Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

the social; "inside," the social is a construct of the individual. This is not to
insist, however, on a dichotomy between inside and outside–or rather, it’s to
insist that the dichotomy occurs equally on both sides of the mythical boundary
that the dichotomy is said to put into effect. NOT that Imaginary Movie works
from within while Testimony works from without, but that in each work a
dynamic is established between inner and outer, subjective and objective, social
and personal. The singularity of the poem rests precisely here, in the character
of the dynamic that governs the poem’s meaning.
Or if I might say that again, a little more simply, the distinction between
individual and social has to occur within the poem, in order for the poem to be
intelligible according to either category. That, in any case, is the logic of
Bakhtin/Medvedev’s formula, which conceives of individuality as an historical
achievement, a social form.
And it’s in light of this analysis that I feel drawn to question your definition of
the social poem. Much as I share the values that your definition privileges–
"poetic practice which proceeds by ‘particulars’ as they circulate in the social
medium of value"–I wonder that the emphasis on "particulars" doesn’t attempt
to establish yet another dichotomy between poems that only makes sense
within them, here between the particular and the general. You refer, of course,
to "other media, other practices, other ways of fashioning the particular" (but
since these would have to be circulations in a "medium of value" other than the
social, I wonder what they can be), and you refer also to poetic practices "that
wobble out of orbit and do escape having a reference" (and you qualify this, but
again I wonder what sort of work you are referring to–and I wonder also at the
equation of particularity with reference). Nevertheless, I think the upholding of
particularity as opposed to generality–or to be more accurate, a proceeding by
particularity instead of generality–only makes sense if "as opposed to" is
understood as occurring IN the poem. And if that’s the case, then the generality
is as essential as the particularity. And isn’t that in fact the case in every poem?
For surely there are no purely particularist or purely generalizing poetries …
This isn’t simply a matter of logics and abstract argumentation. Something
occurs in Reznikoff that seems to both of us illuminating about poetry in
general and the social poem in particular. For both of us, the specificity of
Reznikoff’s content and the redemptive quality of his formal appropriations of
that content are not only striking but exemplary. I would want to say, however,
that too great an emphasis on the historical moment Testimony enshrines and
on the apparent lack of mediation in the poem’s presentation of this moment
blinds us to the insistent leveling of particularity that also occurs, and the