On Docu-Poetry: A Febrile Meditation

31 thoughts on “On Docu-Poetry: A Febrile Meditation”

1. And what’s for dinner?I’d forgotten this Antinesque strain of your work — clearly time for me to work my way back through, from Rodomontade on.In Chicago James and I watched a documentary on the National Geographic channel about tigerfish in the Congo. Apparently the river is so deep and the current so strong that entirely different species of the same genus have are evolving on either side of the slipstream.I don’t know why poetries are still responding to conditions imposed by geography when we all have phones, e-mail, etc.. except that that Sidney Lanier thing Pinsky likes to quote about poetry being an embodied art, literally <>of<> the body of the person reading the poem aloud… that might be tree. I mean true. And that the psychic-acoustics are only part of what goes into it, only part of what gets taken up. I’ll say this, though — suddenly everybody on the subway is reading a book.

2. Didactic sounds like‘died acting’but if you reverse itmy feeling is something more likecities of katydids..now:The family Tettigoniidae, known in American English as katydids and in British English as bush-crickets, contains more than 6,400 species.okay, that’s a small townof the little folk all looking a little different,and on difference and like thisHeraclitan Pi thing I’ve been onlook at Tettigonidaeand i’ll just skip the actual latin etymologyyou ever notice how the pi symbollooks like two small t’s put together liketti find it weird that a non-repeating value is represented by a kind of self-echoing iconwouldn’t it have been more like‘motivated’ if it was just a squiggleat any ratett (pi_is gets me back to Tetti(gonidaewhich gets me tofirstTete-yand then tittythat’s flarfic sort oftitty gonadsokay not so goodon the surfacewell, now there is that wholelogos spermatikosthat Pynchon is always on aboutor whateverso that’s likeTete a gonad y dayand even what’s his facethe really famous poetPaul Celan has hisSprachgitter (“Speech-grille”, 1959)now a Gryllus is a grasshopperbut its also an ancient roman fertility chimera thinglike a wind chime with ballsbut if we updatethe chimera to the modernistgridwe get agrilleor complexityas representedas a self-cross-referencingmatrixthere’s probably a cool buddhist or sanskrit word for thatthe matrix of representationthose old hindu cats were likegonethey were sochillum, chillum(shakes head that way)‘i’m writing on a leaf’and isn’t that just perfectly aptand isn’t Diophantinea cool word?I guess I could go one more stepand just say something likeall representationis of the same‘order of things’but that’s probably not quite rightbut i think there is a grain of truth to iti guess that’s why i never get too caught up in what any given poet or artist is trying to conveyaside from the surfacebecause in the endthe surface is all there isall that stays, or mostly what staysand as a grasshopperthere just no telling wherei’m likely to lighton any sprachgitteror what color sprachjuiceni’m likely to spit outi’m mean it’s fairly limitedbut there is some natural variation and suchget well soon!

3. Wikipedia says, about “diophantine”:The questions asked in Diophantine analysis include: 1. Are there any solutions? 2. Are there any solutions beyond some that are easily found by inspection? 3. Are there finitely or infinitely many solutions? 4. Can all solutions be found, in theory? 5. Can one in practice compute a full list of solutions?Lanny, I always learn something new from you!

4. your lineated ruminations even from a sickbed are certainly intelligentand well phrased / / /i like that poem “Ding” you posted a couple days ago——very impressive . . .

5. Nada — this is a wonderful & thought-provoking post. And Bill is right —you really do think well when you're fevered.Does Juliana refer to her own work as 'docu-poetry'? Because even if she does, I don't view it that way. I love her writing, a lot, and would call it …maybe…witness poetry before I'd label it docu-poetry. Her litanies of data don't strike me as lesson-like at all. The crashing of data against lush descriptives seems to me like an attempt to figure out how to incorporate the ugliest facts, & how & when to make sense or not make sense of them and how to not give up.When I read her work and sense a socio-moral lesson coming up, my bullshit-detecting antenna goes up immediately (is that an east coast thing?) but I think that Spahr is asking the very same questions in the work, in its language & form. So it moves me, and ultimately I trust it. Your questions about east vs. west coast are great. I have no clue about what the answers might be.

