Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Keith Tuma
Subject: Ghost Corner
I was prepared to contest the premises of Alfred Corn’s questions regarding
criteria and evaluation–just as others (myself included) had seen fit to question
a rhetorical model where one post can "change a mind" and perhaps also the
idea that metaphors are "revealing." But I think that David Kellogg and Maria
Damon have already done that–and on the contested nature of criteria one
might refer to Barbara H. Smith’s The Contingencies of Value. If Corn has
recently become a kind of ghost on this list, he seems to me a friendly ghost,
and I want to say a few things in his defense. It seems to me that there is a need
in the "experimental" poetry community for direct and detailed statements of
"personal" value and preferences, tastes (not that these need be singular or
static). Perhaps because of the way langpo emerged and the climate it emerged
in, much langpo prose has been given over to the criticism of other prevailing
modes of poetry–the so-called "mainstream"–or to a kind of blanket advocacy
where the names of the elect are rehearsed. Or, in some cases, for political and
"theoretical" reasons, evaluation is itself questioned or rejected–Charles B, for
one, sometimes seems to me given to listing rather than explaining his
preferences, and I don’t doubt for a second that he has reasons. But there has
been comparatively little critical prose by langpo writers not directed primarily
at "others"–at least until recently, as the case of Bob Perelman’s book(s)
demonstrates, along with Ron Silliman’s recent remark about Susan Howe.
This makes perfect sense to me: one must first clear a little space, no? (This
was part of Alan Golding’s point.) Were things any different in, say, Robert
Pinsky’s The Situation of Poetry, where he worked to clear space for Frank
Bidart, Jim McMichael and others? But it seems to me that now IS the time for
the langpo crowd to begin working on their own A Test of Poetry and, ideally,
the range of their attention will be at least as expansive as Zukofsky’s. This is
not just a matter of expanding an audience but of clarifying what might be
meant by surprise, striking sound patterns,engagement with history–etc etc
(Kellogg’s list could of course be expanded a good deal)–in a proliferation of
examples arranged in provovative juxtaposition. Such examples need not be
ranked good and bad and–if it’s possible to be open-minded at least a little–the
commentary might follow the examples. Of course finding publishers for such
books–there should be a good number of them–will be difficult, which
probably brings us back to the point where what used to be a "movement"
(langpo) started.