Folk Jam
Anne observes in conversation that the notion of "folk poetry" conceived as an outsidery independence, in opposition to poetry created in a collective context, is very tricky, since as soon as you can read, you're already on your way to being social, being contextualized as part of a collective rather than as a monad (I'm combining her words with my own reflections).
Nevertheless, as Anne has also pointed out (earlier, in another conversation), part of what distinguishes truly innovative literary work is its apparent lack of what is conventionally accepted in its time as competence. This "incompetence" may well take on the look of folkiness, or even folksiness ("folkness"). It doesn't have to, though. It can also take on the look of a haughtily hermetic exclusivity that some disparagingly call "academic."
Not that there isn't an apt object for the term "academic poetry," but people too often make the simplistic equation: academic poetry = poetry written by persons who happen to be academics. Academic poetry, I say, may just as well be written by anxiously emulative parties outside academia. If it's academic enough, it goes full circle to being so weird that even (especially?) academia rejects it. Anyway, the only justification I can see for using the term derogatorily is as a corrective to transparent, failed displays of erudition (when they do not fail, they are not transparent).
So what would a true "folk poet" look like? I guess her or his assimilation of social conventions associated not just with current taste and style, but with basic literacy, would have to be conspicuously imperfect. John Clare comes to mind as someone whose evident brilliance stands in stark contrast to the unavoidable fact that in some ways he can barely put together a sentence (although I have to say, not being at all a Clare expert, that this may be a mistaken impression on my part). Who of poetic note in the past century is comparably "incompetent"? Peter Orlovsky? Or is that an act? I really don't know enough about him to say.
But before I go any further with this line of thought, I'm obliged to question the whole concept: do we want to equate "folk" universally with "incompetence" in this way? Of course not. Folk musicians, for example, can be considered incompetent only according to a very narrowly chauvinist definition of competence as the mastery of a set of conventions associated with the dominant version of what counts as "real" music. Folk musicians learn from other musicians, and their success, unless it is achieved ironically (as in the case of The Shaggs) is dependent at least in good part upon the standards upheld by those other musicians. Folk visual artists may seem to be a partial exception, as their work is so intimately connected to mimesis as a factor of immediate perception, or some abstracted derivative from that principle. "Competence" at this point becomes a meaningless notion. Writers, on the other hand, cannot even be recognized intelligibly as writers until they have entered into the social covenant of the linguistic code. And when they do that, they are instantly subject to the pangs of influence and tradition and all those literary maladies.
So maybe it is only in the case of writing that the folk/incompetence equation applies. My point is not that writers striving for relevance should deliberately, straight-facedly, court incompetence, as such effort would clearly be hypocritical. Nor is it that the notion of a competence of the kind I'm invoking should be used as a way of policing "legitimate" poetic practice (though unfortunately such policing does occur, both in "academic" and "independent" circles). My point is simply that if you posit a dichotomy between folk(ness) and collectivity in poetry, you have to include the overwhelming majority of practice on one side or the other, which in either case produces such a lopsided imbalance that the distinction becomes useless, on par with "those poets who are outside of any twofold classification of poets and those who are not."
29 comments:
People interested in the notion of "folk poetry" might want to consult a new book by Joan Rubin, "Songs of ourselves : the uses of poetry in America". About the oral tradition of recitation in homes & schools (which seems to be dying out).
It might help to try to clarify what we mean by "folk art" & "folk artist" before launching into more debates.
I think of the folk artist as, among other things :
1. self-taught.
2. unsophisticated (ie. not working within a sphere of self-conscious fine arts training & critical reception).
3. creating for a general audience (not a coterie), reflecting popular themes, & using simple, ready-to-hand (if unusual) materials.
For me the most interesting of these factors is "self-taught". I'm not saying such artists never train with or learn from other artists; but their "careers" are usually far more solitary & independent than those of "fine artists" working in a professional or structured-vocational milieu with a range of social roles & rewards beyond the simple relationship between artist & audience.
