My Walt Whitman Can Beat Up Your Walt Whitman

The entry for January 28 on the Academy of American Poetry website's "Poetry Debates, Manifestos, and Criticism" feature is Back Down to Earth: Richard Tayson on Walt Whitman's Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass. It's short--go ahead and read it and then come back.

In general, I'm tired of commenting on these knee-jerk tirades against Language Poetry and "Post-Avant" writing: what's the point? But reading this piece, it occurred to me (perhaps under the influence of Benjamin Friedlander's brilliant book Simulcast) that you could take Tayson's negative terms and replace them with positive ones and come up with an argument that holds at least as much water as the original. Obviously, from my point of view, the new argument holds more water, but that's the thing: both points, that Whitman would be either an ally or an opponent of Language Poetry, are so moot that an argument for either one is bound to be a slushy pile of equivocal declaratives that is likely to please those readers likely to agree with you in the first place and displease those inclined to disagree.

I actually started going through the essay and trying out the process of substitution. I got two paragraphs into it before I became a) satisfied that I had made my point and b) bored and lazy. For what it's worth, here are those first two paragraphs in their original form:

Walt Whitman's Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, now celebrating its sesquicentennial, is the strongest advice I know against Language Poetry, now exerting a force unequal to its achievement in current American poetry. For all it virtues, including a radical emphasis on sonic qualities of ever-various, orgiastic and intoxicating American language, and what Paul Hoover terms its "challenge to the male-dominant hierarchy" and its "actuality in words," Language Poetry's denunciation of the human behind the words is its dangerous (and, likely for its practitioners, enticing) legacy. As Jorie Graham states, one often sees in language poets "the dismantling of articulate speech," the goal of which appears (distressingly) to be "a language free of its user." If any poet ever wished to be irrefutably associated, inseparably married to his use of language, it was the body and soul of Walt Whitman.

Since perhaps the mid-eighties, language poetry has gained influence over younger poets, especially those graduating from creative writing programs and publishing in literary journals. The direction that influence has taken has been to focus these youthful works on a lack of narrative, a rejection of closure, an emphasis on textuality, and extreme attention to the material physicality of the shape and sound of words (or even letters) at the expense of what Muriel Rukeyser, a quintessential Whitmanian, terms "a triadic relation" of "the poet, the poem, and the audience." Many of our literary magazines now (and increasingly so) contain work that is divorced from daily life, from politics, and--most distressing of all--from the reader whom one presumes is the reason for publishing it in the first place. The result is an onanism that threatens to rob air from the fire of the creative process. Language poetry, which takes its genesis from Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, with links perhaps to Ezra Pound (and James Joyce's linguistic creations?), may also be seen as having ties to surrealism and other mostly European innovations, such as Dadaism and, in its experimentation with typography, Concrete Poetry à la Apollinaire. Perhaps, though this is a stretch, it may reach as far back as George Herbert's "Easter-wings." Our poets, who Whitman describes as those able to "make every word he speaks draw blood," appear to be dangerously close to creating a bloodless enterprise.

And here they are with my alterations:

Walt Whitman's Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, now celebrating its sesquicentennial, is the strongest affirmation I know of Language Poetry, now beginning to exert a force nearly equal to its achievement in current American poetry. Among all its virtues, including a radical emphasis on sonic qualities of ever-various, orgiastic, and intoxicating American language, and what Paul Hoover terms its "challenge to the male-dominant hierarchy" and its "actuality in words," Language Poetry's decentering of the human behind the words is its most significant (and, typically for its detractors, distressing) legacy. As Jorie Graham states, one often sees in language poets "the dismantling of articulate speech," the goal of which appears (exhilaratingly) to be "a language free of its user." If any poet ever wished to be integrally transformed, irrevocably liberated by and from his use of language, it was the body and soul of Walt Whitman.

