reprint from old blog circa 08

*

i do read SON (School of Noisiness) blogs,

and have been bemused recently by their inane Spicer mania——

the lines they quote from him seem to me to be banal or at best mediocre,

and i shake my head over what the Piss-Avants can see in him—

then i read the review of his Collected by Bill Corbett which says quote:

"It is almost impossible to quote Spicer in any useful way. He wrote lots of stand-alone poems, but the serial poem was his preferred form, separate but linked."

. . . i've been hearing horseshit like this from the Avanti-Ranties all my life—

—i remember Diane Wakoski informing me in 1970 that my failure to appreciate Robert Kelly's poetry would be remedied if i would only read ALL of it——all 300 pages of it . . . (it was 300 pages in 1970, what's it up to by now, 3 thousand? —Jerome Rothenberg's blog ran a rave recently anent Kelly that informed us his 50 published books were only a fraction of his entire output)—

yeah: so if i read ALL of Spicer's poetry (and ALL of the Post-Aholes that Silliman PRs for), then i'll see the merit in it——

every Spicer poem i've seen online is junk, or middling at most——

a quote from Jack Spicer:

"…The trick naturally is what Duncan learned years ago and tried to teach us – not to search for the perfect poem but to let your way of writing of the moment go along its own paths, explore and retreat but never be fully realized (confined) within the boundaries of one poem..."

>>>and that presents the dichotomy here: we SOQs continue to want to write the perfect poem, and the SONs have abandoned that quest to pursue their endless unconfined poeticking——

it's poem versus poetry,

that schism that split will not yield to any "third way", no matter what intriquing terminology you lard it with: Hybrid, anyone? . . .

 the real schismatic diff between SOQ and SON is that the former write poems and the latter write poetry——

    i'm hardly the first to point this out——

    as Corbett acknowledges about Spicer——

    but i think it applies to all or certainly most of the poets in the two groups——

    it is the arrogance of the Avantistes to expect that their work will be read in its entirety——indeed, they demand it as an essential of the esthetic encounter——as Wakoski was convinced in her belief that i must first read all of Kelly's verse before i could pass judgement on his value——and i am convinced that her belief is shared by all or most Avants——

it is this assumption——

    this totalizing attitude or expectation that distinguishes and differentiates the SON poets from us SOQs——

    this seems to me to be the essential difference in our two camps——

    it's poem vs. poetry——

    and i don't think there can be/will be any lasting practical synthesis or transcendance of these antithetical positions . . .

 /

    when i say above "and i am convinced that her belief is shared by all or most Avants"——

    i mean in general,——

the SON says in the imperative:

    "Here is my poetry, my Work:

    you must read it all to understand its significance."

    the SOQ says with a shrug:

    "Here are my poems: I hope some of them look interesting to you; and the ones that don't, unh—"

 /

    we SOQs are essentially lazy backyarders, quotidian empiricists of the possible,

    while the SONs are empire builders, theorists who seek to prevail over all entities—

    (as Ron puts it daily:

    My name is Sillimandias, King of blogs: look at my stats, ye SOQlings, and despair!)

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