Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Steve Evans
Subject: The Social Poem: for the record
The recent exchange of posts on Diane Ward’s Imaginary Movie and on the
social poem has added a valuable dimension to my thinking this past week, so
let me first register the gratitude I feel towards those who have participated. As
the topic evolves, it appears that a hasty response I wrote privately to Patrick on
1 Feb. has come to produce a few effects–through its cited and implied
presence at certain stages of his sustained posting to the list on 2 Feb.–within
the ensuing discussion. I had hoped to avoid entering this space on what could
be construed as a sour note, since my initial response to IM was not a positive
one, but I think now that it would be better to trust that P’s indefatigable,
meticulous, and generous (though I must add, also terminologically baffling)
practice of "sounding" Ward’s work will more than compensate for whatever
criticisms I first thought to advance.
The following two paragraphs, then, are "for the record." I have omitted one
unsympathetic comment that concerned the presentation of the work by Potes
& Poets Press, otherwise I have avoided the impulse to amend or elaborate
these comments. Because I do, however and alas, have more to say, I will tax
everyone’s patience with a second posting that will follow on the heels of this
one.
ORIGINAL NOTE:
Dear Patrick:
Just a quick note to see if I can draw you out on the title poem of the book you
will be discussing on Wednesday. I read the poem this evening, aloud, and gave
some thought to it. But I must admit, it felt more like anemic cinema than
imaginary movie. Jen tells me that this book, and specifically this poem, has
been an important one for you, and I trust that this means I am missing
something. Technically, the repeated six-line stanzas struck me as only
erratically interesting as a unit of composition: the stakes are low, mistakes are
hard to discern (can they be made?). Less sonically engaging than, say, some of
the work in couplets in Relation. A certain, quite familiar, indistinction at the
level of lexicon: I’ll trade the whole gamut of pronouns (the deployment of
which strikes me as tired even in Ashbery) for a few committing descriptives
(but then I like Reznikoff and O’Hara because I like the social as a field of