:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected].
.
University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Iowa Review.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
GERALD
L. BRUNS
Poetic Communities And
one day they
was
shepherding first the
word
daughters of "Shepherds
Olympus,
i
song while he glorious taught Hesiod and this his lambs under holy Helicon, Muses of said to me?the goddesses of Zeus who
holds
the aegis:
the wilderness, things of false shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many we we were as when but true; know, though they things true to utter will, things." wretched
of great Zeus, and So said the ready-voiced daughters a me a of sturdy laurel, shoot and rod, gave they plucked a divine voice to me a marvellous into thing, and breathed that shall be and things that were afore me sing of the race of the blessed bade time; they are both eternally, but ever to sing of themselves gods that first and last. But why all this about oak and stone? celebrate
things
and
?Hesiod,
Theogony, 26-33
like Homer before Scholarly tradition pictures Hesiod, as a great pedagogue.1 The poet is in charge of a vast ency (and also, in Hesiod's partic gods and heroes clopedia concerning we also learn that poet Hesiod But from ular case, everyday life). ry itself is not a kind of learning but a species of ecstasy. No one ecstasy.
him,
to be a poet. No one asks to be such a thing. One is, for no to a kind of out of one's house and exposed reason, summoned not always is of kind transcendence what transcendence. Exactly the life of the belly where peo clear. One can imagine preferring studies
at ple who say they are hungry can usually be taken a of is election condition Like biblical prophecy, poetry a curse as a calling since as much of responsibility, a to voice" "divine (or perhaps we would now hostage voice voice
on the poetic or prophetic itself," Jean-Luc Nancy says: "Someone singing, Levinas: is not a subject."2 Likewise Emmanuel
itself").
In an essay
song, "does not leave any place of refuge,
any chance
their word. and amode one
is now
say: to "the voice, "the during
the
inspiration to slip away...."3 In
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ecstasy I am turned inside out, exposed to others, still myself per agent haps but no longer an "I," that is, no longer a spontaneous obsessive but only a "who" or a "me": a passive, responsive, reper cussion of the Muses. 2
gives the basic theory of poetry as a that is, of being touched, gripped, or mag condition of fascination, Fascination is a reversal of subjectivity from netized (hypnotized).4 to obsession. Of the fascination of images, for example, cognition Maurice decisive Blanchot writes: distance, "Seeing presupposes partage.
In the Ion Plato
the power to stay out of contact and in con separates, tact to avoid confusion. that this separation has nev Seeing means ertheless become an encounter. But what happens when what you seems to touch you with a gripping at a distance, see, although see the manner of seeing is a kind of touch, when contact, when
ness which
is seen happens when what ing is contact at a distance? What on as were if in the the touch itself seized, put gaze, gaze imposes a with appearance?"5 An image is different from concept. Seeing is it it the holds for world, grasps up conceptual: scrutiny as if at (and therefore aesthetics) length; but in fascination distance a It and the seizure. is transfixed or fixed in suffers eye collapses can see else. A visionary nothing experi place by the image and arm's
ence
of is always a condition or consumed what by
absorbed vacant
in which the eye is is seen; hence the avid or the look. I am no longer myself but liquidated a in is not likeness but a Medusa-event confusion
stare, the stony, another. A true image I no longer know what which
I am looking at. Although still part as a surface to be crossed I experience of the world, the world that (starting rather than a place to be occupied. Ecstasy means I am outside of and uncontainable within with myself) any order of things, an exile or nomad. However, shares my condition. On the contrary,
this does not mean
no one the con
Plato emphasizes one to another like the from its flows of poetry; tagion magnetism communities forms delirious that (536A-D). spell Dionysian one is no in which Fascination is a condition of participation which longer separated but is caught up in an ecstatic movement, a gath is always a movement from one to another that produces or conversation (which ering or string, that is, not a dialogue a formed by friends stepping would be community philosophical
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
in off the street) but what Jean-Luc Nancy calls a partage, a shar the divine voice or "voice itself" ing or division of voices in which to another like is multiplied by being passed from one singularity rumor or panic (Nancy prefers the metaphor of the gift).6 There is no abiding or indwelling communion universal of spirit?no the "poetry in general," as Nancy says?but only singular "beingoutside-oneself" round of voices
that
is received
in traditional
and handed
song?"the
(think
of
the
voice
itself," Nancy says, ecstasy is what poetry the sharing of ecstasy
[BP237]). This yours or mine" not a vision or a revelation; communicates, rather than of mind or spirit, language or myth, "can become
on
is the essence
of
Such a com
and of the poetic community (PV66/SV236-37). can never not grow or develop it be does into a munity sedentary; a structure A has the of order. series of unitary poetic community into one.7 Hence rather than a fusion of many the singularities poetry
in flight?"panic" is Blanchot's word topos of poetry as discourse for it: "Flight now makes each thing rise up as though it were all of things?not like a secure order in which things and the whole one might one must
take shelter, nor even like a hostile order against which that steals and steals struggle, but as the movement
away. Thus flight not only reveals reality as being this whole (a one must and without without that flee: issue) gap totality flight is this very whole that steals away, and to which it draws us even while repelling us."8 Poetry opens a hole in being through which that the poet is out every totality drains away. So it is not merely side and uncontainable with any order of things; it is that poetry in advance (an-arche) the possibility of any such order. As disrupts (d?s uvrement) is its principle?"a says, incompletion (1C5/UC5). Ecstasy, says Nancy, "defines principle of insufficiency" the impossibility, both ontological and gnoseological, of absolute Blanchot
immanence
and therefore of immanence) and (or of the absolute, an the impossibility in the either of consequently individuality or sense a of the of In collective term, pure precise place totality."9 the village, the realm, the social (or in advance) of the settlement, civil society, liberal democracy, the total or merely proce dural state, poetry opens up an ecstatic or anarchic community?a that (Nancy says) "resists collectivity itself as much as community contract,
it resists assembles
the
individual"
and disperses
(CD177/1NC71). An ecstatic community (as at games, festivals, and rallies) but is
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
3
to last.
not meant
has
Havelock
Incompleteness, shown that an ecstatic
as said,
is its principle. Eric is what Socrates community
cul around him: a vast theater, a performance ture basically hypnotic and anarchic in its operations and results.10 Whence denial of ecstasy became for Socrates the first principle of saw
4
in the Athens
is a totally integrated economic order "city of words," which con administered sealed-off rational egos exercising punctual by once trol (our and future philosophers). Recall that the starting in construction is of his the point critique of mimesis in Book " a is mimesis where mode of (393A-398B), "being-outside-oneself or impersonation rather than the category of representation that it his
in Book x. The problem of poetry is not its logical weak its power to project people outside of themselves. Poetry in which no one is of subjectivities is a dispersal or dissemination
becomes ness
but
and everyone is somebody else, as in theater. Here would be the place to recall Nietzsche's analysis, which neatly summa rizes Plato's (and anticipates Bataille's): Georges poetics a to excitation is of whole mul communicating "Dionysiac capable one at and titude this artistic power to feel itself surrounded by, oneself
a host of spirits. What happens in the dramatic chorus is the oneself outside oneself primary dramatic phenomenon: projecting
with, and
then acting as though one had really entered another body, character.... It should be made clear that this phenomenon
another
a whole crowd becomes rapt in this singular but epidemic: to a crowd (the first principle of theater) is a manner."11 Belonging condition of rapture. Possibly mystics levitate alone. The ecstasy of is not
In The Unavowable Community is a social experience. poetry, however, Maurice Blanchot recalls that for Georges Bataille ecstasy "could not take place if it was limited to a single individual...: [it] accom it
itself...when
plishes
is
Walter [C134-35/UC17].) contact with the cosmos only error of modern men to regard this
shared"
Benjamin:
"man can be
communally.
It is the dangerous as unimportant it to the and to consign and avoidable, as the poetic rapture of starry nights."12 And he quotes as follows: "The pleasure of being in a crowd is a mys
experience individual Baudelaire terious ber.... cation
expression Number of
('Fus?es').
is
great
Extract
in ecstatic
of sensual in all... cities....'
is a number....Religious
Ecstasy Ch.
of num
joy in the multiplication B.,
uvres,
the root of the human
vol.
intoxi 2,
pp.
being!"13
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
626-627
or rule of dis history. Aristotle's Organon Socrates' form of the city. Here a gives purely logical as mimesis mathesis or place for poetry is found by reconceptualizing learning (1448^4, 2-6), and then by laying bare as its deep struc poetry:
a
short us
course
reasoning called muthos or plot (i45oa.7, or it has a therapeutic for spectators on whom or enhances an it produces Instead of fascination
ture a form of consecutive is now
1-7). Poetry calming effect.
is thought to have subjectivity. Aristotle essentially philosophical of invented the concept of the critical spectator whose experience has and reflective. Gadamer literature is essentially (As solitary is at least shown, the Platonic spectator is always ecstatic.)14 What a into true is that has been introduced principle of disengagement factor the theory of poetic experience?a (perhaps we distancing can speak of this as the aestheticizing of the poetic).15 As a species be largely a branch of rhet of discourse, poetry will henceforward in its that is, not so much a discipline oric reducible to handbooks, in the service of other dis own right as a technique of mediation (or, as Horace said, in the service of empire). Poetry field of its own ("the alle is defined by not having any discursive One can remark in from derives of the gory theology). poets" on affirms the ecstatic tradition but is (1) Longinus, who passing cursive
fields
lost to the world until the Seventeenth (2) on the Century; erotic satiric traditions with its and lethal of the (the genre lyric, one drives people to perdition, the other to suicide; Rome in fact tradition of (3) on the classical satire); passed a law forbidding Joyce); (4) on the myth of the poetic exile (Ovid, Dante, Milton, von who says: "I don't like Wolfram unschooled Eschenbach, poet himself
a single letter of the alphabet" (Parzival, 11.115). But what most is its of its history characterizes poetry throughout For example, in to institutions not of its own making. confinement
know
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages Ernst Robert Curtius of the medieval of existence asks about "the mode poet." For cat is a social rather than ontological Curtius "mode of existence" is: "Why did one write poetry? One was question wrote poetry A to in medieval authors school. great many taught because one had to be able to do so in order to prove oneself a c/er egory.