The stark, stripped-down, simplified quality of much folk art parallels the relation between the folk artist & his or her audience. There are no "grants", no "sinecures", no "appointments", no "positions", no "reputations", no "colleagues", no "prizes", etc. It's just the artist, the art, & its potential audience.
I'm sure you can all dig up many exceptions : I'm just pointing up some general constrasts.
But Henry, what of quilters, needleworkers, woodworkers, musicians, & others who pass down their teachings generation after generation, starting training usually at a very early age? Are these folk artists not "folk artists"?
I would see an almost intractable positioning within one's family/tribe/place of birth to be a fundamental identifying factor of the folk artist.
I do not understand the notion of the folk artist as an "individual" but more as one who may not be aware of or disregards notions of liberal individualism altogether.
Also, I think it is fairly important to acknowledge that in many cases "folk artist" is code for "those who make the art but watch the others profit from it."
Anne
Point taken, Anne. I think I'm working within the framework of the original comments posted by Jack Kimball. & I think there point was to contrast a certain "folkiness" in the best American poetry (Whitman, Dickinson... to Ceravolo etc.). So when I talk about the "folk artist" as self-taught I guess I'm thinking more specifically of the "outsider artist" : & I take it that Jack is attributing "folkiness" to this "outsiderness" - which intrudes on the professional/status structures of the "fine arts". Sort of blending the two characteristics (folk & outsider). & you see this in the visual arts, where a very talented outsider working in folk materials intrudes into the fine arts sphere (for example, recently, the painter Martin Ramirez). Jack, I THINK, is positing some similarities to the dynamics of American poetry generally. seems interesting to me.
It's potentially interesting, but I'm not sure that's quite Jack's point, exactly.
In any event, the use of "folk materials"--Jack cites Stein's use of immediate domestic reality in her writing as an example--hardly precludes an active involvement in a group of others working with similar materials.
Think not of the paint but of the visual information Picasso and Braque used in the teens & early twenties--"folk material," no?
The Martin Ramirez show here in New York was great. What Martin Ramirez, who did that work in a mental institution, has to do with Stein, is not obvious to me.
Stein never turned her back on the fine art world; she wanted to be part of it, was in fact at the center of it. I'm not sure Ramirez gave much if any thought to publicizing, let alone legitimizing, his work, in that way.
Heck, even Whitman had will enough to promote his work--something, again, it seems doubtful even occurred to Ramirez. "Folk art," in the stricter sense, doesn't so much intrude on the fine art world as it is coopted by it--in Ramirez's case, nearly half a century after his death.
Hey guys, I think Lanny, Henry, Anne, and Kasey are off on new tracks, maybe separate tracks in this ghosty roundtable on folk lineage (or something like that) which I brought up a couple of days ago. Maybe I don't know dill about folk art, still I know something about incompetence firsthand, and it strikes me (stop, please) that the role for most poets in the American democracy of mass and now niche media is to speak up, make mistakes, and be ignored, because in a land of freedom, unlike England, say, everyone jabbers and maybe only your bed buddy listens between outbursts of joy. In that bedroom, then, the American poet looks, to me, like a semi-reclining stick figure pulling her own, whittling away at something new and improved, you know, and if she's lucky, scratching or tapping notes off that mad street person overheard, outside or on TV, frothing just a bit or, alternatively, lifting language from her buddy in bliss. The eccentric caricature I have in mind, then, is an isolated voice within a remote crowd of voices. What I attempted with the now-debated term folk lineage was to suggest that this communal yet self-imposed eccentricity is a conditional norm for an American poet to find herself in. Another part of what I meant to imply (but only now I'm saying it) is that group behaviors among poets -- look, poets have to have fun! -- force us to rethink the value and potentials of that solitary stick figure as a poet model. And, finally in backformation, of sorts, I'll go way out here and suggest until we figure new values and potentials, the facticity of the singleton, the crank, the misfit, the folksy innovator is very much in our blood, raising expectations that she still show up and tell us off.
