DS—Shifting gears a bit, what happened between apex of the M and now to change your perception of the poem? Maybe that’s not a fair question. We’re not static beings. But I remember 10 years ago how transforming that journal was for me. A friend at Powell’s Books in Portland came to me with it. Put it in my hands. Said: you have to read this! I think of that journal as a re-articulation of some elements of poetry unacknowledged by the limiting ideologies of Langpo at that time. How do you see apex now? What did you hope to accomplish with it? What worked, or didn’t?
AG—I’d always thought that Philip Guston’s paintings were produced in three distinct stages: the social realist expressionism of the '30s and '40s; the abstract impressionism of the '50s and '60s; and the intentionally crude, cartoonish figuration of the late '60s and '70s. One of the most interesting aspects of the Michael Auping-curated Guston retrospective is the way it illuminates a lifelong continuity in Guston’s work in terms of themes, iconography, technique, palette, politics, etc., as series of paintings draw on prior stages and anticipate future ones. Similarly—and not to compare myself to Guston but to point to how continuity and discontinuity function in all of our work (for instance, the shifts in your poetry between a historicizing approach, a poetics of the everyday, and more recent imagistic and aphoristic transcriptions of thought and experience)—the issue of personal evolution from apex of the M to now is complicated.
I think one could trace a segment of this evolution within apex of the M itself, specifically, its shift from a fragmented lyric mode of address in issue #1 (1994) to a more documentary poetics by the final issue, #6 (1997). In retrospect, it’s clear that this trajectory paralleled the intellectual pursuits and developments of its editors (besides myself, Kristin Prevallet, Lew Daly, and Pam Rehm), whether in direct relation to our individual poetic practices or not. While making videos and cataloging the Helen Adam archive at SUNY Buffalo’s Poetry / Rare Books Room, Kristin was working in a documentary poetics mode that would culminate with the Parasite Poems and a book you—meaning, Skanky Possum Books—published last year, Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation, and Image-Text Projects. Lew was writing a dissertation on mid-17th-century English Civil War-era peasant revolt, and I was writing a similar type of dissertation on early 19th-century British working-class radical agrarianism and abolitionism. Pam—who of the four of us was the only one not in grad school—was reading social and political history, traces of which bubble beneath the surface of her poetry, however generally apolitical her poetry back then might have otherwise appeared on first read. She was also a new mother at the time. All of this informed our thinking about apex of the M during a relatively brief, three-to-four-year period. The challenge was to keep pushing forward while the Poetics Program at Buffalo, which each of us were affiliated with to a lesser or greater extent, treaded water. This was, although it needn’t have been, a somewhat isolating endeavor.
apex of the M created a lot of controversy at the time, which was more the result of the strident editorials—manifestos, really—that led off the first three issues, and less the product of the content that followed (except in one or two cases). At their worst, these editorials called for a political / mystical "base materialist" revolutionary aesthetics (inspired by Georges Bataille’s theory of transgression and Michel de Certeau’s analysis of mystic speech); they sketched a simplistic relationship between culture, society, and politics (and grossly misunderstood poetry’s place in this relationship), and appended to it a mostly conventional notion of literary history; and they painted for censure a somewhat caricatured portrait of Language Poetry. At their best, the editorials called for a contextualizing poetics and criticism (something I’m still very much interested in); they critiqued ahistorical formalism, both in mainstream, workshop verse and experimental poetry (the latter of which has developed its own set of cookie-cutter workshop techniques during the past decade); and they called for a reevaluation of the avant-garde project, which, after nearly a hundred years, seemed to be self-satisfied with, and doctrinaire about, its guiding principles.
