Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Ron Silliman
Subject: Value in Poetry
The question of a "bad" poet or poem in the "parallel tradition," to borrow
Corn’s vocabulary, really calls up the question of value, which is what I think
Bob [Perelman] addresses in [The Trouble with Genius]. While Pound and
Stein make pretty explicit claims for their genius (and Joyce was certainly
willing to play the part, tho more cautious in his statements), Zukofsky seems
to have been far more defensive about the issue, and ultimately does not stake
his work on that. What I think Bob is after is a fresh rereading of all 4 that (1)
reads them beyond the transcendentalist heuristics of their ardent fans, who see
only glimmers of revealed knowledge (they’re not alone in this sycophantic
reaction: Spicer, Kerouac and others have all called it forth. Even Merwin gets
it for heaven’s sake) and (2) looks at what it may be in their own writing that
calls forth such nonsense as Kenner, Davenport and Terrell have spewed forth.
A very distinct critical problem from the one put forth, say, by the New Critics,
who shunned that fawning stance in favor of ultraprofessionalism. Where Bob
gets in trouble, and it’s minor quibbling on my part to call it that (but to put on
the title as much as anything), is in not being focused at all points on which is
the target of a given reading. So in that sense he tries to do too much, which
oddly replicates what all 4 of those poets do in their masterworks.
I don’t, by the way, think Bob is announcing himself Pro-Stevens over any of
those four (give me that cite, Chris!), tho if you look at the recent work (in
Raddle Moon or the chapbook that Ben Friedlander did, Chaim Soutine, the
degree to which Bob is primarly a social satirist (as is Charles B) really comes
to the fore. It’s an interesting genre to see get such large play and worth noting
that both Bob and Charles have generally stayed away from anything of "epic"
proportions.
The problem of value for my generation is I think sticky. Certainly value exists,
but it is not a fixed, transcendental term in my world and that relativism is what
drives the Bob Doles of poetry (and the Ross Perots of poetry, too) around the
bend. Any one of us could name a poet, or several, whose work we do not
connect with, because it shares little in the way of our own values. … I’m sure
that I fit into this same role for other readers too, and that’s how the world ends
up with surplus values that cause slippage and surprises for us all. Which is
why the poetry of 20 years from now won’t look the way I expect (or hope or
fear) it might, nor the way you imagine either.