Every semester, in my composition classes, I ask students to write about their history as writers. Invariably, I get several students who say they write poetry. I find this very encouraging--until I read their poetry, which is usually rhymed and very sentimental. It reminds me of Mark Twain's satire of the girl in Huck Finn that specializes in poetry about dead people.
However, I think a lot of this can be considered folk poetry. I don't think competence or incompetence has anything to do with it. Real folk music is music written and performed for personal reasons or for small social groups. It isn't the stuff labeled folk music and usually doesn't have any commercial pretensions. Occasionally, a folk musician will be so good that he or she will become a commercial musician. Or some group, like academics or music collectors will become fans of a folk musician.
The same applies to my students' writing. I have students who write for themselves and family. One woman had a book of poems she wrote to encourage people to become Christians. All of this is folk poetry, I think
I believe what Wade is talking about is partly the subject of Joan Rubin book mentioned above - the "home family personal unsophisticated" uses of poetry (holidays, memorials, recitations), & how that usage has merged historically with more "formal-professional" poetry.
Gary, who said every comment here had to be about Gertrude Stein? Aside from Gertrude Stein?
Not sure how this intersects with some of the fancy-dancy notions of "folk" under discussion here, but I once edited and translated an anthology of one of the greatest explosions of folk poetry in Western Hemisphere during the 20th century: A Nation of Poets: Writings from the Poetry Workshops of Nicaragua (West End Press, 1985). The book carries a lengthy interview with the great Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, who founded the workshop program shortly after the Sandinista revolution in 1979. Thousands of people, nearly all of working class and peasant background, were involved and publishing for a number of years. Much of the work is really wonderful, a good deal of it reminiscent, in effect, of classical poetries--though often with marked contemporary political twist. Of interest, too, is that the workshop pedagogy was largely based on Pound's ABC's of Reading and A Few Don'ts.
The interview, where the history of the program is discussed at length, can be read here:
http://www.litvert.com/issueseven.html
The book was widely reviewed and actually sold in the thousands way back when, but I still have a number of copies in my basement, wrapped in plastic, and I will send (a special offer at Lime Tree!) a free copy to the first ten people who write (in the next 24 hours) with promise to consider making a mention of the book in a review, a blog post, or a listserv post.
If you are interested in how "folk" literature can intersect with political vision and hope, (becoming, thus, a kind of third thing), this is a book that may be of interest... And no, the workshop phenomenon was never "appropriated" by High Art, contra Gary Sullivan's claim regarding the "inevitable fate" of folk art: it died, along with a great deal else, as result of the counter-revolutionary aggression funded by the Reagan administration. Though perhaps that would not be completely unconnected to High Art, when one thinks about it.
Kent
If we were talking about folk music, I'd think immediately of the example of Irish folk music, or the blues, and how many of those musicians will say "This is a song I learned from so-and-so." As a folk musician, you pick up a song that you hear somebody play in front of a group, or maybe even who comes to your house and teaches you to play it; Robert Lockwood Jr., for instance, claims to have learned to play the guitar from Robert Johnson when Robert Johnson would come over to the house because he was seeing Lockwood's mother. The idea of folk music is deeply connected to specific artistic and cultural contexts.
The phrase "self-taught" comes, obviously, from an opposition between that and "institutionally trained," and so contains the intentional put-down and incorrect assumption that outside of formal institutions, people must be loners and strange, etc. The phrase "self-taught" is therefore a hangover from the days when it was fashionable to argue that so-called classical music was the only form of serious music.
I'd agree, Mark, that "self-taught" is used in contrast with "institutionally-trained", but to read it as a put-down is just one way to read it. The phrase contains a variety of connotations.
Also, there is not necessarily a contradiction between self-taught and learning from others; I'd say most folk musicians do a combination of both, and, if you're going to juxtapose "self-taught" with "schooled", then I would say the "unschooled" folk artist is definitely "self-taught" : whether s/he teaches herself guitar chords picked up from a recording (played by someone else), or learns them directly from another musician.
But these are just quibbles...