The
icus and litteratus; in order to turn out compliments, epitaphs, peti and thus gain favor with the powerful or corre tions, dedications, The writ spond with equals; as also for the sake of vile Mammon.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
5
and a ing of poetry can be taught and learned; it is schoolwork writers' workshop school subject."16 The modern pre university's serves this tradition. Curtius notes that the concept of the poet's as a rhetorical topos. Pope memorial "divine frenzy" is preserved 6
izes this topos in the Peri Bathous; or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry, a aimed at a new poetic culture whose origins parody of Longinus to the development of print technology and the new autonomous social spaces that it opens up: with the rise of mod ern cities poetry becomes a discourse of the street (the tavern, the are internal
rather than of the court, the church, coffee house, the periodical) of the concept of art (in which and the school. The invention can now
poetry
reflect on itself as if in a space of its own) ismade as when Friedrich Schlegel char about poetry being": conversing
by these social changes, the poet as "a sociable
possible acterizes
a condition of poet poets and lovers of poetry now becomes as as as counts But what such? such.17 ry poetry Beginning with the is arguably the first literary com Jena Romantics (the Athen?um of the avant-garde of modernity and a prototype munity group) with
an open question:
this becomes tinction,
theories
poetic
are
as poetry
now
necessary
ceases
to be a genre dis
in order
to
pick
out
a
as poetic Athen?um (see Friedrich Schlegel, language as a nos. we 116 onset So of & the modernism .l8 238) get Fragments, The distinction between the culture of prefaces and manifestoes. of
piece
or between
ceases to be self poetry and poetics, the distinction between fragment and work. The Bernstein that which says: "I imagine poetry...as
ory and practice, evident, as does
poet Charles can't be contained
It becomes by any set of formal qualities."19 Blanchot calls "fragmentary writing"?writing that to masterpieces, from the idea of and even withdraws
what Maurice is "averse the work
to the point
of making
the latter a form of worklessness As
hundred years if, twenty-five [d?s uvrement]" (E1592/1C403).20 later, poetry were breaking out of the Organon.21 As Bernstein says: "I imagine poetry as an invasion of the poetic into other realms: the bounds of genres, spilling into talk, essays, poli overflowing this break tics, philosophy" (P151). The Athen?um group iswhere out
or dissemination
among
other
is first to make
as a program (the idea is, and poetry philo poetic philosophy and of the group Lacoue-Labarthe enacted
things, In their account sophical). Nancy write: "the fragment is the romantic
genre par excellence....
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
In fact, only a single
title, published with the one-word as possible) to the (or as much Fragments, corresponds entirely ideal of romanticism, fragmentary notably in that it has no partic ular object and in that it is anonymously of pieces by composed ensemble,
Imagine poetry not so much as a work of the spirit as a group experiment (Fr. 125: "Perhaps there would new era of the sciences and arts if symphi be a birth of a whole several different
authors."22
so universal became and heartfelt that it losophy and sympoetry no longer be anything for several comple would extraordinary to create works communal of minds art"). mentary the
of
college
sociology. In Paris in 1937 Georges Bataille, Michel Callois, Leiris, and Pierre Klossowski, Roger a of series lectures called The College began organizing bi-monthly was to investigate of Sociology, whose purpose the nature of such along with
social
as the army,
structures
secret
societies, or brotherhoods, salons, drinking, companies, sporting gaming, on the even political clubs, youth groups, parties (normally) Le will Bataille later add the (in coupable 1944) fringe.23 Crucially, of
community tures are, where
lovers
and
orders,
religious
the artists'
community.24 or "sacred"
ecstatic Callois, according "in the outburst the sacred consists
life: a sacred
These
struc
communities, of violations of rules of
expends itself, that spends itself (the orgiastic sacred is not a theological but a social con The sacred)" (CS152). are not part of the productive communities Sacred cept. that
func of modern states; or rather, whatever capitalist to them in the bourgeois tion or goal might be assigned order of Bataille calls "nonproductive things, by what they are defined of energy [d?pense]."25 A nonproductive expenditure expenditures economies
is one
of energy gratuitous
in which
expenditure, or use-value.
there
the
gift. In an essay on "The Notion of such (1933) Bataille gives several examples
economy
Expenditure"
of
It is a
outside
of any economy a of loss upon principle if anywhere, of capital. It belongs,
absolutely It is predicated
exchangerather than on the accumulation to
is no return on investment.
the
of free
art. expenditures: jewelry, religious sacrifice, kinky sex, gambling, It is important to know that within the category of art he singles out poetry as the premier example of free expenditure:
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7
term poetry, applied to the least degraded and least intellectualized forms of the expression of a state of loss, can be considered with expenditure; it in fact synonymous
The
in the most precise way, signifies, is therefore close loss. Its meaning true
8
of creation by means to that of sacrifice. It is can only be appropriately
that
the word "poetry" an rare residue of what it commonly to applied extremely a preliminary and without the that, reduction, signifies worst confusions could result; it is, however, impossible to speak of the infinitely vari in a first, rapid exposition limits separating formations from the subsidiary
able
residual
element
the rare human posal,
poetic
of poetry. beings who
It is easier have
to indicate
that, for at their dis
this element
ceases to be symbolic in its con expenditure thus, to a certain extent, the function of repre
sequences; sentation engages the very life of the one who assumes it. It condemns him to the most disappointing forms of activ to despair, to the pursuit of inconsistent ity, to misery, that provide nothing but vertigo or rage. The can use words poet frequently only for his own loss; he is the destiny of a reprobate, often forced to choose between as who is separated from society as dejecta are profoundly shadows
from apparent whose life, and a renunciation to mediocre subordinated activity, vulgar and needs (PM30-31/VE120).
price
is a
superficial
ceases to be sym line here is: "poetic expenditure important in its consequences." This is the thesis of modern poetics.26 Poems are made of words but are not a use of them. That is, the
The
bolic
words become Bataille
of the poem are no longer forms of mediation; events in the special of communication attaches
to this word.
they have sense that
a concept to the transmission of mes
Communication
is not
theory; it refers not to states of existence but the relation in which sages contagious are passed along from one subject to another (Nancy's partage). Communication has the structure of Plato's magnetic chain rather from
information
and social commerce, anatomy of dialogue, of communication is "conta made words, or of of transfers of movement, elements, warmth, gions of energy, than the give-and-take In Bataille's struggle.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
which never
inevitably the life of your organized being. Life is a particular point: at it passes situated rapidly from one to another like a (or from multiple points to other points), constitute
point current or a sort of streaming of electricity."27 At all events in poet or things: are no longer to be exchanged for meanings ry words of reversal that they are now like images of fascination?moments displace the logical or cognitive eignty and control. As Blanchot
subject from its position of sover says apropos of Kafka: "The writer
is heterogeneous with (EL21/SL26). up saying T" Poetry an to of from the of the order respect things organized perspective we at So should least from the say that, poet's logical subject. point of view, Plato got poetry right.28 gives
la
boh?me.
Notice
that Bataille
defines
the poet's choice as against submission
in
terms of "the destiny of the reprobate" to a as the principle of necessity. this condition that Imagine destiny of Walter tend to be makes poetry possible. Students Benjamin about
guarded
the fact that he was
in Bataille's
among the occasional partici of saintliness (Benjamin's College Sociology in this morally and politically dubious environ
pants seems out of place to In fact in the spring of 1939 Benjamin was scheduled ment). in Baudelaire," but his presenta deliver a paper on "Some Motifs tion was postponed until the Fall, and by then France was at war a few months and within Benjamin would be a refugee (fortunate to Bataille, a librarian, for safekeeping). ly he gave his manuscripts of Bataille's in any case no more meetings group. as we text is in Baudelaire" of "Some Motifs have the However, it, with of both the letter and coherent spirit inquiry remarkably had organized his College. around which Bataille Benjamin's There
were
ecstasy. In the first place there is the thesis that a state of shock.29 to produce his poetry intended was not the first Surrealist.) Rimbaud, Baudelaire, (Undoubtedly is But perhaps more of the mode social existence that important theme
is social
Baudelaire
for Benjamin, represents namely that of the homeless environment is the street and the crowd, where "the fl?neur whose man of the crowd" is restless, manic, in and unstable obsessive, his identities of Baudelaire: (GS.1.2.626-27/CB128). says Benjamin a refuge for him" ("The Paris of the Second "the street...became Baudelaire
Empire
in Baudelaire,"
GS.1.2.573/CB70).
In the
street
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
one
is
9
is nothing and for Benjamin Baudelaire always outside of oneself, in himself but is the consummate role-player ("fl?neur, apache, were so to him") and roles many dandy, ragpicker "On of And the (GS.1.2.600/CB97). again: physiognomy as that of the mime:
Courbet reports that he looked Baudelaire's Moreover, (GS.V.1.419/AP333). every day" sense of an art that and Guattari's is "nomadic" in Deleuze
Baudelaire 10
different
poetry is uncontainable writes:
"Around
order of things. Benjamin any rationalized of the century, the conditions of artis the middle a change. This change consisted in the underwent within
tic production fact that for the first
time the form of the commodity imposed on the work of art, and the form of the masses on itself decisively as can be to these developments, its public. Particularly vulnerable
seen
now
in our century, was the lyric. It is the unmistakably to of Les Fleurs du mal that Baudelaire unique distinction responded a It these conditions with book of the altered is poems. precisely to be found in his of heroic life" conduct best example was not to have Baudelaire's achievement (GS.V.1.424/AP336-377). not merely is Baudelaire the left us a novel. However, Benjamin's a in romantic artist rebellion against fallen solitary metaphysical world. He is rather the representative of the ecstatic social struc ture
him possible, the Boh?me (gs. 1.2.513 namely The Boh?me is the the first 14/CB11-34). underground (by no means of its kind when we think of Grubstreet, Bartholomew Fair, and crowd that begins writing?about the Elizabethan the London that makes
the printing press; think of how Marlowe Benjamin defines the Boh?me as the hiding-place
streets?for
ends
days). cal conspirators
of politi
his
("Professional conspir during the Second Empire ator and dandy meet in the concept of the modern hero. This hero secret society" in his own person, a whole for himself represents It crimi is world of the lowlifes, wastrels, [GS.V.1.478/AP378]).
and nals, prostitutes, realm of the "accursed."