As Language Poetry has become more thoroughly institutionalized and even canonized, it has at one level strengthened its position and authority as academic books and conference papers are written about it, while at another level—on more of a "street" level—it’s lost much of its immediate impact. This is a fairly standard sequence of events for literary and artistic movements, which I’m not describing here for condemnation. For many younger poets, Language Poetry is almost a prior historical phenomenon, which means they read a couple of the classic texts, learn a few formal tricks to add to their repertoire, and move on; whereas for those of us just a little bit older (early-to-mid 30s), we really wrestled with the issues Language Poetry presented. Which isn’t to say that Language Poetry is the only development in recent and contemporary poetry that demands serious attention. In fact, this kind of cultural myopia is exactly what we were trying to challenge with apex of the M, and is an editorial strategy that’s been enacted—in a variety of ways and with varying degrees of awareness—by a number of poetry journals since. We tried, especially in the first two or three issues, to present poets we felt had been overshadowed by Language Poetry while working parallel to it. We combined this with a poetic discourse developed in the late '80s around the idea of an "analytic lyric," formulated most thoroughly in a special issue of Acts (#7, edited by David Levi Strauss and Benjamin Hollander) dedicated to the concept.
It’s necessary to remember—as I’m sure you do, since you were there—that in the early '90s many younger poets (even some squarely in the Language Poetry camp) saw a return to the lyric as a feasible response to Language Poetry’s alienation effects-derived formalist strategies and its critiques of subjectivity / the subject / lyric ego (which were at times carelessly conflated by the Language Poets, their supporters, and their critics). To a certain extent, apex of the M tried to showcase in its first couple issues an alternative lyric practice. But I think all four editors quickly became dissatisfied with this mode. We also stopped feeling the need to be reactive in our responses to trends in contemporary poetry. Furthermore, the Romantic ideology accompanying lyric practice soon felt a bit too predictably appealing to someone in his early 20s, as I was when I co-founded the journal. Instead, we shifted our focus to the concept of alternative histories and the notion of history from below (again, this was closely connected to each editor’s respective investigations into progressive historiography, and, I should mention, the significance of Susan Howe, who was on both my and Lew’s dissertation committee [and Kristin’s MA thesis committee]—and whose work all four of us read and discussed intently—as well as the influence of the radical Marxist historian Jim Holstun, who chaired both of our dissertation committees). Thus, in later issues of the journal, we tried to articulate a documentary poetics that would begin to examine these ideas concerning the writing of history. (So that gets me up to 1997. A more public record can be found in the critical writings on contemporary poetry I’ve published since then.)
In retrospect, our effort in the first couple issues to posit lyrical forms and their accompanying poetics as a viable successor to Language Poetry strikes me as apex of the M’s biggest failing, though certainly not its only one. Since we’ve stopped publishing apex of the M, the discussion in the larger poetry world seems to have shifted toward a desire to synthesize language and lyric, which is, obviously (though I don’t know why people won’t say it), shorthand for Language Poetry and Iowa School-style mostly bland lyric verse. While the endeavor to break down aesthetic and social boundaries is admirable, and the attempt to be more inclusive certainly noteworthy, it seems to me there’s an associated danger of an even greater possibility for exclusions resulting from the creation of a homogenized, middling, and narcissism-prone lyric poetry that with near obliviousness elbows more independent approaches out of the way (while leaving a little room for token inclusions). My social and cultural ideal is a pluralistic and heterogeneous poetry world[s] that respects and creates dialogues within differences without feeling the need to erase or simply pay lip service to them. An optimistic view of the contemporary scene would say that this is the direction in which poetry is headed (I’m inclined to agree with this), whether or not these are its conditions right now.
Transpiring as it did during the mid-to-late '90s, the synthesis of language and lyric can’t help but remind me of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council’s shift to the right and blurring of boundaries between moderate Democrats and Republicans (along with Tony Blair and the British Labour Party’s Clintonesque Third Way), with a similar abandonment of the margins (most dramatically, in Clinton’s signing of the Welfare Reform Act, the political and cultural—or karmic, if you like—repercussions of which cost Al Gore the presidency). This isn’t to equate one kind of poetry with the left and another with the right, which would be ridiculous and deterministic, but to point to a parallel, but not entirely unrelated, political example. In the poetry world, lyric garners from the synthesis what it imagines to be avant-garde street cred, while language gets a higher profile and further institutional legitimization. Whether it leads to any substantial developments in poetry remains to be seen.
