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The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics

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The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics
Barrett Watten
Manufacturer: Wesleyan University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

As one of the founding poets and editors of the Language School of poetry and one of its central theorists, Barrett Watten has consistently challenged the boundaries of literature and art. In The Constructivist Moment, he offers a series of theoretically informed and textually sensitive readings that advance a revisionist account of the avant-garde through the methodologies of cultural studies. His major topics include American modernist and postmodern poetics, Soviet constructivist and post-Soviet literature and art, Fordism and Detroit techno--each proposed as exemplary of the social construction of aesthetic and cultural forms. His book is a full-scale attempt to place the linguistic turn of critical theory and the self-reflexive foregrounding of language by the avant-garde since the Russian Formalists in relation to the cultural politics of postcolonial studies, feminism, and race theory. As such, it will provide a crucial revisionist perspective within modernist and avant-garde studies.

Poetic Culture: Contemporary American Poetry between Community and Institution (Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies)

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Useful Transparency part 1
da shot eard round da english department

Poetic Culture: Contemporary American Poetry between Community and Institution (Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies)
Christopher Beach
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Useful Transparency part 1.......2004-09-24

The previous review of this book covered all of the important and unbiased observations one would be inclined to make of Poetic Culture, so I will try not to reiterate them.

As a book which purports to analyze the culture and cultural mentalities surrounding contemporary American poetry (and thereby to analyze contemporary American poetry itself), Poetic Culture is indeed quite flawed . . . mostly due to its distinct partisanship and glaring hypocrisy. And yet, I felt inclined to bump this book up to 3 stars, because, frankly, it's so damn useful as a psychological artifact, an artifact which provides the clearest window into the mind of the Language Poetry camp that I have yet come across.

To be more forthcoming, I believe the psychological transparency of Beach's book betrays what I consider the fundamental shortcomings of the LangPo aesthetic. It does this with such blatancy that I wouldn't be in the least surprised to hear some of the LangPo minions themselves decrying it. But decry as they might, Poetic Culture is not only transparent, it is, I believe, mostly accurate in its representation of LangPoesy. For this reason, I would recommend this book to anyone trying to come to terms with this phenomenon of Language Poetry. By "come to terms", I mean a legitimate reckoning with it, neither an outright rejection nor an unquestioning embrace. LangPo is an important influence on the poetry being written today, and should not be ignored nor dismissed (had a bit of fun with, yes, but not ignored or dismissed).

And as for having a bit of fun with Christopher Beach, let's have at it. For my first implement of torture, I give you . . . the Close Reading! Beach throws this term around quite a bit throughout the book. In his mind, he applies it to "mainstream academic" poetry. And, in fact, I found his assessments of "workshop" poetry generally sound. His gripes, for instance, against Dobyns' less than exciting language and limited or vague grasp of human psychology are acute. But, long before post-structuralist literary critics were applying "close readings" to texts, the psychoanalysts (most notably Freud and Jung), were breaking down the structures of other "texts" (literary, religious, cultural, hallucinatory, dreamed, fantasized, etc.) based on the notion that the subtext of the unconscious often speaks more succinctly and honestly than the form of conscious expression does, and even that the conscious expression can be an attempt to disguise the unconscious subtext (e.g., projection, denial, etc.). This is where Beach, and I think also LangPo, founder.

Beach applies "sociopoetic" close readings, but remains outrageously ignorant of his psychological subtext. The lack of comprehension in the LangPo school of psychoanalytic thought (sorry, Lacan is really of an entirely different mentailty), is epidemic. As a result, LangPo should strike anyone with a psychoanalytic background as profoundly naïve. Beach so extensively epitomizes this psychological naiveté that I have to admit to feeling a bit bad for the poor chap. When it comes time to comment on the poetry of his LangPo representatives (like Lyn Hejinian), his fairly sharp tool of close reading sags into the kind of abstract, empty rhetoric one might hear in a campaign speech. In fact, he levels no criticisms whatsoever against his LangPo examples. When he speaks of Hejinian's poetry, even his word choice flops over from accurate and well chosen to limp, indistinct, and ultimately hazy beyond any determinacy (please note the intentional use of Freudian subtext above in case you would like to compare and contrast).

Continued . . .

da shot eard round da english department .......2003-11-10

aimin to understand poetry within its sociocultural context, while at da same time acknowledgin poetry's intrinsic aesthetic nature, beach's ang proposes a middle ground betweun "sociogolical" or "institutional" models of canonicity, dig those of cary nelson, and more purely aesthetic models, such as those advocated by vendla and bloom. he begins by outlinin a taxonomy of critical strategies fa canon formation in american poetry and establishes is goal as bein "to not only describe da cultural phenomenon of poetry in dis turf, but also in some measure to analyze da social and economic structures-the structures of cultural, educational, and economic capital-underlying da poetic community in question." subsequent chapters offa some provocative analyses of ow journals, presses, universities, prize committees, and evun television projects negotiate poetry's "cultural capital," but as trenchant as some of is institutional analyses can be, beach's ratha narrow partisanship frequently obscures is ruks. though he imself protests against it, dis ang tends toward da reductive binarism of "the poetry wars" dat logenbach, fa example, describes in modern poetry afta modernism. pittin ejinian against stephun dobyns, fa example, tells us little about da majority of poets who wurk outside da polarized camps of "new narrative" and lingo poetry. is underlyin agenda-the promotion of lingo poetry and da by now ratha ackneyed denigration of "workshop poetry" (as if there were only one kind)-neglects or omogenizes ambitious poets angin outside convenient labels (beach devotes a single paragraph to da possibility of current, aesthecitally ambitious poets outside da lingo camp, callin them "experimental mainstreamers or mainstream experimentalists"). beach's attacks on udda critics is refreshingly fearless and direct, but he all-too-often deploys da same logical fallacies he attributes to udders. fa example, he arshly criticizes more constervative critics fa their "thoughtless and condescendin" dismissal of radical poetics, evun as he treats ighly ambitious and respected poets dig jorie graham in da same manna. likewise, he fails to engage da ruks of important texts closely related to is own, as whun he dismisses shetley's afta da deaf of poetry coz of qualifitacions shetley makes regardin lingo poetry. unless yous is of da ardcore lang po camp, dis book will oftun be infuriatin. sometimes innit interestin. but ultimately i found myself yearnin fa a sturdia methodology.

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