Balzacian It iswhere
destitutes?Bataille's
sacred
at the the gambler is deposited is the detective It is also story.
run. Its defining genre condition of the modern poet's
end of his
existence. On Benjamin's a is of modernist (this is his analysis poetics principle was In it the the of Baudelaire-thesis). ecstasy poet that, antiquity to the magnetic the condition of the according theory, constituted the
the Boh?me
anarchic
community;
in Benjamin
it is the anarchic
community
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
of poetry. In order to become a poet to (as if by nature) a certain kind possess longer enough is all one needs); it is now jectivity (a dissatisfied memory a to take to to in certain kind of world order sary belong that is the condition
of
romantic
neces on the man
that that world makes available?the of subjectivity the painted woman, the beggar, the painter the barricades, ern life. ("In the guise of the beggar Baudelaire continually model of bourgeois society to the test" [GS.V.1.427/AP338].) kinds
end
it is no of sub
of
of modput the At the
is a kind of urbanized the day Benjamin's Baudelaire artist: ironist, a transcendental buffoon, a performance did not have
Baudelaire
the humanitarian
idealism
of a
or a Lamartine. The emotional buoyancy of a not at his disposal. He did not, like Gautier, in his times, nor could he deceive himself take pleasure about them like Leconte de Lisle. It was not given him to
Victor Hugo was
Musset
nor to heighten like Verlaine, find a refuge in devotions, the youthful vigor of his lyric ?lan through the betrayal of is in like Rimbaud. As rich as Baudelaire his adulthood, the knowledge with stratagems
craft, he is relatively unprovided to face the times. And even the grand
of his
tragic part he had composed role of the "modern"?could All
himself.
eccentricities of the mime
this Baudelaire
such pleasure were those who has to perform before a public incapable further the action on the stage?a mime, in which
of following more, who knows formance,
for the arena of his day?the be filled in the end only by no doubt The recognized.
allows
he took
this about his audience that
knowledge
in his per due rightful
and, its
(g s. V.1.429/AP340).
black Clamans tion of
mountain
college.
Jean-Luc Nancy says in "Vox in Deserto," is not an expression of the self but a projec to itself, it is only an exterior it. "Voice is not present Voice,
a trembling that offers itself to the outside, the half manifestation, beat of an opening?once again, a wilderness exposed where in heat. of the voice in the air the The wilderness of vibrate layers no subject, no infinite unity; it in all its clamor?has wilderness, without self self-presence, always leaves for the outside, without
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
11
(BP243). In Charles Olson's poetics the poetic sub like a breath ject does not reflect on itself but rather is projected (hence it is an "objectivist" rather than expressive or "subjectivist"
consciousness"
12
or working-out of genres poetics).30 The poem is not the reworking and conventions (what Olson called "closed form); it is rather an event on the model of free expenditure (or "open form"): "The is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the*way over to, the reader.... Then the poem must be, at all points, a high
poem some
and, this
energy-construct
(PV52).31 Crucially, by the poet's breath?the
a high at all points, energy-discharge" is an expenditure of energy that is shaped of poetic line comes not from a manual
"(I swear it) from the breath of the poet, from the identifies as breathing of the man who writes" (PV54), which Olson "voice in its largest sense" (PV58). (Compare Adorno on breath as prosody
a musical
but
unit allows
in Sch?nberg.)32 In composition, Olson says, the the poet to score the voice of the poem, so that else itmight be, becomes the communication of
typewriter poetry, whatever voice: "It is the advantage and its space precisions,
of the typewriter that, due to its rigidity it can, for a poet, indicate exactly the even of the syllables, the suspensions the jux
the pauses, even of part of phrases, which he intends. For the first tapositions time the poet has the stave and the bar a musician has had. For the
breath,
of rime and meter, record first time he can, without the convention own to his the listening he has done speech and by that one act to indicate how he would want any reader, silently or otherwise, not So the is voice his work" but (PV57-58). poem just composition and understanding the poem will mean performing it performance, it to exegesis. the rather than subjecting Sherman Paul compares verse of other action to, among composition things, projectivist painting and jazz: "Projective verse is not only a poetics of presen tation but a poetics with spectatorship
of enactment. experience, and participation, brings the whole
of present
It replaces self?the
soul?to the activity of creation. single intelligence: body, mind, it recalls us to our bodies Dance, which Olson appreciated because is a correlative of this poetics; and so are and 'we use ourselves,' action painting and jazz, which poets at this time turned to because they wanted. There was no poetic,' they offered the instruction was Olson said of this time. Tt Charlie Parker.'"33 After Nancy one
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
can think of the poem as a voice that passes from poet to reader. and reader are linked as a sharing or partage rather than as It author and exegete, artist and critic, or producer and consumer. to think of it as amovement of poetry from poet to poet, is possible
Poet
inwhich poems appear. up amode of existence is a social poetics as idea is that projectivism
where
poetry opens Stephen Fredman's
as a poetics of verse. It is a poetics aimed not only at the pro more of the group?or, but at the formation duction of works
well
exactly, the formation of a space (an open field) in which poets and artists can come and go and in which works of art are free to take place under any description. The formation of such a space is what at Black Mountain (or sustained) College during the early 1950s.34 Black Mountain College was an art school found was Josef Albers, who ed in 1933. One of its first artists-in-residence an to outlook aesthetic that he had acquired at the school brought achieved
Olson
the Bauhaus
"art is concerned
how
literal content
years: during the Weimar not with and not with the what; The of factual content. performance is the content
done?that
with
the
but with
performance?how of art."35Olson was the school's
the it
is
director
In Black Mountain: An years of operation. during Martin in Duberman's gives a detailed Community, Exploration account of Olson's of the college from an art school transformation its
last five
a colony of performance into an art colony?indeed, art.36 In 1952, to take a famous example, John Cage (who had been visiting the one in his "circuses" the of since which college early forties) staged ten
were each dancers, musicians, painters) of forty-five minutes (each running concur to do whatever in which the others) they wished:
people (poets, a time-slot assigned rently with
in the square arena forming four triangles created by diagonal aisles, each holding the white cup that had been placed on their chair. White paintings by a visiting student, Robert Rauschenberg, hung overhead.
Spectators
took their seats
From a stepladder Cage, in a black suit and tie, read a text to Zen Bhuddism" "on the relation of music and excerpts from Meister with At
Eckhart.
Then
he performed
a "composition "time brackets."
a radio," following the pre-arranged the same time Rauschenberg played an old record on a
hand-wound
gramophone
and David
Tudor played
a "pre
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
13
pared piano." Later Tudor turned to two buckets, pouring water from one to the other while, planted in the audience, and Mary Caroline Richards read poetry. Charles Olson and others danced Cunningham an excited dog, Rauschenberg by (created by coloured gelatine
14
through flashed
the aisles
chased
"abstract
slides"
sandwiched
between
the
glass) and film clips projected onto the ceiling showed first from the school cook, and then, as they gradually moved a sun. In corner, the the ceiling down the wall, the setting composer "whistles
instruments and JayWatt played exotic musical was babies and coffee served screamed, blew, by
four boys dressed It was
in white."37
at Black Mountain
that Merce
assembled Cunningham a all Charles Olson, his first dance company?with Dionysian two hundred of class. him, six-foot-seven, taking fifty pounds to watch was him?he says: "it wasn't (Cunningham unhappy a can One like imagine what Bataille light walrus.")38 something would
have made
Fielding Dawson companionship. an enthusiastic in those days and teacher, in his talk: the white blackboard absorbed
of Olson's
"Charley was
recalls:
optimistic, completely began to fill with blue
blue words diagrams, turned blue and he had blue
long blue sen smudges on his face and
tences, his hands from smoking his cigar with his chalk hand, on he and mustache towards the edge and once, with no place to write, he wrote went, wrote there was no right of the blackboard, down the right margin, but he went on, crossing over and going through already margin, tray, and bending over went to the clean off the blackboard floor, laughing with us."39 (Recall of l'?criture.) Blanchot on the interminability sentences
d?s
until he came
uvrement:
to the chalk
worklessness.
What
conception
of art,
if
itself to the theory of "nonproductive expenditure"? art freed the concept of art-in-general: Duchampean Perhaps only from genre distinctions music, verse).40 sculpture, (painting, is not a genre of writing thinks that fragmentary writing Blanchot any, attaches
fields are but is just the thing itself, l'?criture, where all discursive to the d?s uvrement of l'?criture?in The Philosophical vulnerable defines postmodernity Discourse ofModernity Habermas as, among
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
other
the seeping of poetry self-reflexive lan things, (opaque, a into certain into and then the (of stripe) prob guage) philosophy communicative that defines the praxis lem-solving public sphere.41 follows. The question of nonproductive has expenditure Anarchy relevance
particular
to the problem of the avant-garde work. The does not belong to the history of genius, much
avant-garde work less the history of taste, but to the history of the anarchist The avant-garde work is less likely to resemble a monumental struction Cage's sufficient
like Joyce's 433". Whereas
Ulysses than a minimalist the monumental work
event
group. con
like John self
is classically
ideal of the origiriary selfstanding Greek (Heidegger's edifice, which appears to have created itself), the avant-garde work is accessible only through layers of social mediation, that meaning
one has to belong to the social space in which the work appears in to sense at of it make all (but Gadamer would order say that this a is of condition aesthetic ancient or every experience, belonging to such a space entails belonging to modern). Moreover, belonging its history and therefore understanding the conditions that make a possibility at hand (that not everything in the moment at every moment is the motto of art history: the experi ence of the work demands responsiveness to historicity?Blanchot the work
is possible
In this respect the exigency of the avant garde). a more is like social practice understanding understanding or a form of life than it is understanding or a concept, proposition, use to the of criteria. This helps explain why the avant-garde work
would
call
this
a work
is often ditional Fried's
to critical spectators of a certain tra really accessible A clear and fruitful example of this isMichael disposition. famous reaction to the Minimalist (or, as Fried prefers, "lit not
eralist") work of Donald Judd and Frank Stella during the sixties. Judd's sculptures appear to be simple indeterminate shapes with out parts or design or any sign of assembly or composition; Stella's are paintings painted stripes (famously, four identical paintings of black whose
in 1959-60). Fried meanwhile is a formalist stripes exhibited the issue relation to works of art is essentially Thus judicial.
to tell a work of art from the materi is how, analytically, it ismade al of which (frame, canvas, painted shapes). "What is at the paintings or objects in question are stake," he says, "is whether for Fried
experienced materiality
as paintings or as objects."42 Fried's position is that the as a medium of the work must be experienced and not
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
15
as material;
simply
16
we haven't
otherwise
got art but simply a mere insists formalism, which
is similar to Adorno's thing. The position on matter as mediation, not in order to represent or intend some to set the work apart from the empirical world but thing simply to an empir ("The concept of form marks out art's sharp antithesis ical world in which art's right to exist is uncertain").43 To be an art work
the work must
of conscious
control
exhibit
"aesthetic
over
its materials
rationality"
Exeunt (AT58/AET34-35). as soon "As (Adorno again:
and the Minimalists.
