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worthwhile—that post-modern theory may be killed by artists with art, and if the first baby steps remain theoretical, so be it. What kind of poem, in 2010, could start a fire? Wordsworth’s arsonist techniques involved what he deemed a new kind of language. This is what, at the risk of growing tautological, we need now—a new kind of technique. This language, not qua poetics but beyond poetics, would have to eschew certain kinds of novelty and political correctness. It isn’t enough to wish for a return to narrative—it needs to be determined what a post-post-modern narrative is (and I freely admit that post-modern is important enough that it needs to be assimilated). The inescapable accusation that follows hard upon these assertions is of regressive conservatism—that moving into a new language world that has consonance with narrative and engages the entire history of poetry is tantamount to going backwards. Yet, it has not yet been widely noted that post-modernism has pushed the art-forms it has infiltrated so far in narrow directions that there is no room for any movement but a backwards one. In an experimental landscape dominated by poems impoverished on both sound and sense levels, to argue for sound and sense becomes a radical move. Thus, sound and sense, the ostensible pillars riveting poems to the ground that they might ascend, become signifiers of detested Romantic impulses, holding out bogus claims of transparency and dangerous delusions of grandeur. In such a landscape, the way forward is the way back, because it must be. For every gimmicky vista that opens up and is instantly thwarted, poets lose more of the capacity to both appreciate and generate the kind of texts that make poetry worthwhile—texts that find inventive ways and shrewd angles with which to create the balance of sound and sense that is the hallmark of durable poetry. Poetry that is truly inventive does not need to entail gimmickry—nor does it need to recreate Romantic sincerity, Victorian sonority, Modernist objectivity or post-modern acerbity. And because invention cannot be anticipated, it would be destructive for me to predict what form it will take or how it will be disseminated. Poetry is shrewish. For poems to come along and start fires, they would have to burn through enormous resistances. The reason, historically borne out, is that movements become entrenched, and entrenched movements have a tremendous capacity for denial, obliviousness, and discouragement. Because poetry contexts do not entail gross, or even minor, amounts of capital being made or spent, the rewards poets work for are more or less intangible. As such, there is a tremendous delicacy to poets that often congeals into rigidity. That mature poets are often stiffened into rigid postures, and demand degrees of obeisance, necessitates that younger poets receive strong encouragements to conform or be killed. It is also inevitable that each generation will raise only a few poets above the crowd. Nevertheless, to the extent that poets are willing to take up cudgels, a preponderant sense of poems is worth fighting for. Post-modernism has been attenuated into something quite tame; to the extent that the only leaps left to make are, at least in the short term, backwards leaps (into narrative, emotion, sonority) means that the post-modernists expunged too much from what poetry had been before they put up their grayish fortresses. Yet this cannot be a manifesto, because I do not wish to promote any agendas. The essential agenda here is to create, if possible, a context in which poets can decide for themselves the best means of arson, because these grayish fortresses need to be burnt to the ground. It is over the ashes of the moribund that we invent; and if what we invent is poems, and if the poems are built sturdily enough, we do not need to worry that we will appear grayish to whoever succeeds us. That this work needs to be accomplished in different solitudes, rather than in groups, is worth considering; isolation is not merely Romantic, it may be a job requirement. Clannishness and conformity are the major enemies here. 29
Acknowledgements The Argotist: Century XX after Four Quartets Entitlements: Post-Modernism, Capitalism, and the Threat to Poetry’s History On the Necessity of Bad Reviews The Conspiracy Against Poems Jacket: Wordsworth @ McDonald’s On Jordan Stempleman’s Facings Word for Word: The Decay of Spirituality in Poetry Loving the Alien Stoning the Devil: Anything with an Edge: Rethinking Post-Avant 30
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The Posit Trilogy Adam Fieled Argot
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The Posit Trilogy 4
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Posit I want but that’s nothing n
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Day Song & this reflexivity, right
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Lars Palm Dream I was skulking in a
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Rowdy Dream I was slumming @ Andrew
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Waiting for Dawn Ananda at Dirty Fr
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Girl with a Cigarette, Modern Paint
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Jessica Smith Dream Jessica Smith w
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II. Deposit 20
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The Point, Made Seeds left, softeni
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Manayunk Sky Facades on Main Street
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Waiting for Dawn Ananda at the Bean
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Decoy Dream You were one of the twe
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Absinthe Situations which, to face
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To Courtney (Double Entendre) yes,
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III. Re-Posit 34
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The Point, Beyond So much space inh
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Main Line Sky Clouds conglomerate a
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Waiting for Dawn Ananda @ Volo Coff
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Midnight Saturday Night You said (i
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Eris Temple That night I got raped
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Dracula on Literature You can’t t
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About the Author Adam Fieled is a p
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* Cover image by Susan Wallack Copy
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Yes, this is how it must be, high u
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#3 Look: the boy-child sleeps. Of c
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#5 Do their dreams coalesce? His dr
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#7 He figures he might as well smok
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Erection just beginning to subside,
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#11 He intertwines his fingers behi
Page 65 and 66: #13 Could I have finished the degre
Page 67 and 68: #15 I need a limo to take me to the
Page 69 and 70: #17 He picks up the shitty guitar,
Page 71 and 72: #19 As she spoons the stuff into he
Page 73 and 74: #21 The thing about Manny’s, he t
Page 75 and 76: #23 She’s doing a crosswords puzz
Page 77 and 78: #25 Ronnie is nearing the end of hi
Page 79 and 80: #27 Then appeared the angel: not de
Page 81 and 82: #29 Here’s how Jess does penance:
Page 83 and 84: She just did it. I woke up and she
Page 85 and 86: #33 It’s a girl. Jess names her M
Page 87: Credits Mipoesias/Miporadio— #s 2
Page 90 and 91: Cover image courtesy of NASA Marsha
Page 92 and 93: Table of Contents Apologia 7 Centur
Page 94 and 95: Apologia The guiding principle of m
Page 96 and 97: and maintain the durability and per
Page 98 and 99: Entitlements: Post-Modernity, Capit
Page 100 and 101: On the Necessity of Bad Reviews (20
Page 102 and 103: Wordsworth @ McDonald’s (2005) Wi
Page 104 and 105: of emotional dispossession and imag
Page 106 and 107: Spicer uses “ocean” as a metaph
Page 108 and 109: The Decay of Spirituality in Poetry
Page 110 and 111: Anything with an Edge: Rethinking P
Page 112 and 113: Book Review: Jordan Stempleman’s
Page 114 and 115: excellent classicism of his work wo
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