6. Lynn, I know what you mean, and yes, Juliana’s work is full of all sorts of questions;it is exploratory, yes; it doesn’t really come to a foregone conclusion. She doesn’t use the term “docu-poetry” to describe her work; for all I know I invented it (but probably not). It definitely is a poetry of witness, yes, and there’s a tremendous tradition of that.It’s a tradition, though, that I feel is radically different from my own poetic trajectory. Years ago, somewhere on line, Joe Safdie got on my case for writing “extravagant” poems instead of “poetry of witness.” I got indignant. Can’t it be said, though, that I’m bearing witness to my imagination? I said as much to him.The fixed idea that poetry has to have some direct A=B relationship with a measurable external reality (isn’t even that phrase problematic?), and that it needs to redeem its arguable uselessness by being suffused with a clear and moral narrative of social critique, is really foreign to me. I don’t think that makes me anti-critique, though. Poetry critiques thought and habit by struggling and by playing tricks. Critique is endemic to poetry, I think. Or rather than “poetry,” I should say, “the poetic function.” I guess my argument is that when we minimize poetic function in order to maximize reportage, the element of poetic critique gets lost.

7. I think that a lot of Flarf IS a kind of poetry of witness, in a big way, really. I think the extravagance of your work is part of why it’s so great. You’re very strongly an exuberant formalist, don’t you think? Juliana isn’t that. Lots of different ways to get there, you know?The most engaging ideas, to me, though, are the east vs. west coast and what is going on at this point in time with that difference or sameness. And then of course the question comes up of specifically where you are in that, because you’re both west and east coast, right? In fact, I remember you talking not that long ago in your blog about how New York has changed, and being a New Yorker etc., so I suspect that all those ideas are rolling around in here somewhere too. Roots, contexts, etc. I love your writing, and your blog; and hope I haven’t overspoken in my interpretations here.

8. p.s. It occurred to me that maybe your real complaint is that the kind of work Juliana Spahr writes is much more apt to get “attention” and seem “accessible” than is the kind of work that you write (not speaking, obviously, about your or her work specifically). And if that’s your point, yes, I totally see it, and agree, and wonder about it and don’t think it’s fair and even think it’s kind of weird how that continues to happen. This only occurred to me because you brought up that thing that J Safdie said.

9. Would I of all people object to overspeaking? Of course not, and anyway, I don’t think you are. I’m thrilled that you’re engaged.And thank you for your kind praise, too.Of course, there are different ways to proceed, and different goals, and differences of all kinds. At the risk of sounding trite, I “celebrate difference.”This post, though, maybe came from two kneejerk reactions of mine, one:if Juliana, Safdie, etc., are “right” in their approach, does that make me wrong? I don’t really think so, but there’s always that doubt…(not really that I could change if I wanted to)…and…a feeling that I need to preserve or protect I guess what it is you are calling “exuberant formalism,” not just for my own sake, but for the sake of the artthere’s something about Juliana’s work in particular that is so commanding, because she is so smart, so relentless in her search for justice, so, really, Atlas-like, that I think she has tremendous influenceand I admire her for all of those things and feel affection for her personally. This isn’t personal.

10. re: your p.s.Honestly I begrudge no poet any kind of attention, and I feel blessed to get as much attention as I do; I’ve moved well beyond any bitterness in that department. But as you said, my complaint, if that’s what it is, maybe more like a concern, is not about anyone’s work in particular, just a fear that poetry will get drowned (I first typed drownded!) in the literal.

11. ha, yes, our comments crossed. You've said it much more eloquently but I think we've said sort of the same thing in the end. And yes, I totally see how & what you're fighting for and I agree.

