tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post7422367604058933586..comments2024-01-24T06:50:01.683-06:00Comments on Samizdat Blog: Cambridge Poetry and Political AmbitionArchambeauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-14261953855340052692010-05-14T15:53:46.564-05:002010-05-14T15:53:46.564-05:00More up here if you want it:
http://samizdatblog....More up here if you want it:<br /><br />http://samizdatblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/poetry-and-challenge-to-public-sphere.htmlArchambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-37554676481967858272010-05-13T13:24:24.073-05:002010-05-13T13:24:24.073-05:00The main reason I find so much of the critical pos...The main reason I find so much of the critical posturing and positioning within the poetry world so pointless, even irritating, is precisely because I agree with what Badieu said about Deleuze, in the short comment you quoted.<br /><br />And most of the poets I actually re-read and keep re-reading expressed some very similar viewpoints. Rilke said poetry is praise, for example.Art Durkeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07463180236975988432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-61359729968963490952010-05-12T11:43:14.576-05:002010-05-12T11:43:14.576-05:00Oh -- I should add:
The reason I thought you hadn...Oh -- I should add:<br /><br />The reason I thought you hadn't seen the article, Simon, was that you said you didn't know "just what insupportable claims for poetry are being made," but these are in the article. Also (and this is my bad) I had you confused with another Simon who's been emailing me.<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />BobArchambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-84459014093294647762010-05-11T13:19:52.893-05:002010-05-11T13:19:52.893-05:00Thanks, Simon. I suppose where we differ is this:...Thanks, Simon. I suppose where we differ is this: I don't think that it helps much to claim one is being effective when one isn't. (Not everyone does this, of course). For me, this doesn't imply that one should become silent or complacent. I regret that you took that impression away from the essay. I didn't think the implication was there, but you're a bright guy and you thought it was, so -- who knows?<br /><br />I also think there are plenty of reasons other than political efficacy to write poems (though this doesn't preclude attempts at such efficacy). And I believe, as I'm sure you do, that there are plenty of things other than poetry that can be politically efficacious.<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />BobArchambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-40139936767812701082010-05-11T13:11:55.565-05:002010-05-11T13:11:55.565-05:00Let me check and get back to you on that, Boris --...Let me check and get back to you on that, Boris -- I'd like the essay itself to be out there where people can find it. If they want to disagree, then, at least it'll be with something I've said. In fact, I kind of hope to learn something from what people say, positive or negative.<br /><br />B.Archambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-44322898450297167552010-05-11T12:23:13.106-05:002010-05-11T12:23:13.106-05:00Robert - I had read the article before I posted; I...Robert - I had read the article before I posted; I'll give it another read, but I didn't skim the first time. <br /><br />It shaded, for me, into an exercise in bureaucratic control: get real, stop making these absurd claims, behave like a responsible C21 poetic citizen. Which for me is an odd thing to insist upon? - poets being - historically - not all that restrained in the claims they've made for poetry. A vision of poetic practice as universal modesty topos. <br /><br />I do believe that disrupting the monologic conversation of mainstream politics & culture (& recognising politics & culture as continuous & complicit) is something non-compliant art should do (I also, perhaps quaintly, value non-compliant art).<br /><br />I quoted Ernst Bloch because I think it's an important point; better the wildly utopian than the resigned & this is how things are. If the suggestion is - that's fine, but leave poetry out of it; if poetry is that incidental: why bother at all?<br /><br />Regards, SimonSimon Howardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09309155964441551619noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-20340483614828632622010-05-11T11:13:29.221-05:002010-05-11T11:13:29.221-05:00Andrea may describe (her own) Barque Press as a &#...Andrea may describe (her own) Barque Press as a 'fly-by night outfit' but their production values are far from it. I was impressed, at any rate. And the poetry is more than half-decent too. ;)Jane Hollandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15590668593487445482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-25692999709112363742010-05-11T10:38:20.950-05:002010-05-11T10:38:20.950-05:00Ok that definitely clarifies things. I think you&#...Ok that definitely clarifies things. I think you're right, the ethnographic angle has to be pursued by some kind of Garfinkel subversive.<br /><br />As for copyright -- would it peeve the good people at McFarland if I put your essay in its CLR incarnation up on the website? That way people might be able to read it and engage with it directly.<br /> <br />(I couldn't agree more that some of your claims have been taken completely out of context. For one thing, your essay takes in a considerable historical sweep, and most of the criticisms aimed at it assume it makes only arguments of the necessary/sufficient kind. But, it is after all extremely tempting for those with strong views to want to aim them *at* something; hence you get covered in straw and held aloft. Can't decide if that's flattering or not...)Boris Jardinenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-62593618837163502212010-05-11T10:04:31.890-05:002010-05-11T10:04:31.890-05:00Good post Bob.