Cage, Duchamp, the artwork fears for its purity so fanatically and begins to display outwardly possibility art?canvas
and
mere
tones?it
or the exercise
becomes
that it loses faith in its what own
its
cannot
become This
enemy....
in the happening" [AT158/AET103].) In Fried's tendency medium the modernist work tries "to language, by foregrounding its own objecthood" defeat or suspend (A0120). No one sees a culminates
as reducible
to its material, although is perhaps from the per inseparable of its composition. But with formance Stella the difference a painting and a painted canvas is no longer self-evident. between One cannot tell that the thing is art simply by looking at it (in one is perilously Clement Greenberg's famous expression, close to Jackson Pollock drip-painting as action painting the work
a flat surface).44 looking simply at a frame and canvas exhibiting or literalist work For Fried this means that the Minimalist is art as art. Minimalism or literalism that can no longer be experienced its own objecthood, but on the "aspires, not to defeat or suspend as to In discover and such" (A0120). contrary project objecthood which case it is something other than art: an object, although per haps not a real one. calling the Minimalist longer
takes
prophetically answer
theater
was:
that Fried stops short of (!) It is interesting work a mere thinglike thing, although he no it as art. What is it, then? Or, as John Cage asked in a 1957 essay, "Where do we go from here?" (His
"Towards
of
cruelty.
theater.")45
The
interest
of Fried's
analysis
is that he
the Minimalist work as an event or performance: "the interprets amounts to nothing other than a literalist espousal of objecthood this as an plea for a new genre of theater" (A0125).46 Fried means insult but like Plato's rejection of the poets it is the medium of an essential
insight:
"theater,"
he says,
"is now
the negation
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
of art"
is, subtly, not the same as non-art) (A0125). The mode of Minimalist work?its of the appearance presence?"is basically a It is a func kind of stage presence. theatrical effect or quality?a (which
and, often, even aggressiveness tion, not just of the obtrusiveness that that work the but of of the literalist work, special complicity is the essential extorts from the beholder" (A0127).47 Complicity essential about the social nature note, that is, it defines something is not that of a work of the avant-garde work, whose "objecthood" rather the work is folded into an event in that one simply beholds; and not simply a beholder, at least not which one is a participant a critical observer whose The and assessment. job is zoning and close to what Deleuze work occupies something a can that call "haptic" or non-optical space space, only as a whole or from a perspective.48 be entered, not comprehended in which one's participation makes the It is an event, moreover, the in work Gadamer's work possible may (as theory). Possibly
Minimalist Guattari
art. Theater has this tran its event, as in performance "theater of cruelty" tries to isolate sitory ontology which Artaud's theater-event from the any notion of work or text: in by separating not outlast
"pure theater," otherwise there are no antecedents
called
the "anarchic
to performance?in the language of theater becomes dramatization; of theater and physical shock; the after-effect trauma.49
Performance
art
is a
strong
example
poetry of space," no other words, a medium of noise is not catharsis of
but
nonproductive
its purse is entirely exhausted because by what takes expenditure a case uvrement. A piece of of d?s Dance is likewise good place. to pre a art that is difficult kind of is extremely body choreography grow old, the dance mistress forgets, or never him understand why people wanted dies. Balanchine could to revive his earlier achievements. There is no text for the chore serve over
time: dancers
or a a score for its music ography of Swan Lake the way there is a of notation is for its story (dance narrative good example can be repeated A performance of translation"). "indeterminacy a is not a of video but not preserved. (A recording performance In an essay on of anything but the video recording.) performance Art" (1955) Merce Cunningham said that his "The Impermanent that is just the thing itself: idea of dance is to perform something but when for example, a jump (without musical accompaniment, Cunningham
collaborated
with
his friend John Cage,
not without
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
17
noise). Cunningham's choreography, following Cage, sometimes a to coin of determine what shape the jump takes the form tossing is shaped is not only a bodily movement will take, and what but the movement the time and space in which occurs, a shape that never an occur instant and will for again. On other only
exists 18
their movements. improvise are superbly the dancers trained, cannot help being dance (as if a dancer could no their movements in the per But their movement is exhausted longer merely move).
occasions This
is not
Cunningham's artlessness:
dancers
since
call a haecceity, a of it; it is what Deleuze and Guattari There will be other five o'clock like yesterday evening.50 singularity five o'clocks but not that one. Fried says: "The success, even the formance
to depend on their abil survival, of the arts has come increasingly as it approaches to "Art defeat theater" (A0139); degenerates ity of theater" (A0141). So once more the history of art the condition comes art followed to an end.51 In the 1970s performance of objects alto the production by doing away with see one whether could create an gether.52 The idea was in part to art that could not be bought or sold. This was already the goal of One can think of the New Dada and the (or some) Surrealists. York of the 1970s as a recuperation of Dada the way the New York
Minimalism
True to of Duchamp. and sixties was a recuperation the spirit of the age but also to the spirit of Artaud, Bataille, and artists perhaps before them all, Alfred Jarry, certain performance as an when Chris Burden had absolute stopping-point, probed for or when Orlan had her face himself shot in the arm with a pistol of the fifties
telecast surgically removed, with the surgery being simultaneously to several places around the world.53 Here is an end-of-art story to as were over art if into Bataille's end all end-of-art stories, crossing In its obsession of mutilation, underworld sacrifice, and suicide. to the history of art belongs with extreme situations, performance or at all events to Artaud's kind of theater as "an area Surrealism, in which there are no precise rules," except for one: "Without an of every spectacle, the theater element of cruelty at the foundation as a not of condition is (0C118/AA251). Imagine cruelty possible" theater (this was already the insight of the Jacobean stage?think of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair in which someone pours hot grease on the foot of Ursula the Pig Woman). Bataille, who knew Artaud once to went hear him speak: slightly,
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
A few years before I had attended a lecture he gave at the He talked about theatrical art, and in the Sorbonne.... state aware
of half-somnolence that he had
in which
I listened
risen:
I understood
I became
what he suddenly to state of mind the saying, he had resolved personify of Thyestes his when he realized that he had devoured own children. Before an auditorium the with bour packed
was
(there were hardly any students), geoisie inhuman stomach and let out the most ever come quiet
from a man's
that would
throat:
have been
it created
the sort of dis
felt if a dear friend had
Itwas awful denly become delirious. for being only acted out) (AM43). la
he grasped his sound that has
(perhaps
the more
sud so
uvr?e. d?s The avant-garde work empha the theatricality that is arguably a condition of all art. One could put this in a slightly different way. In the avant-garde the cannot of the work be separated from the formation of production communaut?
sizes
the group, and vice versa: in the case of the Surrealists, for exam is the Blanchot the work?"Surrealism," group says, "is and ple, a work has always been a collective experience" (E198/1C08)?but in the sense of Nancy's communaut? d?s uvr?e rather than on the or in Aristotle's of order of Socrates' words" of conception "city as an extension of the form of (which is politics logical friendship the form of the proposition: follows friendship the relation of than rather identity alterity).54 Benjamin on the Surrealists the primacy of ecstatic emphasizes also
the
logic of in his essay
experiences over the production of works: "anyone who has perceived that the are not of this circle literature but something else? writings if you documents, demonstrations, watchwords, bluffs, forgeries but at any rate not literature?will are concerned reason, that the writings not with and still less with theories
will,
also know, literally with
for the same
experiences, phantasms."55 The group the historical location) of a
(and often always has the structure that does not hang together, Boh?me: a non-productive community which does not last, and whose floating center is the performance the reading, the happening, and more generally (the exhibition, the scene). Its population it exists like a Deleuzean
is Baudelairean "war machine."56
in the sense
of nomadic; Its distinctive modes of
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
19
are gossip, the quarrel, and the collaboration, In review. his memoir, short-lived The Black Mountain inevitably recalls Ezra Pound's advice: think of a lit Review, Robert Creeley communication
20
around which you gather people, not a erary review as something box to put them in.57 Its solidarity is the solidarity of theater, where sense in which in Artaud's theater should to be understood the narrows to zero? and spectators as a in crowd the street, a porous, pictures ancestor audience whose is the Dionysian exposed, Nietzschean are "We the and the auditorium and stage community: eliminating
distance
between
Artaud
performers his audience
replacing them with a kind of single site, without partition or bar rier of any kind, which will itself become the theater of the action. A direct
communication will be reestablished between the specta tor and the spectacle, between the actor and the spectator, because in the middle the spectator, of the action, is by being placed in it and its crossfire" The (0014-15/AA248). enveloped caught by as Marjorie
"Futurist moment," theatricality whose
Perloff has shown, form is the manifesto,
is a moment
of
"a new
principal literary a as to work intervention like rather than genre" designed political a work of art.58 The idea is to alter the art world and not simply to in it or merely find one's place take it over as is. Futurism Italian or Russian) the original defines difference (whether aes between in aesthetics and the formalist avant-garde general thetics of high modernism in and Fried's "mod (as Greenberg's the artist's task is to create a new environment and not ernism"): Indeed the one is the condition of the other, just new objects. because the avant-garde environment is the (the Cabaret Voltaire locus classicus) works like an anarchic space in which any innova take place. ("Do Whatever" is tion?indeed, anything at all?can the rule of Duchampean modernism, In Years Roman Futurist [KD327].) My
according
to Thierry
de Duve
and gives a moving a into such up just
Jakobson funny account of the way he was swept and Xlebnikov, collection of whose space created by Majakovskij A was Face in Taste the and Public manifestoes, (1912), poems Slap of often
one of the texts
inspired Jakobson to become a linguist spe in the study of poetic language. Of course Jakobson tried cializing his hand at poetry and at writing manifestoes, and he collaborated on many projects, but the moral with Majakovskij and Xlebnikov that
of his story is that one doesn't
have
to be an artist
to belong
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
to an
is of it?and the experience art world; the idea is to experience a new "The social transformation world): evenings of (inhabiting the Futurists brought together an amazing number of the public: the Large Hall of the Polytechnic Museum was completely packed! The public's reaction to them was various: many came for the sake of scandal, but a broad segment of the student public awaited the new art, wanted this is interest the new word (by the way?and in prose. This was a time interested weren't particularly ing?they readers... when thought that the main thing was poetry, and that new word to say. Apart from these large a had poetry genuinely were there many closed groups, circles, and private public evenings the main place was allotted to the new word)."59 gatherings, where In his study of the poetic communities of North Beach in San the best Davidson Michael the Francisco, poet gives perhaps and Jack account we have of how deeply poets like Allen Ginsberg in the formation of such communities, Spicer invested themselves and how poetic own) took shape (like Davidson's subjectivities an aesthetics whose such formations.60 within goal is not Imagine so much the creation of the work as the creation of a form of life teaches writers that produces ("An author who poets. nothing, no Davidson teaches one," says Walter Benjamin.)61 As Michael or a like a Utopian aesthetics be something this would suggests, art and in other which, among things, poetry imaginary political no longer be required to justify themselves (before whom?) no regrets. Imagine poetry as a in order to exist. No apologies, from the Socratic exigency that lovers of poetry must given?freed
would
a culture of the gift in Poetry presupposes well and as, to be sure, acceptance?as responsiveness It presup what make reality inhabitable. exposure and risk?are calls community: poses what Nancy being together or being-in come
to its defense.
