Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Sandra Braman
Subject: Re: what does it do?
Maria Damon asks what was so convincing about those folks who used
hallmark cards and popular songs as their own expression – These folks in
general had their intelligence largely in their bodies – the one fellow in
particular looked like Baryishnikov when he moved – more than in their brains,
so to speak, so it sure wasn’t astuteness of analysis…. I was convinced I guess
because of these things:
- constancy of attention to and use of popular songs and cards over time as a
means of expression
- some anxiety each week waiting to see what the hits were on the radio, and
discussion as soon as they were known as to their accuracy and
appropriateness. when songs weren’t appropriate, genuine gut level concern
and response – stomping about, going over and over what was wrong, etcetera
– really upset
- in thinking back, one manifestation that should seem particularly familiar to
poets – a fair amount of time spent trying to copy out greetings or write down
words to songs in a way that had to be accurate from beginning to end – one
mistake and the paper is crumpled, have to try again
- incorporation of words from cards and songs into daily speech, and some
dependence upon those sources of words, which constituted a fair percentage of
language used in either oral or written forms
Ultimately I understood that while these folks had all the same emotions as we,
they had no original means of verbalizing those emotions and thus relied
entirely on the language of mass culture as exhibited particularly in these 2
forms, resulting in a complete identification with mass culture. I’ve come to
understand language use on a spectrum of originality, with poets at one extreme
attempting always first speech, and folks such as these at the other extreme,
completely mapped onto the most mass of mass culture, with varying degrees
of embeddedness in the culture in-between. Academic writing, it seems to me,
is writing engaged always in the process of attempting to bring new ideas –
now make sure not too many at one time, or too original – into embeddedness