Prickly

Here’s more of the prickly exchange between me and Brian that you can find over on Free Space Comix:

Nada: My arguments, as always, eminently puncturable. You are correct that I am an eternally jerking emotional knee. I often say things as a instant-reactive counter to extreme positions, although I might not entirely mean them. I try — though not hard enough — not to get involved in these things for that reason, and I’m going to restrain myself from responding one by one to each of your counter arguments, although I’m sure I could find plenty of loopholes in them out of which to slip.

A question: do you think your intention in writing the original post on _Spin Cycle_, was really to *inspire*?

It looks to me a little more like a move, conscious or not, to “take out a contender.” It looks to me like a power move. Chris’ book preceded yours, and whether or not it is well-edited — I agree that it isn’t — it is undeniably a feat of intellectual energy. You don’t even give the book that much credit, nor do you give any even slightly appreciative strokes to the content, but instead condescendingly refer to it as a mere vanity publication. Not everyone has the luxury of thinking “properly” as you do, Brian, who are so readily accepted by the elders with whose ideologies you more or less harmonize. And while I think it is great that you pay people to edit your work (and I know you are not wealthy), I know for a fact that Chris was absolutely in no position to do so.

The fact is that we could all use better editing. I remember getting a piece from you once that to me was filled with unexemplified abstractions. I put a lot of energy into editing that piece, and you decided not to incorporate any of my suggestions. Of course, that’s your prerogative. Far be it from me to drag you down to earth if that’s not where you want to be.

It’s your Poundian move to be corrective that doesn’t sit well with me, I guess. It’s lofty, impersonal, and nasty. I don’t think I was so much being proscriptive of conformity but as reacting against your proscriptiveness.

It reminded me a little of when I published one issue of a magazine, “Aya”, in Tokyo, which included a couple of poems by Cid Corman. He sent me back a letter listing 17 “errors” he had found in the issue. Most of them were in my poem, it turns out, and they were deliberate re-spellings or twists in syntax. It doesn’t matter how helpful his intentions were, it was an obnoxious thing to do.

And really, as a chronic corrector myself, I should talk. What can I do? I’m a fucking English teacher, and I have to do battle with my love for students’ errors in order to correct them every day. That’s why I preserve and ELEVATE them in verse, I guess.

I like the term “precise,” actually, and I do aim for a kind of precision when I write prose about poetry, or blurbs, or introductions, etc. I am not therefore, in actual practice, advocating “superficial modes of differentiation.” My prose is, to my mind anyway, neither confused nor too terribly digressive. Come to think of it, it isn’t hesitant or stammery, either. So maybe I’m full of shit. Or maybe I’m projecting the qualities I find desirable in verse onto the category of acceptable qualities for prose. I’m sure that is what I was doing in Chris’ case. Maybe I think of Chris’ prose as a kind of verse-prose whose muddleheadedness I see as a pleasing syptom akin to a child’s sloppy handwriting when her thoughts move much more quickly than her hand. (And by the way, this is definitely informed by my being close to Chris.) It’s as if I can see a metaworld in his writing that doesn’t quite keep up with what he is able to articulate. I realize that sounds a little patronizing, but I don’t mean it that way. I like “man’s [sic] reach exceeding his [sic] grasp” — especially in the realm of ideas.

Aaaaggh… I’m being sucked into the vortex of rhetoric… hellllllp meeeeeeeeee!

Allyssa, women tend not to get involved in these things because they have other or better things to do. I know I do, but rhetoric is seductive. Actually, rhetoric is Lucifer. One example of its devilishness is that it can be hard to understand. I don’t think I understood what you were saying in your last post here, actually.

Speaking of Lucifer, you know I love all of you, even when you get my goat. Right?

Nada

Posted by: Nada at September 15, 2003 10:52 AM

Brian responds:

Nada… I like reading criticism — I’ve always enjoyed seeing how people think. It’s fun. I like thinking about poetry and literature. That’s fun too. The idea that someone else in the community took it seriously — there aren’t that many — was exciting and interesting to me.

I did lots of web searches and asked tons of people if they had even read Chris’s book — I didn’t even know it was out — and I could find nothing out about it. And this among his “friends” and those who purportedly like his work.

Why would a huge book written by a poet who so many people appreciate as an artist not make even a small impression on the “community”? Why, in the midst of all that eyewash about “the school of quietude” and the “post avant-garde,” was there no mention of this book which seemed to make some gestures of addressing this very breach? (Why do we always have to reinvent the wheel every time this stupid cultural issue comes up?)

And why, in your defense of this book — and I should point I hardly attacked the book at all, just two sentences, it was not phrased as a review of “Stroffolino” but was a blog post about editing and grammer, for the sake of asking questions about the “community” and how one can do work in it — have you not been able to say what it is about?

A feat of “intellectual energy” — is that all it takes to be a writer?

Anyway, by your standards, my response here should be filled with tons of vile thoughts I am having about you that are related to your life and how petty or devious your motives are and not what you are writing in this comments section.

If you really think that I am trying to “take out a contender” — I guess that’s why I created a .pdf file out of all of Steve Evans’ criticism and posted it on my site, or why I always refer to Drew Milne as the best writer on poetry right now and send people to Jacket to read him, or why I’ve tried to get all sorts of poets down from Toronto and elsewhere who I think blow me away intellectually — you are truly the self-centered, inept monster that you celebrate being. I think 200 more people know about this book now than before I posted about it.

The only thing I’ve learned in my interactions with you (and Gary) so far is how low you think I am — very nice. Next time, be more honest in public.

……………………………………………….

My response — here on my turf:

Brian, I don’t think you are low at all. I think you are a hero for writing your little reviews and for doing Circulars — only two of your many accomplishments. I also think you are far more open-minded than most people give you credit for. And aside from liking you personally, both Gary and I have supported you in many ways — Gary much more than me, for certain. I’m sorry that you think I might truly be a self-centered inept monster (what kind of monster? I do hope it’s a jabberwocky — or at least some fabulous sort of composite beast like a jackalope).

I definitely think we represent rather different aspects of the current poetickal specktrum and as such we a) have a lot of things we could say to each other, and b) our previously held convictions might set up a tendency for us to clash.

So tell me this — if I am so self-centered why am I sticking up for the underdog here? Chris is a maverick underdog and so is the poet about whom he was writing in the piece you excerpted. I don’t know why more people have not read _Spin Cycle_. One reason out of many could be that Tod Thilleman, bless his heart, has a lousy distribution system which locks Spuyten Duyvil books out of SPD. I did see some Spuyten Duyvil books at Barnes & Noble once (tho not mine or Chris’) — for what it’s worth. _Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?_ is the most ignored of all my books.

Of course, if I’m a self-centered inept monster, I don’t really deserve better, do I? Sigh.

I haven’t said what _Spin Cycle_ is about because that wasn’t the point of my post, just as it wasn’t the point of yours.

Anyway, I don’t think my post was filled with “tons of vile thoughts”. I do think I was being honest.

And I’m not totally sure “what it takes to be a writer,” as you seem to be. It seems to me that “a feat of intellectual energy” is a pretty good start.