Although I’m the last person to espouse innovation for innovation’s sake, as younger writers surely our range of options is wider than synthesizing the trends of previous generations and preexisting schools. Personally, I’m interested not only in alternative modernisms and alternative postmodernisms, but in alternatives to modernism and postmodernism. It seems to me that the most significant and innovative linguistic experiments to have taken place since the late '80s have been in hip hop. A figure like Missy Elliott demolishes distinctions between language and lyric, experimental and mainstream, avant-garde and populist. Her work is on the cutting edge of cultural practice, and yet hugely popular. Outkast are another example. Are Missy Elliott and Outkast postmodernists or avant-gardists? It’s kind of an absurd question. They’re independent innovators who come from communities fostering of this approach (and who have since been provided with massive resources from the entertainment industry to further realize—and profit from—their visions).
apex of the M’s biggest success was letting people know that they don’t have to be a 2nd- or 3rd-generation anything to be an engaged and engaging independent poet. Maybe this is part of what initially attracted you and your friend at Powell’s Books to the journal. I’ve always thought that offering this kind of encouragement was an important part of your own publishing and editorial endeavors. In this sense, how would you describe your evolution from the first issues of Mike and Dale’s Younger Poets in relation to your own poetry and your Skanky Possum media empire: magazine, books, chapbooks, website, blog?
DS—Mike and Dale’s went through various sudden and quick transformations, centered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally, the first issues were quite small, including only a few friends and our own work. Michael Price and I were inspired by Tom Clark’s classes at New College, where we spent semesters of intense study on Olson, the English Renaissance, and Keats, for instance. Tom shared with us his love of the past, and so we gave particular attention to it. Looking back, that magazine was quite retro in terms of Bay Area poetics. And at first it was mostly indifferently received, except by our friends and the people close to us who mattered. I see Mike and Dale’s, particularly the early issues, as one of the fields of my own growth as a poet.
The New College scene at the time was great, though; and it was supportive in ways a place like Buffalo perhaps was not. Besides several wonderful students—Hoa Nguyen, Renee Gladman, Leslie Davis, and Jeff Conant—Tom Clark, whom I mentioned, David Meltzer, Gloria Frym and Lyn Hejinian brought formal, if opposing, focus to our studies. Lyn plugged us into the midst of contemporary writing. Her classes on Stein and language theory were wonderful and grounding experiences. She was supportive and put us in touch with her students at UC Berkeley, Katy Lederer and Lytle Shaw among them. Anselm Berrigan, though not a student, was part of a close-knit clan of poets I hung out with. Tom Clark kept us rigorously attendant to the craft of poetry, counting syllables and paying attention to practical details like compression, narrative structure and etymological research. His ability to bring life to a poem impressed me deeply, how, say, reading Herrick out loud you heard through Tom the nuances of meaning that escaped a first reading on the page.
So Mike & Dale’s really grew out of this fluid environment, and it was really created as a kind of opposition or alternative to a derivative Bay Area poetics at the time that seemed remote from political and social experience. We didn’t really have an editorial policy, or really any kind of determined focus. So it was up to the writing we published to extend the energy we sensed around us. And through it I learned, in my way, how to be a poet. I mean, mine was an unsophisticated approach. I just kept charging at this thing called American poetry, sustained by energy and enthusiasm more than knowledge and careful consideration.