I have never understood the necess...Good post Bob.<br /><br />I have never understood the necessity for a political avant-garde poetry. I always thought that such poetry would need to have a widespread readership to make even a splash in the political sphere; and even that would be contingent on such poetry being transparent and easily understood by disinterested readers. This is not something the poetry of Prynne, for instance, can lay claim to. <br /><br />If Cambridge Poetry in 2010 is more transparent syntactically (or moving towards it) than Prynne’s poetry, and, therefore, more discernable to a hoped-for wider readership, can we really say it is any longer an avant-garde poetry? <br /><br />Not that avant-garde poetry necessarily should be inscrutable, but rather that striving for clarity for the sake of a political message, seems to be slightly perverse in such poetry.Jeffrey Sidehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16735826917584494107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-25190883541342682352010-05-11T10:02:30.118-05:002010-05-11T10:02:30.118-05:00Oh -- Boris. Thanks for being cool about letting ...Oh -- Boris. Thanks for being cool about letting me republish the letters. I've been wrangling with a lot of people about copyrights and permissions lately, and heard some truly uptight views on a panel I took part in on "industry standards." It's good to see editors who care about discussion first, and business later.<br /><br />B.Archambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-10944218049387811952010-05-11T10:00:30.796-05:002010-05-11T10:00:30.796-05:00Hi Boris,
Good to hear from you, as always!
As f...Hi Boris,<br /><br />Good to hear from you, as always!<br /><br />As for your question:<br /><br />"are you really saying that the de facto oppositional culture in which the kind of poetry you and I find interesting exists *leads to* a highly theorized and, as you see it, utopian rhetoric, way above its station?"<br /><br />I don't think I'm saying anything as interesting as that. <br /><br />All I really meant was something like "Oh! no wonder everyone assumes I'm attacking them -- the criticism these guys get from outside their own circles seems to be overwhelmingly written from a position of A. dismissiveness and B. ignorance." So when a piece is published by a guy outside they don't hang with, who tries to generalize, and who doesn't buy some of the stronger claims made for the political effect of the poetry, it isn't any wonder he (that is, me) gets treated with suspicion.<br /><br />And I do get a lot of that suspicion, mostly from people who haven't read the article, and seem to ascribe to me views I don't hold. I've always tried to avoid being one of those aloof guys who doesn't respond, but it does get a bit exhausting answering email and comments that begin "I haven't read your article, but..." and proceed to argue against positions I haven't taken. Then again, many of the things I've written get no response more involved than notes along the lines of "saw you article -- congratulations," so it's nice, as always, to have made an impression in one way or another.<br /><br />Anyway. As to the hypothesis you present (could this utopian thinking/theorizing be a kind of reaction formation) I don'tknow. I mean, this could be the case -- it's an intriguing. But I really don't think I'm in a position to know. It would take a pretty serious bit of studying to sort that out, and I've committed to a few other projects for the months ahead.<br /><br />All best,<br /><br />BobArchambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-62076633143089252432010-05-11T09:45:03.086-05:002010-05-11T09:45:03.086-05:00Hi Simon,
The claims in question are in the origi...Hi Simon,<br /><br />The claims in question are in the original article. If you give it a read, shoot me an email with your comments, and I'll be happy to get back to you.<br /><br />As for people giving up thinking they can change the world -- well, I'm not for that, nor did I advocate that in the article. But I am for having a look at what our writing and acting actually do in the world before we claim that it can/has changed it.<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />BobArchambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-75649379328741384432010-05-11T08:06:43.021-05:002010-05-11T08:06:43.021-05:00Bob,
I'm very interested in this:
"But ...Bob,<br /><br />I'm very interested in this:<br /><br />"But as the scuffle went on and on, I got a better look than I'd had at the conditions that seem to have made so many of the poets associated with Cambridge a bit prone to defensiveness. They really do seem to face a climate of hostility in the larger poetic community, a hostility greater by orders of magnitude than that faced by their American counterparts in experimental poetry."<br /><br />When I first read it I found myself nodding at the insight -- it's certainly true that there is a bracketing / dismissive tendency, and that in all sorts of ways poetical life here can be oppressive and is doubtless distorted (bookshops, criticism, reading culture etc.). Obviously this is something that deeply concerns me, and about which I thought at great length.<br /><br />But then I performed one of those swings that make retaining balance so difficult: are you really saying that the de facto oppositional culture in which the kind of poetry you and I find interesting exists *leads to* a highly theorized and, as you see it, utopian rhetoric, way above its station?