Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

some say the emerging poets, would I think both profit from this massive
exploration of poetry as unwarrantable language given a welcome charge of
distinct audibility, and want to refuse it in specific ways and parts, just as a
reader might wish Zukofsky had cut some of the beginning of "A"-12 for
poetry’s sake (I hope that expressing such a wish in order to make a point does
not mark me as narrow-minded or condescending–I admire Z and find his
poetics both meaningful to my efforts and succinctly comprehensive). Such a
refusal might well produce boring poetry if it takes place in a vacuum of further
ideas, but imitating somebody else’s practice certainly would (and does)
produce boredom all round.
It also seems to me that bland lyrics is a fairly good description of the bulk of
poetry of any period (including American poetry since the war).
3) By concealing artifice, Williams’ respected example has helped to excuse
the general neglect of rhythmic design–in the phrase, line, paragraph, and
work–in contemporary American avant-garde poetry (but see At Passages, et
al.), and therefore, together with Moore and Pound, can be blamed for the later
standardization of voice at the expense of arrangement, perception at the
expense of rhythm, which absolutely guarantees bland poetry. Recent
comments against Williams on this list seem to want to shoot the messenger of
an American voice–one seemingly without art–now that Williams has been so
clearly exposed as the "thoughtless" message in much contemporary writing.
This is unfair. Taking a different direction, I would say that the fault lies not
with the doctor but with the glut of words masquerading as idea in the
discourse on poetry and on literature generally, or with the loss of – an
energizing loss, looked at in a certain way – generic boundaries. Does the word
poetry name anything apart from a context of presentaion? Tell me that the
answer is YES. If I am a poet, I must suppose that I am not writing a context of
presentation but a poem. How can I know that this is so? Circles make me
dizzy. Here again, the doctor of Paterson must take some of the responsibility
for at once opening up a wider terrain of poetry and, one might say, thinning it
out and confusing the workers. I could (as you could) write a list of fairly
recent books that work excellently from the former without succumbing to the
latter, but still areas in Paterson (or Maximus) usefully diagnose the
disagreeable vague monotony some object to in poetry today. …
4) But then again, (following up on Gale’s remarks) are there any monoliths?
states? who gets to count as the younger generation? I can never shake the
feeling that all talk of generations, schools, movements in the US will remain
premature because of the sheer size of the educated population. And that maybe