By the last few issues of Mike & Dale’s, Hoa and I were living in Austin. I began voicing some of my conflicted but I think also compelling criticism of Language-derived writing on the Buffalo Poetics List. Charles Bernstein quite apart from the quality of his work became the figurative opponent for my own formulation of a poetics, which resisted the kind of power he seemed to represent for me at the time. Like you, I didn’t have a very complex understanding of the contemporary literary world, how socially constructed environments are quite divers in ways that are difficult to describe or absorb without several years of active involvement within those communities. The climate is different now, of course, and more open in ways it wasn’t a few years ago. There was a lot of hostility towards me in particular and Mike & Dale’s, probably because I do have a tendency to work things out publicly in my writing about poetry. At any rate, Mike & Dale’s collapsed after 10 issues and that’s when Hoa and I in 1998 began the "media empire," as you put it, Skanky Possum. It grew quickly, thanks to the enthusiasm and support of many people. Initially, as I mentioned, Tom put us in touch with many writers. And from there, with each issue, more and more people became involved. Hoa and I both think of this as a community effort, and engagement with poetry through the Possum has helped us both individually in our work.
One of the things I’ve learned is how to separate my likes and dislikes as an editor from my likes and dislikes as a poet. We include things in the magazine I might not tolerate in my own writing. Learning to see writing for what it is, rather than for what I’d have it be, or even what the poet might wish it to be, has been important for me. One of the things about both Mike & Dale’s and Skanky Possum is that we’ve always tried to keep it multigenerational, in that we publish new, unknown writers next to more established ones. I don’t really look at the poetry world as a division of schools except as in a kind of historical context for writing papers or something. I hope that Skanky Possum shows a small portion of what’s happening around the country in regards to poetry. The influences on young writers are divers, but the one thing I firmly believe in is a direct dialogue with previous generations of writers. Poetry, unlike many other things, seems to take a tremendous amount of time to come into, to absorb and understand. I’ve been lucky to pick up a lot of lore and stories and ideas from writers I’ve met through the magazine. Hearing someone like Joanne Kyger’s relations of San Francisco in the 1950s can influence even now my understanding of where our poetry comes from and how it was partially formed and extended by certain groups at certain times. I know you meet many poets being in New York City. But out here in Texas, it’s more difficult. And even when I lived in San Francisco, I had this sort of feeling of isolation and that the only cure for it was to go out and meet the poets whose work I loved.
The other thing is that I love making books and magazines, difficult as it can be. And I complain about it constantly, having no time to myself. But I’m sure no one’s going to do any of this for us. I firmly believe that all poets must contribute more to the art than their poems, especially early on in their writing lives. Translation, book making, and critical writing are all necessary elements, as you know, to any poet’s art. Poets have to make conversations with people, share them and put others in touch with what’s happening. And on the surface, in the midst of all this work, it might seem as if no one’s paying attention or reading poetry or whatever. But even with a limited distribution, the work, I believe, does make a difference because of the community we have made for the poem’s reception.
Regarding my own writing, since you’re kind enough to ask, like you I love historical research and poetry of documentation. I hope to continue such projects with particular focus on the 16th century. But with the birth of Keaton, and the approaching birth of another child any day now, I’ve had to alter the way I write. I can’t sit for hours unmolested in my study, books a-scatter and manuscripts yellowing under dust motes bopping on sunlight in the window. Instead, I carry pocketbooks and document the mundane environments of my day, hoping to retrieve poems later from these scattered notes. Thing is, I love to write, quite beyond the need of having anything to say. So I write frequently and work through whatever there is to be worked out. You mention Philip Guston, above. Another great example from painting is Picasso. In his notebooks, particularly ones before the first war, he is furiously working through divers phases. There will be pages of still lifes where you see him pushing as far as his interest and curiosity will go. Then, wham, he’s off on something totally different and unrelated. So, I love that kind of freedom, to pursue my curiosity until it’s exhausted, or until the material medium or environment forces some other approach. One thing I’m doing now is typing my work on a manual typewriter, to slow down my approach to the page and to bring some physical impression to the manuscript stage.