<br /><br />I suppose my oscillation in reading your statement is based on a feeling that: yes, the fact of a deeply and utterly conservative culture operating on poetry cane generate of great excesses (positive) of style and theory; but, no, the careful theoretical apparatus that has been hard-won (though it is inevitably at times expressed inelegantly), and the committed poetical practice that exists in its own dialogue with conservative forms of thought and the politics of terror and torture -- and ultimately with linguistic complicity -- can not merely be a by-product of cultural struggle.<br /><br />Could you say more about what you've come to understand about the relationship between defensiveness, hostility and the more general deployment of theory/writing of poetry?<br /><br />(Another way of getting at the problem is to look at, e.g. Prynne's note on _Hot White Andy_ and Robert Potts' review of Barque/Quid/KS in the _Poetry Review_. What's said there seems a valid *interpretation* of the poetry, and yet it reiterates much of what you criticize. I wonder if the problem of bombast is merely folded into the poetry, and explication can't help get caught in the mulch.)<br /><br />Best,<br />BorisBoris Jardinenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-59203325962193809602010-05-11T05:53:44.656-05:002010-05-11T05:53:44.656-05:00Hmm: I struggle to understand just what's so w...Hmm: I struggle to understand just what's so wrong with "Utopian claims for what poetry could [can] accomplish" - much of the most interesting past poetry is full of Utopian claims. Are those OK now that they are securely 'Literature' & don't need to be taken seriously? <br /><br />& just what insupportable claims for poetry are being made? (perhaps sadly, I cannot think of anyone who is claiming that poets can bring down Empire & Capital: unlike Blake or Shelley). <br /><br />It all reads like an argument for quiescence & acquiescence; go ahead, write the stuff but relax. Don't take it all so seriously. It's not like it matters. <br /><br />Surely, if people (whether poets or not) stop believing that what they do can have effects greater than a conforming (inactive) 'activism', then the end of history etc. narrative is confirmed (weird to imagine Badiou assenting to that)?<br /><br />"But at least as suspicious as the immaturity (fanaticism) of the undeveloped utopian function is the widespread and ripe old platitude of the way-of-the-world philistine, of the blinkered empiricist whose world is far from being a stage, in short, the confederacy in which the fat bourgeois and the shallow practicist have always not only rejected outright the anticipatory, but despised it." Ernst Bloch, 'The Principle of Hope'Simon Howardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09309155964441551619noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-74209915713522190962010-05-10T15:46:35.471-05:002010-05-10T15:46:35.471-05:00Hey [name withheld to prevent sacking],
Thanks --...Hey [name withheld to prevent sacking],<br /><br />Thanks -- the American publication was actually slated to come about before the English publication, but the glacial pace of small publishing led to a different outcome.<br /><br />Anyway:<br /><br />While we continue to disagree about a lot of things (like what I claimed, and what the people I tried to refute claimed, and what it is we mean when we talk about politics, etc.) I'm all for the cause you're involved in, and I hope the poems do have some political influence, incidental or otherwise. I hate to see a world-class academic system destroyed by shortsightedness and a misguided version of utilitarianism.<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />BobArchambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-48884894577609046052010-05-10T15:28:14.874-05:002010-05-10T15:28:14.874-05:003.
In homage to them I wrote a short, direct po...3. <br /><br /><br />In homage to them I wrote a short, direct poem on the spot, during (many apologies) Matthew's reading (which sounded really interesting - I'd not heard him before), and read it at the end of my set to cap off the frantic cogs and collage with a bit of decisive agitprop. Here it is. For those not in the game, "VC" is how universities refer to their "vice chancellor", the top manager at the institution. <br /><br /><br />In the Spring of its discontent the management gets tough,<br />to keep our heads down and our castrated pecker up,<br />in the real world where VC stands for venture capital,<br />and what the workers think stands for nothing at all,<br />liberalism chasing its tail like a foxy pay packet,<br />the oceanic feeling a deflated life jacket;<br />but we will keep our arms linked and stop these fucking cuts,<br />or let life bleed away into its allocated ruts.<br /><br />Under the mainstream media barrage telling us all how unforgiveably self-interested it is for low paid British Airways workers to protect themselves and their future colleagues by obliging a small number of consumers to reorganise one of their holidays, it was more than a relief to share this past week with students like Fran and Josh and all the others who<br />made Sussex into a frontline in the war against the demolition of the public sector. It was gigantically uplifting and inspiring. I thought it worth noting in this forum that poetry seemed very obviously to have<br />"exercised some incidental political influence", to recur to a phrase by John Wilkinson lately dismissed as fantasy by Robert Archambeau. In the years just round the corner there will be plenty of chances to see if we can't put our poetry to that same test with some more extensive preparation.A "Cambridge" reader, last bit!noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-76462687801313718302010-05-10T15:28:14.873-05:002010-05-10T15:28:14.873-05:002.
