Extravagance
Accused recently (on Gary’s blog, in a comments box) by Joe Safdie of writing “extravagant” poems that somehow deny the right of “the poetry of witness” to exist.
How can what I do be construed to be in the slightest bit proscriptive or exclusionary? I who always argue for extreme freedoms?
It is true that, like any human being, I like what I like. My aesthetic choices exude what I like. It does not mean that with a poem, even tacitly, I condemn other modes.
Which is not to say that I haven’t and don’t condemn other modes– decidedly cattily, in fact — just that my writing a particular sort of poem is not a gesture of condemnation per se. Again, like any human being, I have opinions.
Indeed, if a person would rather read Carolyn Forche than Song of My OWN Self, what, pray tell, is that person doing here on Ululations? And what gives that person the need to condemn what I do?
I suppose I consider what I do to be, in a way, a kind of poetry of witness. That is, I’m bearing witness to my imagination, or more exactly, to the imaginative possibilities in the combinatory qualities of words — as poets have always done.
Besides, I’ve written “America Sucks” poems same as anyone else. If you don’t believe me, look at my archives from February.
More on condemnation:
A parody is not necessarily a condemnation. In fact, I think it is almost never a condemnation. More than that, a parody is a kind of homage (thanks to Gary for this insight). I don’t select poems to rewrite that don’t in some way interest me.
It is true that parody is by its very nature somewhat blasphemous. This is what appeals to me about it and what seems to irk certain others with more pious viewpoints.
There was a brouhaha over a poem of Jennifer Moxley’s that I parodied and published in V. Imp. Michael Scharf wasted no time in telling me, right after I had read the poem at the Drawing Center last year, how inappropriate he thought I had been. Apparently, I have not put myself in Moxley’s good graces either, which should come as no surprise, as she and I don’t know each other, so she I’m sure has no interpersonal frame in which to receive my gesture.
I don’t really understand their pique. Parody is a form of attention. It’s not unflattering. Gary parodies me all the time and I find it very funny (of course, we do have an “interpersonal frame”). I would almost pay people to parody me if I thought they would do it. This comes partly from a fear that I have no identity. Whenever I meet someone who can do impressions I try to get them to do an impression of me in the hopes that they can mirror some elusive (to me) character back to me. It turns out that I am not easy to do an impression of — I find this worrisome.
It’s true that one of the intentions of my Moxley parody was to pop the balloon of self-seriousness of the original. I won’t deny that. But I was also wallowing in its gorgeous syntax, like a hermit crab would in a particularly elegant new shell or a working person might who had won a night at the Plaza over the radio.
I think I’m doing the same with the Whitman piece. I’ve always found Whitman’s spiritual expansiveness to be at once exemplary and totally annoying — very… California. This is my way of feeling that feeling through him and also cleansing it of some of its hubris. If I am, as Brian charges, turning his poem into a David Lynchian landscape, I hope it anyway is Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive and not one of the lesser works.
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*Extravagance. This word seems to be applied to women more than to men, doesn’t it? There are shades of Marie Antoinette in it. Does the thought of a woman’s “extravagance” somehow tap into a man’s fear of the twisty, the embellished, the unclean, etc.? And if the poem is indeed “extravagant,” (which sounds to me like a great compliment) who am I harming with it? Marie Antoinette stole from the people to decorate herself, it is true, but on the contrary, my little scrawlings hurt no one — not the peasants in Chiapas or Iraqi babies or sweatshop laborers in NYC. Believe it or not, like Whitman and probably like you all, I keep these sister and fellow humans in my heart too. If I really thought my poetry could do anything to help them, I would probably write a different sort of poetry. Note: I do not — DO NOT — think that poetry is “ineffectual.” It’s plenty effectual — it’s just a different kind of “effectual.”
Otohime 