Jordan “Blogman” Davis, the only one to respond to my call for questions!, writes:

Nada: vis a vis ornament. Have you read Mary Karr’s attack on ornamental poetics, mainly Ashbery and Merrill as I recall, that ran in Parnassus back before she became Stephen King’s Favorite Memoirist? I guess I don’t think of ornament as a gendered attitude, but isn’t that what everything from The Yellow Wallpaper on has been beating into our thick routines? that the apparently trivial details are the handholds, the judo leverage. What does that mean, I don’t know. I think I learned everything I know about martial arts from Charles Schultz (and Susan M., come to think of it). Anyway I’ve been thinking about that quality that you’re pointing at, and it keeps coming back to me in a negative definition, i.e. including material extraneous to the structure, embellishment, etc — which contradicts my own understanding of this quality, which is to take the most direct existing route to whatever emotion it is I’m following.. to create a filament that loops and coils to give off light, magnetic energy etc.. (blah blah Breton blah blah Soupault blah blah) which may look baroque and in a vacuum, fair enough. And fragile. Not that I can protect anything by changing its name, but the whole ‘ornament’ category sounds a lot more decadent than anything I’d know how to defend. Unless all this ornament is just a decoy, and I’m putting it out to divert attention from a real story, which now that I think of it (I’ve been using that phrase a LOT lately) may be just what I’ve done. So what’s the question. The question is, have you read Mary Karr against Ornament, as printed in Parnassus back when? xo, J

Jordan, I haven’t read the Mary Karr. I don’t think I’ve ever read Parnassus that I can remember. I’ve been so ghettoized in the inno-po world for so long that, well, I don’t think I’ve even ever read an issue of Fence all the way through. Not saying this with any kind of braggadocio, rather admitting the mind-forged manacles of my own cultural lexicon. So that answers your basic question, however abruptly. But to get to what is really interesting in your missal above, that beautiful description of the process of making things (poems) manifest themselves… I was reading today an article about Alan Watts, from which (tho it’s admittedly sorta half-baked)I quote briefly here:

Watts viewed the body as nothing less than a particular flowering of the Universe, frequently stating “You did not come into this universe, you grew out of it, like a leaf on a tree.”… of course the implications are gigantic, as our whole social and economic structure is based on the illusion that float around inside our heads and are “confronted with a world of alien objects,” that we don’t belong here, that we’re a mistake.

If we transpose Watts’ idea onto the body of the poem, the negative idea of ornament as extraneous unnecessary embellishment evaporates. That is, poems are not abstracted out of the world but are of the world (c.f. my letter to Brenda about the ornamental quality of the many things that can hang off a tree — apples, dewdrops — and her response) (cf also what is culture? what is nature? termite hill? skyscraper? what’s the diff? why do we loathe ourselves so?) (cf also a naked body — even naked we’re decorated, right? and our “parts” are hardly useless embellishments. I’m really talking about SUFFICIENTLY CAPTIVATING FORM) . And therefore, there are no objects (words) alien to a poem’s *potential* [an important qualification — and duchampian at heart — that is, ANYTHING can be material for art] microcosmic universe. However, if the objective, in making a poem, is to create or follow or trace back or spin out a particular emotional (or rhythmic?) filament (and I agree that it is), and to limn or fabricate its inherently necessary-to-its-being loops and coils and tendrils, then surely there are words, phrases, grammatical constructions, lineations and phonic patterns that either do or do not contribute to said creation or following or tracing back or spinning out. And that’s why we have editing. And that’s one reason why certain poems do not for certain readers allow more than a glimpse (if that) of that luminosity you allude to. Of course, those very impediments can also be part of what makes the poem compelling. Let me always admit impediments!

But I ask you all, whence the “decadent” association with ornament? And isn’t it egregious? There is no human culture whose members do not decorate themselves and their surroundings. Even the puritans had their buckles, did they not? I am in the possession of a zen priest’s summer over-kimono — it’s black and sheer like a negligee. As a child, did you or did you not play dress-up? So why, why, why do we punish ourselves for something we seem to be hard-wired into doing, namely manipulating the forms of our selves and surroundings into shapes that please and stimulate us?

It’s true that ornament may be the wrong word for what I’m talking about, too. I may have chosen it for the sake of polemic, because I was feeling limited by something or someone and I don’t like that feeling. It makes me want to argue, kick out, and ululate.

I don’t know if ornament “divert[s] attention” from the “real story.” Couldn’t ornament actually be the real story? Would there be any art(ifice) in that real story, if it could be proven to exist? At any rate, I don’t think poetry is about a real story. Do you? If you were really hot for the real story, wouldn’t you be doing something else?

Here are some more “think” questions:

Are anklets extraneous to a kathakali dancer?

Or false eyelashes to a drag queen?

Wouldn’t we all be less ornamented if we had no names?

Isn’t language itself the ultimate ornament?

Can you imagine yourself living inside a perfect white box?

Aren’t even “whiteness” and “boxiness” decorative qualities in contrast with NOTHINGNESS?

I’m feeling all heady with abstractions. Thank you for the question, Jordan. Do you have a copy of that Parnassus you could lend me (or as my students say “borrow me”)? More fuel for the polemic is (as the Japanese say) also good.

It’s my birthday in one hour and one minute!