which
"we are not a 'being' but a 'happening.'" ("Finite of [BP157]). The poet David Antin captures something History" to be avant-garde": "what itmeans this in one of his talk-poems, common
inwhich
and i under the circumstances
did the best i could there is
then
which
somebody
who
circumstances
is my does
without
image the best worrying
of being
of what
an artist
does
can
under
the
he
about
making
it new
and
or
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
21
because
shocking to do
have
the best
and where
can do depends
you
if you
and
new to do the work at hand you will that will
ready-made to get
on with
rest
the
22 the
tool
thats
work of
and
upon
to invent
have
what
you
something
but not if you have a at hand
is close
and
you want
the business
then youll pick up a tool
there
that
has made
else
somebody
and youll lean on it and feel grateful when its good to you for somebody elses work and youll a as as think of him friend who would borrow freely from you that will work
if he thought of it or needed to
because there is
a
don't
of artists
who
or shouldn't
except
community
patents who
send
language sometimes or
l=a=n
other tools 62 , in a bar
writing. in North
written
gone
by
= g = u=a=g
the
during name
the
= e
Poetry,
of
circumstances
exchange
the most
and
copyrights
unusual or
of
Much America
under
in the mail
each
in conversation
recognize
them
memorable
past
poetry has half-century
"Language after
Poetry,"
the
journal
edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and Andrews between looks 1981. Language Poetry 1978 very much cen movement like the longest-running of the twentieth literary tury. Its poets are flourishing thirty years after the fact. This may is not an aesthetic concept; Language Poetry a not at it is all but a family name. No concept strictly speaking of formal features or tendencies could define the term; description it is not a kind of ism but simply a number of large, diverse, and be
in part because
fluid interactions among York but also embracing into Eastern extending
in San Francisco and New poets centered Canada and Great Britain, with filiations and Australia (and translations Europe
into, among other languages, Chinese.) Poets share practices rather Language
Like
the Surrealists
than views. What
the
makes
them a group is their involvement with one another in a variety of to publication from poetry readings to literary criticism in a surprising number of journals, anthologies, web sites, and
activities
books of poetry published by an array thoroughly non-commercial Sun & Moon). of small presses they (Figures, roof, Individually so of but do within the framework do very different things, they
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
social
interaction
Charles
Bernstein
above
highlighted writes:
all by
the poetry
reading.
are the central social activity of poetry. They Readings as the most of distri rival publishing significant method bution of poetic works. They are as important as books
23
in bringing poets into contact with one and magazines in and another, cross-generational, forming generational and cross-cultural, cultural links, affinities, alliances, and the like.... The scenes, networks, exchanges, reading is the site in which reconstitutes
itself.
the audience It makes
of poetry constitutes and to itself.... I itself visible
criticism that everyone at a poetry reading is a poet to say that this is just what is a even essence a of vital about the poetry reading series, For is constituted poetry reading. dialogically through an audience with of peers, and exchange recognition turn around
would
the familiar
to invisible readers or the poet is not performing listeners but actively exchanging other per work with The poetry is an formers and participants.... reading convention of for poetry, by poetry, ongoing poetry.63
where
"The performances, pieces, and talks on poet ics that took place frequently during the initial stages of the for mation of the language group were communal events, casual, that took place in lofts and art spaces. But they intense interactions Bob Perelman writes:
were
not only addressed to immediate participants: they were also some However and trivial the remarks of contingent
recorded.
tapes were aimed at entering and redefining literary were at One could also aimed say they appropriating liter history."64 as if to keep it from the of ary history, specifically poetry, history
were,
those
coming
to an end. The
seems point that the extension
crucial
to be
Language Poets it is a given poetry cannot be closed by a frontier.
that among of the concept of
Language poets are widely to conceptual in poetics and poetic theory investigations as a way of keeping and to formal experimentation the limits of what counts as poetry unsettled or controversial. Sound poetry and dedicated
poetry are perhaps not so much face each other across a vast poetic circus.
concrete
limits
as horizons
In any event
that
the spirit of
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
that of the anarchist group: the idea Language Poetry is essentially a space inwhich is to create and maintain (granting historical con is possible. What informs Language Poetry is in ditions) anything any case historical self-consciousness 24
These poets are deeply one might at "the call their situation as to (and end of history." They understand themselves belonging a tradition made of William up specific essentially responsible for) rather
Ezra Pound, Charles the Black Mountain
Carlos Williams, Jackson MacLow, the Beats, as well New
than theoretical.
of what
York continue
Louis Zukofsky, Reznikoff, and Poets, Allan Ginsburg
as the avant-garde groups that San Francisco to make possible. Historical self-awareness
feature
and is a
of
the Language Poets?whence their idea, distinctive turn by William derived from Mallarm? but given a particular that poetry is an exploration of language in all of Carlos Williams, in its formal, material, and in particular and semantic dimensions, an array of social and its historical conditions of existence within contexts. A great many of these poets hold the view that economic a particular way poetry is not simply another species of discourse, of using language that can be contrasted with other discursive gen res (philosophy, science, law, everyday speech), but is simply a con dition of language as such, so that what counts as a poem will depend as much upon how we listen to language in the world around us as upon our capacities as speakers or writers. There is as much poet to know that in the noise of the world. It is interesting ry as music of "language as such" originated the motto the Russian among Futurists
that
so
intoxicated
Roman
Jakobson.65
But
for
the
It is accessible Language Poets language is invisible to linguistics. at of and the level (street level, or at experience participation only the level of theater) and not at the level of formal description. the
entity. Hence the concentration among a mode of performance, as of the idea upon poetry Language where the emphasis falls, among other places, on how a poem (or can think of this its appearance.66 We how language) makes h?t?roclite
Poets
as a modification thesis that a poem is of the modernist emphasis made of words but is not a use of them. This is not just an inten sification of the thesis but (as in Blanchot's poetics of d?s uvre ment) made
of it away from the idea of a poem as something is that performance is (an artifact). The point to understand
a bending
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
not something added to something made; it iswhat is made?the is itself. This the because of the poem is not of thing temporality but of something that interrupts the present by something present one In of there. his "durations," David taking shape talk-poem, Antin
calls attention
to the two modes
of existence
of his "work": 25
as a
im an
performer
so
improviser
i dont
know
exactly what im going to say when i begin though ive about of and when ive thought talking particular things finished talking imay still be interested in something ive said and imay want to think about it again and sometimes i'llwant
to look at it and transcribe it and maybe
even
in a more or less extensive form that hangs to the original talk or the sense of it close pretty even when ive extended it because immuch less it
publish
in revision and polishing than in the difference between print and performance (wim65)
interested
The difference
between
and print is, for Antin, analo performance between gous (that is, objects) poetry and works of art: "most people / in art schools are interested in making objects," that is, "objects of duration." Such objects don't interest Antin. To say why they don't he recalls a visit of his to the Louvre in which he hunts up mainly the paintings of low-profile artists to the difference
trying very hard (but failing) to avoid the Mona Lisa tour. On his way out he passes one of Rembrandt's self-portraits:
while
as
i passed
the
for a moment
stopped
rembrandts to
look
once
on
the way
again
at
out
the
i
self
portrait
with
the pallette in his hand and the turban tied around his head which looks more like a painters cloth to protect his
hair
and
an
expression
that
some
suggests
kind
of
comment
on the object of painting its meaning and perhaps its duration a comment that looks to me like the beginning of a very rueful Jewish grin that expresses something of my own disdain for the idea of duration are "objects of duration"? They that don't get thrown away?unlike
What
(wim72)
are evidently Duchamp's
not just things Readymades,
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
we
which cultural
know icons
Rembrandt's
is a self-interrupting icon (like the one in John a in Convex Portrait it incor Mirror). As a self-portrait Self Ashbery's could say: perpetually porates?one interrupts?the performance on Rembrandt's of its composition. The expression face is a
Antin's 26
or replicas; they are of chiefly from photographs the Mona and also of course like Lisa, but the Rembrandt that catches self-portraits; like
attention
moment
of d?s uvrement?unworking?inserted one thinks about whether An entretemps. Naturally of the Mona
Lisa's
smile. We
into
the work.
the same
is true
underestimate
the difficulty of such as a disinterested to smiles with aesthetic respect experience event. At any rate Antin reads Rembrandt's face as a "rueful Jew own ish grin that expresses of / disdain for the idea my something to say that this disdain of duration expresses the fundamental anarchism (one could call the anti-principle prin Antin's the d?s of uvrement) (and of the avant garde, ciple: poetics
of duration."