12. I get annoyed by people who criticize others for not writing witness poetry or political poetry because, even if they don’t say it, they want everyone to take the expected liberal view in that kind of poem. I like to think I’m a liberal too, but I don’t like the one-sidedness that political poets seem to expect from everyone. I mean, for example I think a person could write a poem about a death row inmate whose sentence was reduced to life in prison, but then they escaped and killed someone–a political poem in favor of the death penalty. It seems like every death-penalty-related poem I’ve read is anti-death-penalty. I’m never surprised.I’m totally anti-death-penalty too, but that liberal one-sidedness that some poets take for granted still annoys me.

13. the universeis the most beautiful songbirdin the universe

14. extravagance is more essential to poetry than witness,I think, so I’m on your side in the matter,though of course it’s an ancient debate, and the antithetical postures have had many terms/figures applied to their contentions over the centuries——one of my favorites appears in Octavio Paz’s “Children of the Mire,” where he says:“The history of modern poetry is that of the oscillation between revolutionary temptation and religious temptation.”Whether one is witness (revolutionary, in Paz’s polars) inclined or extravagance (religious, as Paz frames it) bent,I like Paz’s use of the word “temptation”——as Oscar Wilde said, I can resist anything except temptation”——and Wilde was if anything on the side of extravagance in poetry as in life——“We are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars”as he phrased the credo of the Extravs . . .

15. . . . thinking of the Wilde quote leads me to wonder whether we could even glimpse the stupid stars from our luxe guttersunless the poet elevated them up there or pointed them out to us——as “Ding” limns Amy Winehouse for us in a fresh rush of imagery and vibrant juxtapositions, re——”compulsion” is “composition”. . . the poet’s “Autistic [artistic] constant . . . blunt-tonguing the air—”No, I don’t understand every “thing” in “Ding,” but its “sucky shit” is worth “shouting the sprout” about.. . . and while “Ding” directs us toward the extravagant nominal star of Winehouse (as Li Po wrote: If heaven does not love wine, then why is there a Wine Star in heaven?), it hardly neglects the gutter where president blowjob plucks the penis of mayhem while being fisted by peace bracelets . . . The stock market of poetry sez that while the castles are burning, the poet must——the poet must what? Witness? Convey/survey the gutter we rut around in . . . ?Fur hat, fur hat, wig—— Amy’s erectile coiffures blowjab themselves toward the stars, transforming our fetters into prinking primping nightmares . . .President, president, race, stock market——it’s a nightmare alright.

16. if my reading of “Ding”as a kind of ars poetica defense/assertionof your position vis a vis the questions you raise above,is a foolish one, sorry! won’t be the first time I’ve been a dingaling dong who’s wrong about dings . . .

17. I was thinking that perhaps thispoetry thing is so personal that calling it to witness something belittles it, turning it over to the authorities for evidence. Or that it privileges the words as the only call and responseavailable to the sufferingof one person. it excludes which isn’t what poetry does at all. I also agree with Matt. What would “political” poets say if they heard Rush Limbaugh write my poetry? Would they call it “engage”? “Political poetry” is always code for poetry that doesn’t seem to address the fact that no one’s going to read it once the political reality shifts.

18. I don’t mean what I’ve written here as any kind of indictment of political poetry. Or engaged poetry. If “everything is material for poetry” than politics and social engagement are, too. I’m just asking, where does the form fight my reception? In what cases would I rather be reading a non-fiction book on the subject?I’m reading a wonderful book right now on how island species become extinct called “The Song of the Dodo.” It includes a lot of summaries of the theories of Darwin and Wallace, and also the investigative journeys of the author to various islands in search of examples and more data. It’s got history,conjecture, anecdotes, wit. Tons of wit. It’s a terrific book.Now, I can think of nothing that would deaden it more than if someone were to say, hmm, how terrible and sad and poignant that all these species are disappearing. I’m going to write a poem about it, selecting or adapting material from the book. Poets seem to do this sort of thing all the time. I guess occasionally it can be done well, but still with this oppressive kind of mawkish “poetry framing.” More often it just sounds like a lot of interesting information has been LEFT OUT.I can think of one way it might work, which would be to do a list poem, say, of the names of species that are mentioned in the book as becoming extinct. Reading the book, I have to say I am so enchanted by the names of the species that I have been thinking I want to use them for something, if probably not this particular purpose. Why would this work,for me? I hate to be formulaic, but simply because the textual qualities, the odd and beautiful sounds and creative naming of the creatures would be forefronted. And no one would have to know that it was a list of endangered species, unless the poet said so beforehand at a reading, which they would probably do, thereby maybe ruining the thing, although it might be OK if they said it afterwards. They could also ruin it by documenting its source when they publish it in a book. I realize that that is the academically correct thing to do, and I’m not beyond that myself, but personally I find the ever-growing “lists of sources” that get included with poems in print increasingly annoying, almost pious.

