Eleanor Smagarinsky emailed on Sept 27 in response to my coining of the term 'literary bling' poetry versus formalist poetry in the example of Clive James' recent poem published in the New Yorker.
Ouyang Yu does say that he chooses poets and poems - for translation - with whom he can engage on a personal level, and I don’t think he ever claims to be “objective” in his love for one poetic style over another. I find that incredibly refreshing, because it gives me a subjective window through which to begin viewing a foreign language and culture. I can get an objective summary of the history of traditional Chinese poetry from a text book. But then, I love literary bling, literary bling!! Swooning with delight!! Traditional literary garb leaves me cold, although I’m trying to engage with it now because it’s necessary for the craft. But when it comes to passion, give me bling, bling, more bling!!
But are we talking about content or form here? Or both?
I’ve been thinking about this issue quite a bit these last couple of days, especially in the context of Clive James’ poem “Japanese Maple”. Autumnal trees are traditional literary garb, and I appreciate them objectively (as I do the poetic craft), but that’s where it ends for me. Personally, I prefer the last stanza of Shu Cai’s poem “Demolition” –
“Demolish it, demolish it, demolish it
Quick, write the word on the wall
And circle it with a circle”
Bling!!
What is trad garb -- rhyme and metre and a contemplative tone? Versus ranty ranty -- 'Hu flung dung' against the wall? (Sorry very bad school boy joke :-) ). The way I see it is there's a time for all. What is beautiful in James' immaculate use of form and rhyme for me is like the modesty of knowledge worn lightly without the brouhaha. The craft required to do what he did is undeniable. The constraint, the intelligence required to work within it. The gesture toward revolution against tradition is highly understandable, especially in this Chinese socio-political context. But the political need for freedom to rant and object is just that -- a gesture that is also limited by its social context and may in the future die with it. This need to up-end tradition is generally a younger artist (angry young man/woman) need to assert and throw off 'fusty trad garb' like parental control, in the belief that youth has a clearer picture of things which is not always true, although the energy is admirable and desirable. God! I'm sounding older than my years. LOL. (BTW in case you don't know I'm the guy to started Poetry Slam in Singapore and Malaysia which is going strong after a decade.)
When one looks at the model of Stein, the innovator and her phenomenology of objects -- it's a century old story. Like Pound and Williams. I don't doubt their importance and impact. However, in the desire to innovate and refresh what had slid into decadent aesthetics has become the next platform for another aesthetic that has become 'trad garb' of another kind and may be served its use.
My point is that this incessant search for 'the new' is so often a superficial thing, an over obsession with the feeling that the container, the box needs to be redesigned every generation. I say take on James' neo-formalism alongside the modernists and practise the post-modernism of open choice - fixed or free form according to thematic circumstance. There is nothing particularly virtuous about form for form's sake, nor the breaking of the poetic line etc. It's been broken. How many more ways do we want to break it? (To do that requires knowledge of what you are breaking IMO) In the long run, if the poem does not resonate deeper human experience no amount of formal or informal structure will save a poem. And if the term 'deeper human experience' is a worry in an age of doubt' then why bother writing the poetry of the clever at all? There has to be a Jack to come out of the box. The box aint enough.
That's the 'content' you ask me about - the guts, the soul-essence, the emotional integrity of the poem. There is a lot of cleverness around. Bling poets abound. There always were in past times. They lose their sparkle. For me, the language experimentalists are at one end of the post-modern spectrum -- at the other end I think is neo-formalism which never died in Britain and arose in the US in the 1990s. As I see it neo-formalism filled a gap as the last modernist polemists died off one by one. No one really of stature has filled the ranks of a Pound, Stein or Williams. Thus, the wheel re-turned (it's not the 'old' -- it's just a turn of the cycle). Good Neo-formalists poems use trad tricks in an contemporary context shucking off the bad habits and indulgences of the decadent period Pound ranted against. Both live in the Now. Why can't we accept a 'Middle Way' and draw on all? As a poet I want to know as much as I can about my tools and craft rather than just colouring in from one end of the Derwent pencil box. Besides writing in 'trad garb' -- metre, rhyme etc just doesn't seem to die off, does it? In fact it won't in my view, because the musicality and regularity of metre is linked to physiology.
Why are the longest standing expressions of poetic literature still here? Because they are oral and memorable. They come from a belief that "metre is mantra" as Coomaraswamy says, and has sunk deep into the collective memory, passed on from one generation to the next as remembered art. Most of modernism and post-modernism is textual and despite the sweeping innovations has already split brain from body in a way. I want organically-grown poems. Metrical form is mnemonic and has deep roots that defy repeated attempts to be pulled out or poisoned at the roots.
