Tuesday, August 08, 2006

One reason I keep coming back to the New York poets I love so much, Frank, Ted, Joe (Ceravolo), Alice, Ron, Joe (Brainard), Kenneth, is because of how readable their work is. I mean, its challenging, its vigorous with form, they don't take you by the hand and walk through their work, they don't practice the Billy Collins poem as hotel with indoor water park for the (fucking) kids model. But, with a few exceptions, its work that generally doesn't feel at all inaccessible. One reason I started thinking this is from thinking about Kenneth Goldsmith's uncreative writing that isn't really even meant to be read. Or Silliman's new thing, where he's apparently going to write 300 or something books of poetry that will compose Universe. And right now I'm reading Tjanting and its great, but it seems that part of the point in it is that it not be readable, until one develops a proper reading strategy. That seems to have been a big part of the disruptivity thing in Langy Poesy. You can't read it the way you read novels or textbooks. But what I see in NY stuff is this exuberance in making it, and also intimacy and empathy, humanity. And self-consciousness, which is also very human.

No comments: