Poor or not-so poor Ron Silliman

Recently, Ron Silliman was asked by the Poetry Society of America (PSA) to judge the William Carlos Williams (an award given out to a trade press published collection of poems).
Of course, even though having Ron Silliman judge was a good idea in retrospect, the ending result was absurd. Silliman, whose blog is the most popular source for contemporary poetics, is a great choice because of his popularity and willingness to select a work that one might consider “on the fringe” or “outside the box” (or whatever cliche for the unconventional could be employed here).
Well that is certainly what the PSA received. Silliman chose Aram Saroyan’s “Complete Minimal Poems”, most of which was written and published in the 60’s.

Saroyan is most known for poems that I wouldn’t even consider poems; they are more or less visual experiences (which is interesting in its own right, but how far can one take this? Hasn’t Saroyan taken it as far as it could go?). Now when I say “visual experiences” I’m not talking about Saroyan in the same way one might talk about ee cummings or Tristan Tzara’s work (both of which drew some kind of influence from Cubism). Saroyan’s most talked about work (though one can assume not many people would know anything about him if it weren’t for Silliman’s blog) is the poem:

lighght

Now this is certainly cool to look at and impossible to say. Conceptually it’s great, because between the “li” and “t” is the unsayable “gh” phoneme, not once, but twice. The poem is abysmal and that’s what makes it so interesting.
Back to the PSA’s WCW award. The absurd thing about this (and I’m drawing from Bill Knott’s blog on this same subject http://billknott.typepad.com/billknott/2008/04/20/index.html ) is that Saroyan wrote most of these back in the 60’s and is now receiving help from Ron Silliman to have them brought to attention. Poor Ron Silliman. For all his talk about the School of Quietude and the post-avant, he has succumb to the same power process he claims to rebel against. [For those that don't know, the idea that an author selects a work for a prize based on merit alone and not for any other reason].
I don’t want to go so extreme and say Saroyan is entirely undeserving of this award, his poems do get us to think about poetry in a new way (certainly different from other “visual poets” like cummings or Tzara). The problem with Saroyan’s work is it is only going to be understood by a select few and thus it becomes just as inclusive as anything Silliman might attribute to the School of Quietude.

Also, on a note so unrelated note; if we take Silliman’s judgment seriously this allows us to see that Silliman is subverting the concept of the general “literary prize”; in a way Silliman’s judgment is more beneficial than what Zadie Smith pulled a few months ago denying an award to any of the work sent in for her to judge.

wow. and you thought I thought workshops were bad ideas!

This article comes from the poets & writers website, I actually found it through Silliman’s blog (http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/). A quick plug for Silliman. Though Silliman doesn’t really fit into the class in terms of reviewing, his blog does offer some interesting questions on a realtively daily basis. He also has a lot of sections where he just lists books he’s received, both contemporary and non-contemporary works. I try and check out Silliman’s blog just about everyday at least once. It’s definitely a good outlet that collects information not gathered on the websites Dr. Roth gave us to use for class.

Anyway, what I really made this post for is to just show that there are people out there that believe workshops aren’t a good idea. And certainly, our class workshop is probably the most beneficial and less stressful workshop I’ve ever had. I can’t same the same for other classes though, not any fault on any of the professors I’ve had. The workshop is flawed. Dan Barden lays out a case for why that is. Do you agree?

http://www.pw.org/content/workshop_rant_against_creative_writing_classes

Oh and please no jabs at the fact that I’m negative and Barden is negative. It’s just a coincidence, I swear. :-)

Bukowski, and

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-ulin25nov25,0,4326589.story

When I first encountered Bukowski, it was in a small Lewisburg bookstore a little over five years ago. I had gone in looking for some other Beat authors (other than Kerouac and Ginsberg) and figured I might find something. What I found just above the “Beat” section was a posthumously published collection of poems by Charles Bukowski. I took the book off the shelf, read a few poems, and bought it. Though I initially enjoyed Bukowski, I was completely intrigued as to why he wasn’t in the Beat section, and also not typically referred to as a “beat” writer. This, along with his sharp negativity and non-pretentious language, has allowed me to continuely enjoy Bukowski from time to time over the years.

Of course, Bukowski, gets a bad wrap from a lot of angles, for a number of different reasons. Critics love to attack his ‘lack of craft’, alcholism, reclusion, and misery. The irony is, if you don’t enjoy Bukowski, or his lifestyle, aren’t you giving his work press space [or in this case, super-embedded-high-bandwidth-blogosphere space], thus empowering it?

The hilarious aspect of the David Ulin, LAT review I hyperlinked, is that Ulin is looking for something more than “a disconnected litany” of “uninspired details”. Doesn’t he realize he’s reading Bukowski?

Ulin cites “Like a Flower in the Rain” to begin his attack on Bukowski:

later we joked about the lotionand the cigarette and the apple.

then I went out and got some chicken and shrimp and french fries and bunsand mashed potatoes and gravy and

cole slaw, and we ate. She told me

how good she felt and I told her

how good I felt and we ate

the chicken and the shrimp and the

french fries and the buns and the

mashed potatoes and the gravy and

the cole slaw too.

For Ulin, this is absolute garbage. Ulin attempts to explain Bukowski’s authorial intention “Here, Bukowski means to tell us about the solace of simple pleasures — sex, food, companionship “. Essentially, for Dave Ulin, Bukowski achieves nothing. Maybe Ulin lives in an isolated small overhead lit room, and enjoys poems that enable him to live vicariously through them. Bukowski doesn’t allow for this. And why should he? Bukowski’s poems are his thoughts, and his thoughts, his poems. What we get with Bukowski is another Whitmanian descendant from the 1950’s.

Pure, bare bones, uncovering in the plainest manner what is so obviously before us; subjects our lives depend on ignoring in order not to feel so consciously disgusted, shameful, and depressed about our individual and collective human existence. For example, the excerpted poem above isn’t about the “small pleasures” of life, it’s about the hollowness of these pleasures. For the characters, after fulfilling the desire for sex, the desire for food comes after. There is no dressing-up of events. In fact, the poem ignores the events that Ulin is so desperately reaching for. There is no large conversation between the two characters, no romanticization or picturesque sugary details. As with Bukowski’s poems, there is no experience or thought not individually exclusive no matter how ordinary, mundane, or vulgar. Merely evidence of a ravenous hunger attempting to be subdued.