Iwant
art, and of Language Poetry). The idea is to pro in which the work takes place without taking final or even it materializes without becoming objectified
of performance duce an event
form; finished. The poem can be communicated
a haecceity that in this respect is a singularity, a voices but which can no partage of through
longer be identified on its own as a thing set apart from the com in its company. John Cage remarked on the that assembles munity to escape the fixity of Robert of Rauschenberg's ability paintings canvases of paint, not to mention painting despite being made stretched on a frame and hung on a wall, for all the world objects to memorize of art: "Over and over again I've found it impossible I 'Have it?' you changed paintings. Rauschenberg's keep asking, And
I'm looking that it changes. I look out the then noticing while and see the icicles. There dripping water is frozen into an
window
object. The icicles all go down. Winter more season of quiescence."67 What's the principle io"
The principle
than the others here?
called mobility-immobility
is this:
every thing is changing some things but while are changing others
are
not.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
is the
20"
eventually that were
those
not 30"
changing
27
begin suddenly to change (S154) The principle of art belongs
d?s uvrement) is that the work (mobility-immobility: to an unstable environment is internal (historicity
to its essence); it cannot be sealed off from this environment it is, whatever else it is, an event that happens simultane with else taking place in the ongoing ously everything places it to form. (Recall Celan's traverses and which, indeed, it works
because
of
the
Meridian," ["Der poem: Unterwegssein no are art. Poets There works of GW3:i86/cP34].) unaccompanied and audiences of poetry are clandestine of poems that companions figure
travel from one environment in school bracketing
to transform
works
them?Gadamer
to another.
To be sure, we are trained of art into aesthetic phenomena by calls this "aesthetic differentiation"
as a one (wm8i/ TM85). But the poem cannot be differentiated time thing that gets picked up now and again by the isolated read er. On the contrary, as Peter Middleton in an essay on suggests "The Contemporary to be radically
needs
the concept of the poem Poetry Reading," "Instead of thinking of the poem socialized: around being variously that moves read interpreted,
as something in different forms, and generally provoking dis aloud, published we might be better to think of it all as a large tinct interpretations, memo h?t?roclite texts, people, performances, entity, that mixes a in other and that ries, affines, process engages many possible people, perhaps only briefly, over a long period of time, whose out comes are usually hard to see, and which has no clear boundaries, not the page, the reading, the critical study."68 without myth. regards mod Thierry de Duve as a Utopian project that failed (KD191). A hundred years of rhetoric has (he thinks) left modernity?the alienat in-your-face world of industrial-technological ed, rationalized capitalism?
community ernism
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
at the end of the (This is a universal disappointment unchanged. is like art, century: unredemptive.) politics, Says de Duve: the art in is New commercialized?a York, world, thoroughly especially if there ever was one?and institution market painters mostly "man of'68" (KD191-92). As a self-professed (KD288) But for (KD462). longs community probably not a poetic since such a community does not fit anywhere along community,
work 28
alone
de Duve the
axis
between
or
libertarian-communitarian as a "h?t?roclite
The poem categories. of partage: as a formal model of itself?ecstatic: journeying
entity"
liberal-socialist
is anarchic
on the
object the poem is always in excess its sur outside itself and absorbing
into itself as it goes. Why not think of this as the his roundings is not a torical mode of existence of the poem, whose self-identity the but entails communities that it gener logical ipseity multiple ates through those whom it fascinates? Nancy points out that lit erature
a certain romantic, functionalist, nation is not myth?on of myth as a unitary narrative that gathers a whole into a totality. Whereas (in this certainly erroneous myth
alist notion people
sense) produces communion?heterogeneous people united as in a sharing or divi one voice?literature is serial in its production, sion of voices: its unity is not organic, that is, as Nancy puts it, it is "articulated" "articulation rather than "organized," where is only a juncture, or more exactly the play of a juncture: what takes touch each other without different pieces place where fusing where together, they slide, pivot, or tumble over one another, one at the limit of the other?exactly at its limit?where these singu fold or stiffen, flex or tense themselves pieces one and this another, unto one another, without together through same a at mutual the time, always remains, play?which play between them?ever forming into the substance of a higher power lar and distinct
of aWhole"
(CD188/1C76). So one could (or ideology, law, or philosophical myth is not a totality or a unitary produces or tradition theatrical
of communities
whose
and performative
rather
say that, unlike romantic rationality), what poetry
but a series community I if it right, is have sociality, or even than civil, economic,
ideological.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
NOTES i. Werner
is a poet
"Hesiod
says:
Jaeger
because
is a teacher."
he
The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet Press,
University to Plato 2. "Vox al.
p. 74; and
1939,1, Mass.:
(Cambridge,
Harvard
in Deserto,"
Clamans
Stanford
(Stanford:
3. Emmanuel
Levinas,
also
example,
University
Press,
Otherwise
than
Havelock,
Press,
to Presence,
The Birth
(New York: Oxford Eric
University
1963),
trans.
Preface
or
105-6.
pp.
Brian
bp. trans.
Essence,
Beyond
et
Holmes,
p. 239. Hereafter
1993), Being
Paideia:
Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinuus Nijhoff, 1971), pp. 141-42. 4. Ion, 533d-534e. It is worth noting that Socrates identifies lyric poets as particularly Dionysian: shipping Corybantes are
poets
lyric
in their
senses
when
they make
these
lovely
lyrics.
once they launch into harmony and rhythm, they are seized
No, when with
not
"So it is with the good lyric poets: as the wor are not in their senses when they dance, so the
the
Bacchic
transport,
bacchants,
when
not when
in their senses"
possessed,
and
are
draw
milk
and
the
[katexomenai]?as
possessed
from
honey
the
but
rivers,
(534a; Lane Cooper trans.) Maurice 5. Blanchot, Lespace litt?raire (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), p. 28; The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1982),
32.
p.
6. Jean-Luc Nancy, Le partage de voix (Paris: ?ditions Galil?e, 1982), pp. 62 65 (hereafter pv); "Sharing Voices," trans. Gayle Ormiston, Transforming the Hermeneutic and Alan
See Walsh,
sv).
on
Havelock pp. 7. See
Schrift
suny
(Albany: The Varieties
"The
to Nancy,
From Nietzsche
Context:
D.
Press,
1990),
of Enchantment, Poetic
of
Psychology
ed.
L. Ormiston
Gayle
234-35;
pp.
Performance,"
(hereafter
and
3-36;
pp.
Eric
esp.
Preface
to Plato,
145-64. Maurice
Minuit,
La
Blanchot,
1983),
18-19;
pp.
communaut?
hereafter
ci;
inavouable
Editions
(Paris:
The Unavowable
de trans.
Community,
Pierre Joris (Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1988), p. 7; here after
uc:
"It
of his
readers
quest
for
an
is striking signifies ecstatic
that Georges
Bataille,
the mystique
of an
experience,
name
whose ecstasy
excludes../fusional
or
the
for
so many
non-religious
fulfillment
in some
(Jean-Luc Nancy). It is something he is deeply hypostasis' averse to. One must never forget that what counts for him is less the collective
one forgets everything (oneself included) than the demanding process that realizes itself by bringing into play and carrying outside itself an existence that is insufficient [unto itself], a state of ravishment where
movement
that
ruins
immanence
as well
as
the
usual
forms
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
of
tran
29
d?s
uvr?e,"
no.
Alea,
Christian Bourgeois revised
and
additional
30
"De
essays,
"Divine
(1983).
"La communaut?
Nancy's
La communaut?
Nancy's
P?tre-en-commun"
d?s
uvr?e
d?s
and
uvr?e"
"L'histoire
or
?clats,"
"Shattered
and
Love,"
two
plus finie."
"Des
The
adds two
The Inoperative Community, cited below,
en
(Paris:
contains a
to Blanchot,
"La communaut?
of
version
enlarged
"L'amour
more, or
4
to
Editeur, 1986), responding
translation,
English
is a response
text
Blanchot's
scendence."
lieux
divins,"
Places."
8.Maurice Blanchot, La question la plus profonde," Lentretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 28; hereafter ei; "The Most Profound Question," The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 9. La
Press,
(Christian Community,
Nouvelle
trans.
Connor,
Peter
ic
Lisa
96:
p.
fact of poetry's
account
"Plato's
over
control
Stanford
remains
Press, 1991), p.
first
See Giorgio
an
conception], aesthetic
Content, 1999),
4-5:
pp.
experience The
enjoyment.
and
the
indeed
of
Albert
Georgia
"Plato,
and
Greek
of art
experience little
having power
"The
Agamben,
trans.
in general, had a very different
antiquity and
the
and with clarity the central
culture." Without
Press,
University
our modern
disinterest
Greek
The Man
Thing,"
Uncanny
(Stanford:
[from
and
Holland,
of Minnesota
(Minneapolis: University
augment?e
The Inoperative
cd;
inc.
to Plato,
classical
et
Michael
Garbus,
only Greek attempt to articulate consciously Most
revue
?dition
p. 22; hereafter
1990),
6. Hereafter Preface
21. Hereafter
pp.
uvr?e.
Bourgeois,
Simona Sawhney 10.
1993),
d?s
communaut?
art
to do with
over
the
soul
to him so great that he thought it could by itself destroy the foundations of his city; but nonetheless, while he was forced to very seemed
it, he
banish
so
did
'since
reluctantly,
of her spell.' The term he uses when is Oeio?
imagination
inspired benevolent
no
spectators,
their
in the
time, experience
notes
find
in which
he wants 'divine
pp.
55-56.
very
conscious
to define the effects of terror,'
inappropriate
a
term
to define
that our
we, reac
increasing frequency, after a
modern
artists
attempt
to capture
of art."
11.The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Francis Golffing 1956),
are
ourselves
is found with
tions, but that nevertheless certain
cpo?oc,
doubt
we
See Martin
Heidegger,
(New York: Anchor
"Rapture
as Aesthetic
Books, State,"
Nietzsche: TheWill to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper
and
Row,
1979),
1, pp.