19. I want to clarify that I wasn’t implying that political messages have no place in poetry. I’m referring rather to impression and mistake, two tendencies that poetry allows for that politics does not. I’m wondering if treating a poem as “evidence” cheapens its massage quality. Since, as Nada says, it’s possible that much is left out in a poem (some poems define themselves by exclusion). It’s not politically adept to be ambiguous or to play with varied meanings. I’m wondering how much these devices intervene/fere in our reading of a political poem.

20. Hi Nada,Remember you and i talked about this “tendency” a bit when you were in SF for the Bollywood neo-benshi show? I remember we were both kind of wary of it. In my mind it’s connected with some conversations that were going on around last summer and fall maybe about ‘relevance’ and ‘engagement’ — which are perennial problems for artists, of course. They’re problems exactly because they don’t have “solutions.”My wariness had to do with how a factive (a neologism?) text might be trying to borrow or sneak in a sense of authenticity, as if facts themselves were a special class of mentionable that would ground a poem in some kind of social space of engagement, or in some kind of innoculation against the charge of subjectivity that would render a critique merely “personal.”But i think it all depends on the context, since the mode is not a genre, it’s more of an impersonal diction that a poet can slip in and out of. I think the recounting that you give of Juliana Spahr’s poem shows that she <>uses<> that mode to create something: a shift of scale or narrative awareness — maybe if the piece were more conventionally “lyric” would these aspects be more acceptable by analogy with, say, the collaged bits of newsprint in Kurt Schwitters’ paintings? I know Stephanie’s recent piece, as well her “The Image Record,” also inserts factual information into the mix — in a number of different voices i might add — and you seem to be ok with assimilating that under the rubric of anything can be poetry. (which i totally agree with) Anyway i am familiar with their work on the page and in performance, and that’s the way it works for me. Sometimes it doesn’t work, of course.Anyway i guess i just want to say that it seems more like a functional distinction rather than a substantive (genre or movement) one. The work that uses such means doesn’t always fall down the slippery slope of unfun didacticism.Also i think you might be overstating it to say this is a geographic movement or something that coherent.

21. While I don’t mean to dismiss the seriousness with which people feel like they have to take sides on the issue of a more directly political poetry vs. a poetry more consciously concerned with playfulness, surface, and artifice, I really do think it should be a non-issue. I find myself most frustrated with people who insist that the answer to the question must be either-or (and there are a lot of such people, I know).Speaking as someone who has played around with both approaches: why shouldn’t I? As if the value of the poetry of witness could ever make all other poetry worthless, or as if artifice was always inevitably more crucial than reference. Clearly, or at least clearly to me, observing the world and engaging the pleasures of language are things that are never going to leave poetry, despite the fact that some people think that one aspect or the other shouldn’t exist.Still, I know that’s easy enough to say and not always easy to feel. I often get very anxious when it seems like another writer is doing things that I either can’t or wouldn’t want to do myself.There’s so much uselessly annoying either/or thinking in poetry. An insightful criticism rarely draws lines like “doing things in that (general) way is bogus by definition.”I don’t think any of us have to choose Juliana’s poetry over Nada’s, or vice versa–and I’m certainly not saying that’s what anyone here seems to be calling for.If we want to draw lines, let’s at least find a subject worth drawing lines about.

