Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Mark McMorris
Subject: Re: bland abstract lyrics
Yet another act of delurking (=lug rude kin):
1) Bland of course is in the eye of the beholder, but I suppose one means poetry
that is monotonous, unmodulated and unaccented, clever rather than perceptive,
perceptive rather than selective, meandering rather than directed, vague,
hubristic, histrionic, picture-postcard dull–in short, metrically and procedurally
commonplace. A few queries: is the abstract bland? Can there be a non-bland
abstract (there can be a non-abstract bland, as we know)? By abstract are we to
understand a bad case of conceptual manipulation a la late Stevens (without his
ear or eye–or brain, for that matter)? Is "The Triumph of Life" bland? Abstract?
(Yes on both?) Is Stein’s Tender Buttons abstract (I assume it’s not bland)? Is
Césaire’s Ferraments abstract? (No) Is it conceptual? (Yes) Lisible? (no)
Scriptible? (yes) Moving?
2) I know that procedural ingenuity or formal obliquity has produced most of
the interesting (to me) poetry in the US in the last 50 years, but if I am to make
any sense at all, I must also say that the very same poets who opened up and
kept open the still lively and living (a pesky romantic metaphor) forms of
poetry around today themselves could be world-class bores. Being dull seems
to be an occupational hazard of innovative writers–am I quoting here?–who
venture into areas to invent them and on happy occasions (e.g, "A"-12, Prelude)
are able release poetry, on other occasions (e.g., "A"-12, Prelude) fail miserably
to make anything happen that hasn’t already happened elsewhere to greater
effect (in conversations with Celia or Paul, for instance, to which I am not
privy). Who can read Paterson through without a shudder of dismay? Williams
and Zukofsky were onto something that became important for US poetry in the
years after them and one might well tolerate the bland in "A"-12 in order to
arrive at the sense of design in small matters as well as in large that Zukofsky
undoubtedly (to me) managed to build in. What does this have to do with poets
writing now? I suppose I’m trying sneakily to suggest that in a survey of any
today one must expect a certain amount of the bland, but that it would be very
unlikely if the Americas in 1995 were uniformly anything, let alone bland.
Let’s say that an attention to syntax and decontextualized, rigorously antimimetic
linguistic subversion/resistance characterized the underground now
overground practice of the recent US avant-garde. Younger poets writing now,