The other thing that intrigues me is image. There has been so much attention given to language as text, and to speech or non-speech based writing that the image moved out of immediate focus or conversation. So I’ve been reconsidering its function in poetry. Filmmakers by necessity write or discuss images with extraordinary precision. Dorsky, Brakhage, and Herzog have all been helpful to me, along with various historical and primary documents of the Renaissance. What gets pushed into a little dark corner under the label "Occult" is a rich ground for exploration. This isn’t in opposition to a secular, relational poetics, but as a way of finding the historical relation of images to the present. Myth, religion, and anthropology therefore are useful to me as ways of reading images. So this is something I’ve been thinking about, though I’m not sure yet directly how it’s influenced my work except to say that I do have a concrete need for things in a poem. Not static things, but things released into the active environment of the poem.
AG—A few weeks ago, I attended a public conversation held with the visual artist William Pope.L as part of a retrospective exhibition of his work at Artists Space here in New York City. During the post-conversation q&a, a relatively young guy in the audience said that he worked with disadvantaged teenagers, and that part of what he tried to do with them was bring them to art exhibitions and other cultural events they might not otherwise attend or have direct access to. Pope.L’s work is conceptually-based and sometimes elusively confrontational in its dealings with racism, class, iconographies of blackness, and especially black masculinity, and so this teacher asked Pope.L to specify a few of the concerns and ideas he thought might be most useful for the students to take away with them after seeing his show. Pope.L didn’t really have an answer for this question, partly because he didn’t want to reduce his complicated work to a few talking points—understandably so. But as I was sitting there in one of New York City’s oldest not-for-profit alternative art spaces, I thought to myself that while it’s vital to encounter work which exists on the margins of mainstream culture, it’s equally important, if not more so, to become aware of the role played by alternative institutions, modes of transmission, and communities in the support of such work.
I say this because it directly relates to your comment about the difference editing—and translating and criticism—makes in creating a "community" "for the poem’s reception." If focusing on this social dimension means partially devaluing—or at least reconceptualizing—the social and political qualities of cultural products themselves, then this may be exactly what’s needed to, in fact, recharge cultural products with social and political efficacy by more precisely understanding their roles in the formation of alternative communities, institutions, ideologies, and subjectivities. Overestimating the capacity of cultural products to instigate social change is as self-defeating as underestimating their capacity for this. I was mentioning our dialogue to a friend on the phone the other night, and he made the comment that although we now know screwing with grammar doesn’t screw with society, it doesn’t mean poetry should stop trying to screw with society. In the wake of a hundred years of avant-garde literary experimentation, it sometimes seems that coming to the former realization has caused poets to forget or ignore the latter.
I find it interesting how in your previous response you stress in a couple different places that your editing work has informed and altered your own poetry. This reminds me of a similar type of statement you made earlier concerning the ways in which your son Keaton has also informed and altered your poetry: "I’ve learned in the last couple of years with Keaton a kind of provisory existence, where I read each situation according to the context and demands of that environment, mood, need, etc. It’s exhausting but it’s also liberating in that I’ve come to attend each relationship as vital and essentially dynamic. It’s much like poetry and language. You learn not to impose your will on someone or something, but to listen, feel through it, make subtle negotiations. And failure’s also part of that package." Of our many agreements, and occasional disagreements, this idea of a "relational poetics" perhaps has the deepest affinities with my own thinking about poetry in specific and culture in general. A sensitivity to relationship and context, an understanding of language and even consciousness as ongoing negotiation, an emphasis on listening, all of which are accompanied by the inevitable failures you mention, are at the heart of my sense of an aesthetics and an ethics that are neither an aesthetics nor an ethics, but are part of a larger critical and creative reevaluation of these categories.
What an excellent 4th part to a fascinating conversation. Thanks for making transparent the political/ideological process of editing and both of your experiences with your publishing efforts.
Posted by: Scott Pierce on March 11, 2004 09:06 PM