22. Funny, I’ve been teaching CD Wright’s _One Big Self: An Investigation_, which I love (and which is east coast, like Rukeyser, like Williams . . .)and asking students to write their own documentary poems. They’re coming up with more documentary than poem, so far, but I see this as a great way to get away from cliches and–oddly–to show them the beauty of ordinary language. There is tremendous artifice in a documentary poem, isn’t there, which is part of that content/form split you’re writing about, Nada? Anyway, thanks for this.

23. Well, Konrad, … “poetry of witness” is certainly a powerful sub-genre (Charles Reznikoff, Carolyn Forche, Mark Nowak, et al) at least and so is “investigative poetics” (Ed Sanders, Carol Mirakove, and so many others); these would probably overlap on a Venn diagram, and the three pieces I mention in my post would possibly get included as well. I don’t want to get bogged down in terms or taxonomies, though, as those never really represent the territory, do they.You’re almost certainly right that whatever it is, it is not a geographical tendency, but what IS a geographical tendency is that impulse to justify (or, as you put it, “ground”) subjective or lyric utterance (“unmentionables”) by couching it in socio-cultural self-examination and critique. Look at the Grand Piano series, for example. I still maintain that there may be some connection to the northern California climate, something in the fog perhaps, or that relentless cold wind out at Ocean Beach, to this kind of ethical self-consciousness. Maybe because it’s never quite warm enough for anyone to actually contemplate her own navel? So that energy gets displaced upwards?It’s right and proper (and I don’t mean that as some sort of veiled put-down) for writers and intellectuals to use the widest possible lens on themselves and determine how they fit into vaster grids and networks, and I think Juliana does that pretty much as well as anyone can. I think data is generally more than just a mode she uses, though; it’s her dominant mode, especially in that piece, which is only just bracketed by two sections that are more like what one might recognize as “poetry.” There’s nothing unacceptable to me about “The Incinerator,” really, or the move towards documentariness in poetry; I regret to have given that impression. I accept everything! I’m only just looking at the marked difference, and maybe trying to pull the oar over to “my side” just a little, even if, as you say, Mark, it’s really not an either/or choice, and we’re all in the goddamn canoe together.I will say, though, that what Juliana does is not like Schwitters at all. Schwitters transforms what was discarded so that you can see his materials, no matter how low or ignorable, as material. This is more how I see Stephanie using her data in The Image Record. Juliana is much more coming from a space of rhetoric; each byte builds her argument. Which makes sense, wasn’t she president of the debate club or something?Anyway Susan, yes, there is artifice in everything.

24. not an either/or choice, and we’re all in the goddamn canoe together.I believe I prefer the termnarrenschiffalthoughcanoedoes seem to bring upcan doand canus ca noussignusThere is nothing but signs.Signs that are alive, signs thar unliving. All things are signs.Signs eat signs. Signs emit signs.There is a total and totalitariansign-nessto all things.There is no thingwhich which can be expressedwhich does not partake of signage.RESISTANCE IS FUTILEYOU ARE TERMINAL PICTUREBREAK THROUGH IN GRAIAI ROOMwv: fistse

25. Hi Nada — I hope you’re healthier. And thanks for remembering our ancient “dispute,” which never really resolved itself and, as several commentators above have pointed out, probably shouldn’t. Here’s my latest articulation of it, two paragraphs from an essay about empiricism to be published soon in <>Big Bridge<>:<><>Most apologists for the humanities eventually get around to acknowledging that what they teach is a full spectrum of what it means to be human . . . including our immense capacities for depravity and immorality. The 18th century, in which Locke and Hume first generated their empirical theories, was good for that – the satire of Pope and Swift focused largely on the stupidity they found around them in their daily lives, the Goddess of Dullness, in Pope’s <>Dunciad, <>eventually extinguishing all light and life on earth. They weren’t just cranks and haters – they were also supremely witty and often hilarious – but they did consider themselves citizens of the world, free to comment, in their work, on what they perceived and experienced in that world.<><>I think many contemporary writers have shrunken from that particular assignment. The poetry I come across, often written with wit and facility and intelligence, seems not to be referring to any shared public space. And history, at least the kind I’m talking about, is also public. Gary Sullivan, one of the originators of Flarf, wrote (four years ago, on his blog “Elsewhere”): “A particular strength of poetry is its ability to accommodate nuances of language use and thought. The more ‘public’ poetry intends to be, the less this particular strength is exploited.” I wrote back to him, objecting (perhaps with these 18th century writers in mind) that a practitioner might be able to engage public themes and still incorporate nuance and imaginative language, that these things needn’t be opposites.<><>So of course I agree with Mark, and a few others above: witnessing social phenomena doesn’t have to be boring or prosaic — the residence of Ammiel (e.g.) in your fair borough would also complicate the location of them as east and west. And what’s to explain my adoration of your own work? Nothing in this faux-dichotomy.<><>As it turns out, I’m teaching Keats and Shelley this week, and have composed some “lecture notes” on Shelley’s political poem “England in 1819,” trying to explain why I still like it two hundred years later. I think you might like them, so will try to send them to you by e-mail (do I have it?) Rest up and feel better.

