Monday, September 8, 2008

Alistair Noon recently questioned, in an email to me, whether the technique of "found poetry" is capable of producing "great" poetry, as opposed to merely good poetry (sorry Alistair for what is probably a travesty of what you actually said). I wondered, what is "great" poetry? Is a great poem one that has influenced a lot of other poetry? Is it one which defines its age (but then, does that means it's tied to its age)? Or is it the opposite - one which somehow seems relevant across different historical periods and different cultures?

As far as influence goes, is that a function of having a small number of poets compared to the population at large (in the past, coming from a literate minority)? There are a vast number of practising poets today, at least in the Anglo world, and probably in the developed world generally, and a fragmentation of poetic practises and communities. In those conditions, how does a single poem or poet influence enough people, or be representative enough to be considered "great".

These half-formed thoughts were prompted by visiting Ed Baker's site, and finding there some startlingly good poetry (I read a chapbook called "The City" - and will be back for more). I'd come across Ed's name, but not his poetry, and it just struck me that in different circumstance - say, if there were fewer people writing poetry, and it was given greater prominence by society in general, then a poetry as good as Ed Baker's might have had a very different fate (I mean to the fate of being read only by other poets wired into that particular scene).

Afterthought: It does seem to me that "found" poetry, cut-up or collage could all be capable of producing "great" poetry in the sense that it defines its age. The poetry of, say, Tony Lopez or Giles Goodland appropriates and makes lyric work out of the all-powerful language of the mass media. In the sense that it also mimics the internal dialogue or "noise" of the mind it may also be representative in a way that appeals to a wide range of people.

8 comments:

Ed Baker said...

noh "scene" here always been 'outside' the pale...

always have felt that nothing much (ever) happens in/through/by/for/with any Crowd...

thanks for the notice


damn little comes my way these days.... greatly appreciate your attending to the work


will send you something recent when I discover your emal address...

John B-R said...

Well, the Iliad and Odyssey are understood to be the accretion of a long string lasting who knows of how many hundreds of years of one poet (rhetor) taking at least some of the words of his predecessor and incorporating them in another telling of the tales etc etc til the tales reached Homer ... now no-one doubts the greatness of thoes poems, however much found material has made its way into the versions we now know. Virgil certainly found the structure and many of the details in Homer when he came to compose the Aeneid.

Skipping ahead to the 20th c I dare anyone to tell me that the convolutes that make up Benjamin's Passagenwerke do not add up to a great and important work.

I could come up with many more examples ...

But what I really want to say is that I think we have a problem when we try to cordon off (quarantine?) some works as found and others as what? creative? I don't think the line between found works and the rest of literature is as easy to draw as it might at first glance seem.

Leaving that aside, what is meant by great? I remember hearing Marcuse say that life on earth can't become great til Beethoven's 9th was consigned by all to the category of the "unlistenable." Is great art a good thing? Benjamin again (from memory) "Every work of civilization is also a work of barbarity."

In any case, while I don't claim to be doing the job as well as Lopez or Goodland, I work in what Angela Genusa has called "mashup" mode. I've gotten enough positive feedback to know that folks like to dance when I spin, so to speak. Everything else is what Pater called "the paradox of posthumous fame."

John B-R said...

Actually, I think rhetors are those reciters of Homer who followed him. Sorry ...

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

I'm a huge Ed Baker fan, glad to hear you talking him up - his work, written and visual, is among the very best ...

My two cents ... great poetry doesn't define an age, it defines "is", and it really doesn't so much define as posit ... more the constant rephrasing of the question, rather than supplying an "answer" - by this definition, found poetry can be indeed great poetry ...

all the best,
Don

John B-R said...

To PROVE that found work can be great go to The Walls Are Listening at Jean Vengua's Okir, and click on the link to the Quiet American, and LISTEN to the mp3's. And, as the good doctor used to say, that's an end on't!

Alistair Noon said...

Oh God, I’ve really put the cat among the proverbial and should have thought it all out a bit better. I would say the following though:

1. Alan, your rewording of what I said isn’t a travesty but a more eloquent summary.
2. John, I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that the division between found and non-found is blurred. There are different kinds of shaping – I guess in your terms transformation. Nevertheless, I think we could have a sense of a difference at least in degree between say a Shakespeare sonnet and say something made directly out of another discrete text. I think there’s also a difference to be drawn between reworking a previous poet’s poem till you get the Odyssey, and reworking a clothes catalogue. I don’t mean to be facetious – they’re both valid, but I think they’re different.
3. Any categorization made here is just for the purposes of discussion – of course, in the real world everything blurs.
4. I guess I’m just rationalizing my relative likes here, and I hope this doesn’t annoy poets whose work I respect: I like Giles Goodland’s Capital (found) but I’m even more impressed by his Myths (non-found). I like John’s transformed stuff that I’ve read but I’m more impressed by Zeitgeist Spam. I like Reznikoff (this is where it all started) but noticed on reading and reviewing his Collected that it was the non-found stuff I found most powerful.
5. I like to be both moved and interested by poetry at the same time. I recently reread Tony Harrison’s stuff for the first time in ages and found myself (sort of) moved, but completely uninterested by it for its absolute transparency. My experience of some (relatively) found poetry has been the opposite – interested but not moved.
6. My use of “great” is nothing more or less than a term relative to “good” to show how much I like a certain body of poetry. Great for me means I get up from reading and start swearing under my breath. I wouldn’t personally use the term relative to its impact on other poetry. I’m sure we can all think of poets whose work we don’t like but that has had or is having a big impact…
7. Alan’s ideas about the relationship of poetry to the age are worth exploring. By taking other people’s words, poetry could become less egotistical and, yes, more representative. But then again, Peter Riley has something about the most personal things in poetry being the most representative…

John B-R said...

Alistair, I think your cat is safe among the proverbial, and that you and I really differ over very little. I hope we can meet someday; I think we'd have a spelendid time.

I personally think someone would have to do an amazing job with the clothes catalogue for the result to = the Odyssey in greatness. But I'm not convinced that that amazing job is de jure or de facto impossible. There are a number of c20-c21 works that are quite fine in which the commodity, or commodities, play a crucial role (take American Psycho for instance, perhaps the quintessential novel of the Reagan/Thatcher era). I guess my point is that it's not the source that's important - it could be history/myth per Homer, it could be a found text; it's the result that counts (for the reader/auditor at least). I think that, without a doubt, 4'33" is one of the greatest pieces of music ever and I never fail to be profoundly moved by it.

And yes I did know what you meant by greatness; I was only trying to say I'm not sure it's the only value, or even one I at least would strive for; given my knowledge of my (no false modesty here) limited gifts.

Borges' bit on Pierre Menard is very pertinent here, I think ...

Kathz said...

I've just linked to you through the I Love Your Blog awards. Would you like to join in? If so, you should nominate blogs and include the logo in your post.

http://kathzsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/tour-of-blogosphere.html