The reading took place on Monday night in A2,...2.<br /><br /><br />The reading took place on Monday night in A2, the largest lecture theatre at Sussex with a capacity of around 300, I would guess. The<br />students had occupied the theatre and converted it into an autonomous centre of learning and discussion. They'd been sleeping there every night on the floor in sleeping bags. Speakers came from far and wide to join the debates, which were very efficiently and imaginatively organised. Every day a list of events would be published and everyone in the university invited to come and listen and join in. Several of the<br />leaders of national trades unions came and spoke to us. Alex Callinicos gave a talk on marketisation in higher education. The occupation was partly in response to the exclusion and suspension of six students from Sussex on the grounds that they were ringleaders in the protest movement and had taken part in an earlier occupation (that lasted only a few hours) during which a highly dubious "hostage situation" had arisen (contrived, all the evidence suggests, by the "hostages" themselves) and the riot police had been called on to campus and had pushed people around, intimidated students and arrested two of them. Anyhow the A2occupation was a profoundly inspiring and well organised campaign, conducted in open defiance of the university's high court injunction (which made it illegal for anyone to enter the lecture theatre once the occupation had started), and it no doubt contributed immensely to the<br />victory here yesterday when senior management decided to reinstate the six students unconditionally and submit to the university-wide demand for an independent inquiry into the "hostage" charge, the police behaviour and the legal grounds of the injunction. <br /><br />In the thick of all that, at risk of being suspended and arrested, over a hundred students piled in to hear some poetry readings. The event was organised by Francesca Lisette and Josh Stanley, both students at Sussex and both on this list. The readers were Josh and Fran, Ed Luker, Matthew Cunningham and myself. The readings all went down very well, with lots of applause and cheering, which is unsurprising, I suppose, given that we were there in solidarity with the occupation and, like everyone else in the room, at risk to our own careers and memberships of the Sussex community. But for all that the mood in the theatre wasn't, I thought, unchallengingly just grateful and benign: people were really listening, picking up on new angles and sparks in the language, their nerves and hearts really exposed to it; but also, their heads screwed on and their tactical ears alert to the front and back of the stuff, the language surface and its scintillations as well the pressures of argument deeper<br />down. The comparison is of course hilariously disproportionate, but I couldn't help thinking, as I waited for my turn to read, about Mayakovsky's _How are verses made_, particularly his account of the "social command" and its necessity to the poet, the imperative to recognise a task that needs carrying out and to remake the language until you can do it. It was an interesting question: how would our work work or not, resound or not, be funny or not, when dramatically recontextualised and put to the test of sustaining energies of resistance and lighting up the structures of domination in the bullying jargon we'd been hearing all the time from management? I don't know the answer, of course; I can only say that I really enjoyed the challenge of reading for those people.A "Cambridge" reader contd.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-27894035882655895692010-05-10T15:26:35.472-05:002010-05-10T15:26:35.472-05:00Congratulations on getting the essay published, Ro...Congratulations on getting the essay published, Robert. I look forward to reading the longer version.<br /><br />We continue to disagree, of course. I don't see what you mean to achieve by mockery of a specimen claim exaggerated out of all proportion (that BP isn't affected by versification: hear the chorus of jaws hitting the floor!). Anyhow, I expect we're both content to keep to our own sides of the argument. <br /><br />I thought I could post here an email I sent to the UK Poetry list in March about an occupation at Sussex University in Brighton, where I work. Perhaps it will help us think about what John may have meant by his very modest remark about "incidental political potency" (from which you clipped off what I always thought was the crucial epithet: "incidental"). Anyhow I hope it makes for interesting reading for comrades struggling in the US public university sector. Best wishes!<br /><br />[Forgive me for not attaching my name to this post, but I could be sacked for it. I'll need to do it in two runs, the max is 4096 characters.]<br /><br />* * *<br />1.<br /><br />Listmembers with surveillance set up on BBC 1 news may have noticed on last night's edition a report on funding crises in UK universities, which included some footage from the strike at Sussex yesterday, a couple of very short interviews with students, etc. That strike felt very much like a success to me, on the day at least; almost everyone I spoke to was supportive and enthusiastic for our action, and I didn't see a single colleague cross the picket. A few students rudely pushed through, every one of them without exception wearing an iPod and at least 8 out of 10 of them in shades (bad objects part exchangeable with the phallus, I expect; foreskins?). Anyhow, the strike came in the context of a week packed full of actions on campus, actions by both unionised staff and the students, and since one of the actions was a poetry reading I thought it might interest the list to hear something about it.A "Cambridge" reader (who hasn't lived in Cambridge for many years)noreply@blogger.com