26. Nothing like a fever to cause a rash.🙂

27. Well, here’s a coastal difference: in California, people seem to believe that life is (maybe infinitely) perfectible, so there’s this constant reaching for (pun intended), a “golden state.”In New York, the idea of perfectibility is laughable. Where would you even begin? We just want to survive.

28. Joe, thanks, yeah, you have my e-mail.And thanks, too for shedding some light on who that Gary Sullivan guy is; I’d been wondering.🙂

29. The idea of perfection seems either semantic or contextual. To me, philosophically, there can only ever be perfection, because whatever state exists at the present is the outcome of perfect discrete moments. The idea is perplexing. In Sartre’s La Nausée, perfection is cast almost as a character and put between peopleas an object of contention. I think it is this contentiousness which forms the quixotic nature of perfection. In Freudian terms, if we think through perfection in terms of the reality principle, there is only a kind of molecular truth whose abstraction layer is layered and contentious, I would say from this model we can surmise many nestinging of perfections and imperfections all arising together, against and from one another, and wholly, and partly dependent on one another. The signifier obscures many deep perfections in the universe, many more than it reveals, I feel.For me, imperfection is always a case of spiritual myopia, becausematter is gloryand imperfectionthe chatterof instantiated banalityunaware of it its own infinitely weird settingpeople who see imperfections in things would do good to smoke a joint and listen to Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma and ponder the idea of complexity.

30. Gosh, Nada, this is probably the most thoughtful thing I’ve read in the blog world from the “skeptical of political poetry” perspective. That’s characteristic, I think; when we met briefly (nice to meet you, by the way!) I was my usual just-meeting-someone-nervous self, and failed to mention how much I appreciate the (unusual) care you take in your posts and comments on others’ posts. You really pinpoint some of the difficulties with writing (good) political poetry. There’s a lot to say on this topic, and I hope to write some of it here and/or on my blog in a few days, after I’ve had the chance to read the comments stream thus far (where more great thoughtfulness seems to be taking place). I hope you found <>something<> to enjoy in the magazine. I’ll have to ask for more on what you think is “heavy-handed” (I might even agree with you at times). I guess the only thing I’ll say now, by way of apologetics, is that writing “experimental political poetry” is <>hard<>, and that we don’t really have a rich tradition of grappling with the problems of bringing radical form and social content together, in the U.S.–a tradition that would provide some support for dealing with the difficulties you point out, and others. But I’m glad people are trying, including Spahr, whose <>This Connection<> I find a valuable lesson in failure, while <>The Transformation<> should be required reading for anyone who cares about these matters. Ok. More later. Thanks again. cheers,Andy

31. To clarify, though, a little (oof–I don’t usually wake up clarifying things–or wake up this early at all):–I might say “sincere” where some might say “heavy-handed.” (Or does the latter mean “seemingly insincere?”) Not that sincerity is the positive member of a binary set here–it has its own problems…—<>This Connection…<> doesn’t do it for me partly because radical form gets jettisoned without (I think) the content generating new formal possibilities–whereas the use of the anonymous plural pronoun throughout <>The Transformation<> does a huge amount of formal work with what starts out seeming like a little “trick.”

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