Since perhaps the mid-eighties, language poetry has gained influence over younger poets, especially those dissatisfied with mainstream creative writing programs and frustrated by the narrow opportunities for publishing in literary journals. The direction that influence has taken has been to focus these youthful works on a questioning of narrative, a rejection of closure, an emphasis on textuality, and extreme attention to the material physicality of the shape and sound of words (or even letters) in a radical reimagining of what Muriel Rukeyser, a quintessential Whitmanian, terms "a triadic relation" of "the poet, the poem, and the audience." Many of our literary magazines now (and increasingly so) contain work that rejects cliched, homogeneous representations of daily life, impotent and depoliticized versions of politics, and--most refreshing of all--the static fantasy of a generic reader whose docile indulgence one presumes is the reason for publishing it in the first place. The result is an Promethean act of defiance that promises to breathe fresh air onto the fire of the creative process. Language poetry, which takes its genesis from Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, with links perhaps to Ezra Pound (and James Joyce's linguistic creations?), may also be seen as having ties to surrealism and other mostly European innovations, such as Dadaism and, in its experimentation with typography, Concrete Poetry à la Apollinaire. Perhaps, though this is a stretch, it may reach as far back as George Herbert's "Easter-wings." Our poets, who Whitman describes as those able to "make every word he speaks draw blood," appear to be thrillingly close to sparking a bloody revolution.

My version probably contains just about as much nonsense as the original, but certainly no more. Besides, if you want a probing, insightful summation of what Whitman's relation to Language Poetry would really be, I doubt anyone could say it better than Anselm Berrigan: "I think Walt Whitman would have liked to lick Bruce Andrews all over."

Inorganic Utopias

Josh writes:

"my utopia of poetry is a world where EVERYONE is a poet, in which all voluntarily assume the pains and pleasures that come with the highest possible sensitivity to language."

This in the context of his larger discussion of the "organic" vs. the "inorganic" in poetry, or let's say modes of poetry based on the illusion of direct communication of transparent (i.e. familiar) meanings between a unified speaker and a (presumably also unified) listener, vs. modes of poetry that often take as their starting point the subversion or denial of such direct lines of contact between writing and reading subjects. The organic approach is distrusted by the avant-garde inorganicists because it relies on passive subscription to the dominant values that determine what gets counted as authentic, realistic, or beautiful; the inorganic approach is distrusted by the establishment organicists because (among other reasons) it resists evaluation along the lines prescribed for writing in the dominant poetic tradition (i.e. formally conservative and/or discursively "natural" composition).

Both these camps would claim that they are ideal citizens in Josh's utopia as he describes it in the quote above. That is, both have reason to believe that they are exercising "the highest possible sensitivity to language" when they promote their own tastes and denigrate the tastes of their opponents. In the eyes of the organicists, the worst crimes of inorganic poetry are defined precisely by insensitivity to the qualities they hold most dear: euphony, conventional structural coherence, sincere and eloquent expression of universal human emotions, etc. For the inorganicists, however, those who valorize the organic lack sensitivity on multiple contextual levels. They fail to acknowledge the significance, for example, of framing, of the ways in which the establishment scene of poetic practice and readership comes with pre-set parameters which are indestructible in themselves, but which may be interestingly tweaked and challenged by the intentional deployment of cacophony, disrupted coherence, deliberate stagings of insincerity and inarticulacy. More importantly, according to the inorganicists, the organicists lack one of the most old-fashioned of poetic values: Keatsian "negative capability," or the ability to accept that beauty and its cousin pleasure, being fundamentally irrational, may inhere in those habitations one would consider most likely to be unamenable.

Like Josh (a fellow Libra, since he brings it up), I often like to think of myself as fair-minded enough to negotiate these kinds of polarizations, to soothe warring factions into states of compromise. Lately I wonder, though, whether compromise is really appropriate. Maybe the maintenance of a vigorous antagonism between sworn opponents, even at the expense of constructive dialogue, is really healthier for poetry in the long run. Maybe poetry, whether organic or inorganic, needs a disaffected "other side" (or, preferably, multiple sides) to lend it a healthily energetic negative frisson.

This is not to say that there aren't good self-sufficient reasons to be an inorganicist. I and others have rehearsed those reasons repeatedly, and so for their part have the organicists rehearsed theirs. My point is that the legions of the unconvinced on either opposing side still far outnumber the converts and partial converts (although this resistance may be more the case with the organicists than with the inorganicists), and that this intractability may be an unavoidable by-product of the very conditions of modern organic poetic practice that lead to the disagreements in the first place. So, in short, my utopia is one in which there must intrude a little conscious insensitivity to (organic) language: some "pleasures" must be acknowledged as painful once they can begin to be used to inhibit the exercise of the uncorroded imaginative faculties. And maybe not EVERYONE can participate in this angry utopia; maybe in order for the commonwealth to function at all the organicists will need to be marked as non-poets. Maybe with big red O's on their shirtfronts (foreheads?).