I think the territory underlying this discussion goes back to the "raw vs. cooked" wars of mid-20th century poetry, & the question of what kinds of "training" tend to produce what kinds of poets... Not a new issue, obviously : the Elizabethans had their rivalries between collegiate, court & popular styles...
& underlying these polemics are questions about what kind of society we live in, & what kind of society we desire...
It seems there are lots of theories & recipes for the proper manner & style to address these issues (cf. langpo & all the other windy movements) - but I guess in my view this problem of how a poet is to address the culture at large & its changing shapes can only be solved in a SELF-TAUGHT compositional struggle : the poem is actually the (partial) resolution of this problem.
My take would be to find a connection between the ideas of "communal context" and "self-taught." All artists learn about art in a context, yet what they do with their own art isn't simply a function of context: it also has to do with their individual choices. Talk about context can deny individual artistic choice just as talk about individual artistic choice can deny the role of social context in forming artistic preferences. But pointing out the roles of sociality or individuality doesn't automatically need to deny the other side.
This is the eclectic nonentity. I
am 66. Given the choices I have
made, the "Folk Jam" post and all
of the comments are of interest
because (in some ways) they are
about me. I am my own group, and
though this group I am may be more
like a crumb than a kingdom--which
is not for me to decide, this group
is easily verified.
Among the comments, Henry Gould's
initial comment, Kent Johnson's
comment--and I will be zipping to
the site he noted, and Mark
Wallace's last comment/ are the
most meaningful to me.
why not include stupidity and an inherent rejection of essentialism. primal givens in art take the form of the uncategorical (excremente), which make for good folks.
and I suppose one could argue that folk/outsider art couldn't exist in a culture given to simulated conditioning. internet access suddenly encases those with "purely" folksy intentions-turns them into "simul"-outsiders, which means they are no longer "outsiders' but "insiders" posing as outsiders.
It seems like everyone's got a point, which might just reflect the amorphous mass we imagine the folk to be and which demands an elastic term to encompass it. My unsophisticated impression of folk is that the folk artist in some way represents what a nation imagines to be its peasantry based on flat out mistreatment (e.g. Irish folk songs or the blues), social standing, or occupation. Don't know how true that is, just my impression.
But I think that being self-taught is not so much required as typical of a peasantry without access to education. Interesting that this seems to paradoxically provide an example of ingenuity and resourcefulness at the same time as it attempts to confirm the impression of widespread ignorance throughout the lower classes as a whole.
I guess this would also be the case with Henry's critera about "not working within a sphere of self-conscious fine arts training" and "creating for a general audience." So does folk only fit that label once it has been received by a group that do not identify themselves as "folk"? I guess I'm thinking primarily about folk music, which I don't know that much about. Sorry.
Last month when I was writing alpha
"poems"/ I wanted to provide a link
at each letter to a poet surname
beginning with that letter. One of
the letters I had a problem with
was "q"; so I did a quintessential
poets search, and was I surprised
by what it caught. I refer you to
www.westernfolklife.org/weblogs/paulz/
2006/07/coming_double_nickels.html
where looking at the four pictures,
reading the bio notes beneath Paul
Zarzynski's picture, and the first
paragraph suffices.
URL correction:
I forgot to include between
weblogs/ and paulz/ in the
comment I made above this one
artists/
So
Zarzynzki
I wonder if "folk" anything isn't just a way to take an art and assume or wonder if there's any "folk" left that it refers to...
Not that there aren't "folk" lying around, but is there a homogenized group of folk with the same taste and flair for production? It's probably cliche to ask now, but is hip hop folk poetry, then?
Perhaps folk is the medium, unmediated by middlemen, middlepeople (i.e., as song is to radio, or academia). Does the rise of the M.F.A. then spell the end of folk poets? Can self-taught "folk" poets grace the halls of academia or does the distinction disappear with acceptance?