Ouyang Yu does say that he chooses poets and poems - for translation - with whom he can engage on a personal level, and I don’t think he ever claims to be “objective” in his love for one poetic style over another. I find that incredibly refreshing, because it gives me a subjective window through which to begin viewing a foreign language and culture. I can get an objective summary of the history of traditional Chinese poetry from a text book. But then, I love literary bling, literary bling!! Swooning with delight!! Traditional literary garb leaves me cold, although I’m trying to engage with it now because it’s necessary for the craft. But when it comes to passion, give me bling, bling, more bling!!
But are we talking about content or form here? Or both?
I’ve been thinking about this issue quite a bit these last couple of days, especially in the context of Clive James’ poem “Japanese Maple”. Autumnal trees are traditional literary garb, and I appreciate them objectively (as I do the poetic craft), but that’s where it ends for me. Personally, I prefer the last stanza of Shu Cai’s poem “Demolition” –
“Demolish it, demolish it, demolish it
Quick, write the word on the wall
And circle it with a circle”
Bling!!
What is trad garb -- rhyme and metre and a contemplative tone? Versus ranty ranty -- 'Hu flung dung' against the wall? (Sorry very bad school boy joke :-) ). The way I see it is there's a time for all. What is beautiful in James' immaculate use of form and rhyme for me is like the modesty of knowledge worn lightly without the brouhaha. The craft required to do what he did is undeniable. The constraint, the intelligence required to work within it. The gesture toward revolution against tradition is highly understandable, especially in this Chinese socio-political context. But the political need for freedom to rant and object is just that -- a gesture that is also limited by its social context and may in the future die with it. This need to up-end tradition is generally a younger artist (angry young man/woman) need to assert and throw off 'fusty trad garb' like parental control, in the belief that youth has a clearer picture of things which is not always true, although the energy is admirable and desirable. God! I'm sounding older than my years. LOL. (BTW in case you don't know I'm the guy to started Poetry Slam in Singapore and Malaysia which is going strong after a decade.)
When one looks at the model of Stein, the innovator and her phenomenology of objects -- it's a century old story. Like Pound and Williams. I don't doubt their importance and impact. However, in the desire to innovate and refresh what had slid into decadent aesthetics has become the next platform for another aesthetic that has become 'trad garb' of another kind and may be served its use.
My point is that this incessant search for 'the new' is so often a superficial thing, an over obsession with the feeling that the container, the box needs to be redesigned every generation. I say take on James' neo-formalism alongside the modernists and practise the post-modernism of open choice - fixed or free form according to thematic circumstance. There is nothing particularly virtuous about form for form's sake, nor the breaking of the poetic line etc. It's been broken. How many more ways do we want to break it? (To do that requires knowledge of what you are breaking IMO) In the long run, if the poem does not resonate deeper human experience no amount of formal or informal structure will save a poem. And if the term 'deeper human experience' is a worry in an age of doubt' then why bother writing the poetry of the clever at all? There has to be a Jack to come out of the box. The box aint enough.
That's the 'content' you ask me about - the guts, the soul-essence, the emotional integrity of the poem. There is a lot of cleverness around. Bling poets abound. There always were in past times. They lose their sparkle. For me, the language experimentalists are at one end of the post-modern spectrum -- at the other end I think is neo-formalism which never died in Britain and arose in the US in the 1990s. As I see it neo-formalism filled a gap as the last modernist polemists died off one by one. No one really of stature has filled the ranks of a Pound, Stein or Williams. Thus, the wheel re-turned (it's not the 'old' -- it's just a turn of the cycle). Good Neo-formalists poems use trad tricks in an contemporary context shucking off the bad habits and indulgences of the decadent period Pound ranted against. Both live in the Now. Why can't we accept a 'Middle Way' and draw on all? As a poet I want to know as much as I can about my tools and craft rather than just colouring in from one end of the Derwent pencil box. Besides writing in 'trad garb' -- metre, rhyme etc just doesn't seem to die off, does it? In fact it won't in my view, because the musicality and regularity of metre is linked to physiology.
Why are the longest standing expressions of poetic literature still here? Because they are oral and memorable. They come from a belief that "metre is mantra" as Coomaraswamy says, and has sunk deep into the collective memory, passed on from one generation to the next as remembered art. Most of modernism and post-modernism is textual and despite the sweeping innovations has already split brain from body in a way. I want organically-grown poems. Metrical form is mnemonic and has deep roots that defy repeated attempts to be pulled out or poisoned at the roots.
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