92-106.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
12. Gesammelte
g s.
Marcus
Bullock
p. 290
1999),
and Method,
G. Marshall
Jennings
146-47. ed.
Harvard
(Cambridge: The Arcades
Benjamin,
ap).
trans.
ed.,
trans.
Project,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard
(hereafter
rev.
2nd
1, pp.
1913-1926,
486-87.
pp.
369. Walter
p.
I:
Writings,
and Kevin McLaughlin
Press,
Truth
after
1996),
Eiland
University 14. See
W
and Michael
gs.v.i,
13. Benjamin,
Selected
iv,
1972),
Suhrkamp,
Street,"
"One-Way
Press,
University
Howard
(Frankfurt:
Schriften
Hereafter
and Donald
Joel Weinsheimer
(New York: Crossroad Publishing,
1989), pp. 125-26 (here
tm):
The true being of the spectator, who belongs to the play of art, cannot be adequately understood in terms of subjectivity [i. e., as a
cognitive
disengaged
sciousness
But
itself.
conducts
as a way
subject],
this
that not
does
nature of the spectator cannot be described at
present ment
of human
conduct,
has
present
being
that
the
in terms of being
as a subjective
Considered
something....
con
aesthetic mean
the
accomplish of being
character
In the Phaedrus Plato already described the blun der of those who take the viewpoint of rational reasonableness outside oneself.
the ecstatic condition of being outside and tend to misinterpret oneself, seeing it as a mere negation of being composed within In fact, being outside oneself and hence as a kind of madness. is the positive possibility
oneself else. a
This
kind
one
is watching. for
condition,
privative tion
to the matter
tive
accomplishment.
15.This distancing
into
in
oneself
and
from this
to be
and
to
is anything
devoting is the
something
self-forgetfulness
self-forgetfulness
it arises
at hand,
one's
spectator's
full
a
but atten
own
posi
factor by which an audience is constituted is already ironically in the Ion when Socrates gets Ion to confess
conceptualized that he (Ion) watches produces
giving
Here
of being wholly with is a self-forgetfulness,
present in
consists
spectator
what
of being
the Dionysian effects that his recital of Homer (535d-e). In Plato poetry is already integrated
in his audience
a culture
of
rhetoric.
16.Trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 468. See also Max Weber, "The Chinese Literati," SociologicalWritings, ed. Wolf
Heydebrand
(New
York:
Continuum,
1994),
pp.
122-50,
135-36.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
esp.
pp.
31
17. See
the
on
"Dialogue
Poesy,"
as Practice:
Theory
trans.
A Critical
of
Anthology et
al.
18.Philosophical Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University
of
Early
German
Romantic
(Minneapolis:
of Minnesota
University
Minnesota
Press,
ed. &
Writers,
1991),
31-32,
pp.
Jochen
Press,
50-51.
Schulte-Sasse,
1997),
Compare
181.
p.
"The philosophy
Hegel:
of art is therefore a greater need in our day than itwas when art by itself as art yielded full satisfaction. Art invites us to intellectual considera
32
tion, and that not for the purpose of creating art again, but for knowing art
philosophically
what
Knox
Clarendon
(Oxford:
Press,
19. See Charles Bernstein, Poetics 20.
See
(Cambridge:
"The
Fragment
Word"
since
it is a word
to translate, take place.
1992), and
(1C51-59);
(Process)," A
his
an easy
term
does
something are
"uneventfulness"
"worklessness,"
on Ren?
essay
is not
in which
p.
151; hereafter
p.
also
uvrement
D?s
for an event
T. M.
13.
Press,
(1C07-13).
"Unworking,"
trans.
and Critical Excess
University
"The Athenaeum"
Blanchot,
Char,
1, p.
1975),
"Optimism
Harvard
on Fine Art,
Lectures
is." Aesthetics:
not
some
of
the possibilities. For Blanchot d?s uvrementmeans that writing is not a mode of production but an experience of the interminability of writing: writing without arche or telos. It belongs to the family of Bataille's or non-productive
d?pense 21. The
break-out
in
Content, artist
28-39.
pp.
whose rather
is arguably
painting
See
galleries.
or poet
al but
expenditure. as
earlier?perhaps,
Giorgio
suggests, when people begin collecting paintings and hanging
Agamben them
of
work
a the
Cabinet
longer unique
a
subjectivity, can
spectator
no
an alienation,
experiences
is
in
a craftsman
simply
moment
that
see
of
mode a reflection
Without
when
with
working
special
longer a
The Man
of Wonders,"
interest
Agamben's
is no
becomes
"The
the
his materi in
inwardness of himself
but
(p. 37).
"being-outside-himself"
22. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The LiteraryAbsolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, trans, by Phillip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: suny Press, 1988), p. 40. 23. See The College of Sociology, 1937-39, ed, Denis Hollier, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University The Unavowable
Blanchot, iments
in community
conviction number external
animating
of people ties
of
the
whose action,
1930s,
Later
project.
names by
today more
on
12-16,
pp. starting
Bataille
[Andr? Breton] but
Press, 1988). Hereafter esp.
Community, during
as a group
Surrealism
of Minnesota
would
Bataille's his
with
es. See
write:
exper of
experience "the
force
of
allowed him to bring together a are
known
intimate
everywhere?not ties
of
passion.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
by It was
Breton
Andr? have
the
who
is in his
to say what
power
a poet
that
recognized
rightly
but
heart,
or painter an
that
not
does
or
organization
a collective body could. This 'body' can speak in different terms from an individual. If painters and poets together took consciousness of what on poetry and painting, anyone who speaks in their name must
weighed
it is the
that
plead
How
on Surrealism,
trans.
Michael
trans.
The Guilty,
(1947), TheAbsence ofMyth: Writings
Richardson
Verso,
(London:
1994),
Bruce
Boone
California:
(Venice,
Lapis
p.
Press,
25. See "La notion de d?pense," Lapart maudite (Paris: ?ditions p.
and
"Surrealism
necessity."
impersonal
60.
am.
Hereafter 24.
of
vehicle
ItDiffers from Existentialism"
hereafter
28;
"The
pm;
of
Notion
1988).
de Minuit),
Visions
Expenditure,"
of
Excess:
SelectedWritings, 1927-1939, trans. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press,
communities they
are
1985),
To
be
all
sure,
ecstatic
relation to the social order in which
have an ambiguous are
contained?armies
ve.
118; hereafter
pp.
the most
emphatic
But
example.
one
think of armies not so much
as disciplined orders in which everything is regulated by command but as packs or bands that a state cannot finally keep under control. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, should
on
"1227: Treatise trans. 1987),
Brian
The War
Nomadology:
Massumi
(Minneapolis:
A Thousand
Machine,"
Plateaus,
of Minnesota
University
Press,
351-415.
PP.
26. See Steve McCaffery, Critical
Intention:
"Writing as a General (New
York:
(Paris:
Gallimard,
1973-86
Writings,
Economy," North of
Roof
Books,
1986),
pp.
147;
Inner
201-21. 27.
See
Bataille,
Experience, 28.
See Giorgio
29.
gs.1.2.614-8; trans.
L'exp?rience trans.
Harry
Boldt
The Man
Agamben,
(London:
Content,
A Lyric Poet
Verso,
1973),
1943),
suny
(Albany:
Without
Baudelaire:
Charles Zohm
int?rieure Anne
Leslie
Press,
of High
Press,
1967),
p.
94.
Capitalism, cb.
113-17; hereafter
30. "Projective Verse," TheHuman Universe, ed. Donald Allen Grove
p.
5.
p.
in the Era pp.
p.
1988),
(New York:
pv.
59. Hereafter
31. Compare Louis Zukofsky, "A Statement for Poetry [1950]," Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays (Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University is to
read
Press,
2000),
poems.
That
p. 23: way
"The
the
best
reader
way becomes
to find
out
something
about of
poetry a poet
himself: not because he 'contributes' to the poetry, but because he finds himself the subject of its energy."
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
33
32. Adorno, mit
trans.
Prisms,
Press,
1981),
Samuel
and
Weber
Shierry
MA:
(Cambridge,
152:
p.
Schoenberg's instinctive mode of reaction ismelodic; everything in him is actually "sung," including the instrumental lines. This his music
endows
with
its articulate
character,
and
free-moving
yet structural down to the last tone. The primacy of breathing
34
over
the beat
of abstract
and to all those who, existence,
more
to
Schoenberg
than
modern
Stravinsky
to contemporary
having adjusted better
themselves
fancy
contrasts
time
The
Schoenberg.
is allergic to the elaboration and fulfilment of which it substitutes the docile repetition of mutilat melody, for ed melodic fragments. The ability to follow the breath of the reified mind
music unafraid had already distinguished Schoenberg from older, post-Wagnerian composers like Strauss and Wolf, in whom the seems
music
to
unable
its
develop
substance
to
according
intrinsic impulses and requires literary and programmatic even
port,
in the
33. Olson's
Push:
Rouge:
Louisiana
34.
and Recent
Black Mountain,
Origin,
Press,
University
1978),
American
Grounding
American
kind
Fredman of mystery
"the
says
that
sect,
particularly
Black
Charles
Poetry:
1970, when
Olson
ers
this
to join
died.
As
the of
community
Mountain
leader,
Olson
resistant
poets.
Black
Mountain
Review:
Olson,
Creeley,
as
1950, when
a
Olson
a host a group
Thus,
the
started Origin, and
encouraged
formed around such centers as Black Mountain
and
functioned
years
and Cid Corman
Olson
Press, 1993), pp.
poets
the
between
and Creeley began corresponding
(Baton
Poetry
39.
p.
Emersonian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University 52-57.
sup
songs.
Fredman,
Stephen
its
of oth
of writers
College, Origin, and The
Duncan,
Denise
Corman,
Levertov, Edward Dorn, Paul Blackburn, Joel Oppenheimer, Fielding Dawson, Michael Rumaker, Hilda Morley, John Wieners, Larry Eigner, Jonathan Williams, Le Roi Jones, Gilbert Sorrentino, and others. In the course
of
this
twenty-year
appeared and intermingled with be mentioned,
the
following
a second
period,
wave
of projectivist
writers
the first; of a larger number that could
writers
maintained
a more
or
less
strict
to the projectivist doctrine during at least some of this time: Robert Kelly, Theodore Enslin, Kenneth Irby, Jerome Rothenberg, Edward David Richard Eshleman, Sanders, Bromige, Clayton adherence
Grossinger,
Ronald
Johnson,
and Armand
Schwerner"
(p. 55).