[My apologies for the multiple posts]
I personally happen to be a folk poet/outsider writer with plenty of far-out political ideas unshared by many of my fellow citizens and humans, while also being an unrepentent poetry groupie/cultist who loves to show up at things and be associated with various groupings of artists who share an intense sense of collective endeavor and (often) disdain for the boring notions of other groupings. . . Hopefully no one has a problem with this. Gary Sullivan, probably, could be described in the same way, as could Anne Boyer surely and probably even the sage K. Silem. Finding some other people boring is just being honest, and not at all a sign that one has no individuality. . . It's silly to think that folk poets don't have coteries, though they might not choose that word. . . since it has negative connotations. Isn't Cage a great example of someone who loved to participate in artistic groups and who was nonetheless often rather folksy and homespun in his politicals and preoccupations?
Jack and Gary are both great and, from where I sit, have just been arguing past each other, since they define all the terms in their debate differently, and are actually just having two parallel debates where they respond to each other as if the other person wasn't defining everything differently. . .
Folk poetry tends to have a political consciousness, which tends to be a rejection of elites (take Sandburg, or Vachel Lindsey), and avant-garde groupings tend also to reject the cultural values of elites. Let's not accept the right-wing notion that graduate students and artists eeking out a living are "elites"--elites are people with typically economically conservative (i.e. "liberal" in the original sense of valuing free trade and unregulated business) views. I think it continues to be true that elites like apolitical writing because they don't want to reflect on systems of exploitation that underlie their advantages. Much folk poetry and much avant-garde writing call attention to unfair social arrangements. And Ginsberg was definitely influenced by folk traditions (Vachel Lindsey, the blues, and more), but also a savvy participant in avant-garde scenes who "would go to the opening of an envelope" as someone, I forget who, said of him.
i think there is an interesting cross over with the definition of folk artist and the actual fold musician. i was thinking of someone like Daniel Johnston, who doesn't really use many conventions of folk musicians. because Johnston just seems to have absorbed his surroundings in childhood and adulthood and swished in a gallon of crazy, and has created this music that defies a lot of conventions, but i think it's because he doesn't seem to know them. like henry goulds idea of being self-taught and how that can free and artist to just express himself. so how do we categorize artists of that nature? do we even need? what does this categorizing even accomplish for us as readers / listeners / viewers, other than something to blog about.
Maybe this is too meta a comment, but isn't folk poetry entirely a term used by people who write academic poetry? I mean, it -- like "school of quietude" -- not only points, but frames.
I think the term this conversation wants to be about is not "folk poetry", but rather the poetic equivalent of "outsider art." I don't think people mean to be talking about the contemporary equivalents of "Casey at the Bat"!
sa's comment brings up another point: Are you a folk poet if you label yourself one?
I think folk poet is one of the terms one would apply to a poet who wrote like an "outsider artist". This term is being used, perhaps, because "outsider poet" has other connotations.
I agree with simon that the term "folk poet" could only occur within a discourse of academically-trained poets, which clearly proves that only an academically trained poet like myself can legitimately be a "folk poet."
Also, Ryan, I have a name, which is "Stan Bob". As you can see, my use of an absurd-sounding Southernesque middle name marks me unaviodably as a "folk poet," as does the preacherly cadence of my internet-collage poetry.
Actually, all kidding aside, I have a very "outsider art" book coming out, despite much of my other writing being avant-garded. What my point earlier was, very simply, is that there is no contradiction between what people may see as different "sides" of my poetic output, because it's natural and normal to inhabit these categories at once.
Stan Bob,
Duly noted. I'd like to see your outsider book.
Buried over here in Jean Toomer letters and diaries, I ran across this today and thought of you folks.
"For better or for worse, an industrialized society offers us only one choice: either to be individuals or to be neuter atoms in that non-existent abstraction The Public. Folk (gemeinshaft) in the old sense of a community created more by unconscious nature than by conscious spirit, belongs to the pre-industrical closed society which the machine has broken open. Whoever today, whether in art or politics, idolizes the folk-like and popular and disparages the highbrow and difficult, is making whether he means to or not, propoganda for the Police State. No society can now be closed unless it is coerced."
I don't know if that helps.
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