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
by RoseLee Goldberg, Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present York: (New Harry N. Abrams, 1979), p. 79. 36. (New York: E. P.Dutton, 1972), pp. 334-67 ("ANew Black Mountain"). 35-Quoted
37.
Goldberg,
82.
p.
Performance,
See
Black
Duberman,
Mountain,
pp.
350-58. Black Mountain,
38. Duberman,
p.
35
380.
39. The BlackMountain Book: A New Edition (Rocky Mount, North Carolina: North
Carolina
Press,
Wesleyan
1991),
178-79.
pp.
40. See Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp (Cambridge: mit Press, 1996), p. 375; hereafter kd: "Something unprecedented in the whole history of legitimate to be an artist with
art surfaced in the sixties: it had become out
being
ist,
a
either
architect,
or a poet,
painter,
or art at
in general,
in traditional disciplines." seems
Nancy
to
(Stanford:
or a new
A
was
large?that
novel
sculptor,
art
of
'category'
no
absorbed
longer
In "Why Are There Several Arts?" Jean-Luc
contest
Stanford
etc.
filmmaker,
choreographer,
appeared?art
or a musician,
de Duve.
See
Press,
University
trans.
The Muses,
1994),
1-39. Cf.
pp.
Peggy
Kamuf
Stanley
Cavell,
It" (1967) on the work of Anthony Caro, whose sculpture is no longer sculptured, thus depriving us of criteria for deter mining what we are looking at. This is the modernist project, which "AMatter
of Meaning
leaves us in the dilemma of always having to discover anew the condi tions
that
the possibility nal
to our
Essays 41. Trans.
us
enable
to accept
experience
Frederick
art.
of
43. ?sthetische
See Must
G.
Battcock
We Mean
Lawrence
mit
(Cambridge:
Press,
always inter
(Berkeley:
University
of California
of
188-90.
pp. 1987),
pp.
205-7.
(1967), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, Press,
1995),
212;
hereafter
p.
ed. 120.
ao. Theorie
(Frankfurt:
1973),
Suhrkamp,
Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor Minnesota
1969),
event
Say? A Book
We
What
Press,
University
Cambridge
42. "Art and Objecthood" Gregory
in which
of art,
of fraudulence, Cavell says, is henceforward
(Cambridge:
Hereafter
as a work
something
Press,
1997),
p.
141. Hereafter
p.
(Minneapolis: University
at;
of
aet.
"Modernist Painting," The New Art, ed. Gregory 44. See Greenberg, Battock (New York: Dutton, 1973), pp. 72-73. See also Arthur Danto, "Works of Art
and Mere Real Things," The Transfiguration of the A Commonplace: Philosophy ofArt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 1-32. Thierry de Duve has a good chapter on this matter in Kant After Duchamp, pp. 199-279 ("The Monochrome and the Blank Canvas").
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Silence (Middletown,
45- "Experimental Music," Press,
University 46.
deep 36
p.
In an
can be
summed
up
footnote
important
by
Connecticut: Wesleyan
s.
that
saying
on
remarks
Fried
and Surrealist
literalists
between
affinity
affinity
1961),
so new.
not
Perhaps
12. Hereafter
sensibility....
Surrealist
"the
This lit
sensibility...and
eralist sensibility are both theatrical" (A0145). 47. See Marjorie Perloff on Fried's separation of art from theater, The Moment:
Futurist
Avant-Guerre,
See A Thousand
Plateaus,
pp.
of Rupture
492-99.
uvres completes (Paris: Gallimard),
49. See Artaud, et
the Language
of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 109-11
(Chicago: University 48.
and
Avant-Garde,
la m?taphysique,"
and
40-57,
pp.
"En
finir
en sc?ne
IV, "Lamise
avec
les
chefs-d'
uvre,"
89-100; hereafter oc; The Theater and ItsDouble, inAntonin Artaud: Selected Writings, ed. Susan Sontag (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988),
en
"Mise
esp.
to Masterpieces."
another
with
to come
not
is "not
experience silent
presence
alist
objects
rooms?is not
were 50.
the
just
of
"theater
A Thousand
reserve
give
or of
in
that
a person,
the name
haecceity
the
by
liter
darkened
ifMinimalist
art
cruelty."
p. 261:
of
is
The
upon
coming
somewhat
(A0128). As
Plateaus,
from
does
ground.
crowded,
Becoming-Animal,
Becoming-Intense,
different
or
experience
example,
work
the beholder, who
back
distanced,
being
person;
but
theater
stand
in just this way"
disquieting
very We
unlike
of another
Imperceptible...,"
stance.
any entirely
Minimalist
It confronts to
but
unexpectedly?for
"1730:
viduation
closer
The
person.
not just sit there; it is aggressive. warned
describes
"object" as if itwere a not-altogeth
the Minimalist
encounter
Fried
Interestingly,
"An End
and
227-39,
pp.
aa.
hereafter
252-59;
pp.
the encounter with er-friendly
and Metaphysics,"
sc?ne
for
"There
Becoming is a mode
subject,
it. A
season,
thing, a winter,
of
indi
or
sub
a sum
mer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking nothing, even though this individuality is different from that of a thing or a subject. in the sense that they consist entirely of relations
They are haecceities of movement affect
and
and be
rest
between
molecules
or
capacities
particles,
to
affected."
51. See Arthur Danto, "The End of Art," The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 81-115. For Danto,
however,
art comes
to an end,
not when
it turns
into
theater,
but
into philosophy," that is, when the work just is the theory that constitutes it: "Now ifwe look at the art of our recent
when
it is "transmuted
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
we
past...what
to a world
But
itself.
that
so
infinity,
that
as
remaining,
sciousness" Muses,
it were,
(p. in).
and more
upon external
something
in understanding
that
is another
all
virtually
it
its object
exhibited
feature
these
by
there
as the object
solely
Jean-Luc
Compare
is at the
art
is theory,
end
in a dazzle of pure thought about itself,
having finally become vaporized and
is not
theory
so
there
more
depends
is that the objects approach zero as their theory
late productions which approaches
so
as art,
to understand,
it seeks
to understand
has
which
is something
its existence
for
theory
see
its own
of
Nancy,
con
theoretical
"The Vestige
of Art,"
The
81-100.
pp.
52. See Henry Sayre, The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde Since 1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 1-34; and Lucy Lippard, Six Years:TheDematerialization of theArt Object from 1966 to 1972 (New York: Praeger, 1973). 53. See Chris Burden and Jan Butterfield, "Through the Night Softly," The Art of Performance:A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas
E. P Dutton,
York:
(New
1984),
Parveen
and
222-39;
pp.
Adams,
"Operation Orlan," The Emptiness of the Image (London: Routledge, p.
esp.
1991),
145.
54. The Surrealists were always a plurality in which, in Nancy's words, "different pieces touch each other without fusing" (1NC76). In The Unavowable
remarks
Blanchot
Community
on
the
character
aleatory
of
Andr? Breton's group: "There it is: something had taken place which, for
a few moments existences,
gular
gave
established
munity
to
due
and
the misunderstandings to recognize
permission
though
previously
at the
to
peculiar
the same
of a com
possibility time
sin
posthu
already
mous: nothing of itwould remain, which saddened the heart while also exalting it, like the very ordeal of effacement that writing demands" (UC2l). 55. Gs.i
1.1.297.
Street
One-Way
and Other
Writings,
trans.
Edmund
Jephcott
and Kingsley Shorter (London: Verso, 1979), p. 227. 56. A
"war machine"
is like
a
pack,
band,
or
ducible to the State apparatus, to be outside its
law:
it comes
from
elsewhere."
"it
gang:
seems
to be
irre
its sovereignty and prior to
See A Thousand
Plateaus,
p.
352.
57. Robert Creeley, Was That a Real Poem & Other Essays, ed. Donald Allen (Bolinas, 58.
Moment,
Four
California: and
"Violence pp.
Precision:
Seasons The
Foundation, Manifesto
1979), as Art
p.
Form,"
17. The Futurist
80-115.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
37
Futurist
59. My
Marsilio 60.
ed.
Years,
Publishers,
See
Michael
Bengt 1992),
trans.
Jangfeldt,
York:
(New
Rudy
4-5.
pp.
San
The
Davidson,
Stephen
Francisco
Renaissance:
Poetics
and
Community atMid-century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989). 61.
38
"The
as Producer"
Author
(gs.u.2.696);
Books,
1978),
62. what
it means
Essays,
Reflections:
Autobiographical Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott
Aphorisms,
(New York: Schocken
p. 233. to be avant-garde
(New
New
York:
Directions,
1993),
pp.
46
47. to
"Introduction"
63.
Close
Listening:
Poetry
and
the Performed
ed.
Word,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 24. See Ron Silliman, "The Political Economy of Poetry," TheNew Sentence (New York: Roof Books, 1987), and Charles Bernstein, "I Don't Take Voice Charles Bernstein
Mail: The Object of Art in the Age of Electronic Technology," My Way: Speeches and Poems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 73 80,
p.
esp.
76.
64. The Marginalization Princeton
(Princeton: 65.
See
of Poetry: Language Writing
Marjorie
Press,
University
as
"The Word
Perloff,
and Literary History
14.
1996),
p.
Such:
l=a=n
= g = u=a=g
= e
Poetry in the Eighties," TheDance of the Intellect: Studies in thePoetry of the Pound Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 215-38. 66.
pp.
Steve
for example,
See,
162-77.
Antin,
See Marjorie
and
the
McCaffrey, Perloff,
Poetry
of
"Voice "'No More
in Extremis," Margins': The
Performance,"
Poetics
Close John of
Listening,
Cage,
David
Indeterminacy:
Rimbaud to Cage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 288 339; and Stephen Fredman, "The Crisis at Present: Talk Poems and the New
Poet's
Prose."
Poet's
Prose:
The
Crisis
in American
Verse,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 136-49. 67. "On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work" (S102). 68. Close
Listening,
p. 294.
This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
2nd
ed.