“What is it about poetry that brings out the worst in people?”
From Jezebel:
“Let the laughers stand up!” shouted a woman who I think was Eileen Myles. “Let’s interrogate the laughers.” Eileen fucking “rock star of poetry” Myles was mad at us. (Was she serious? I couldn’t tell.) A few people I didn’t know stood up, then sat down again. Others raised their hands. I stood, copped to being a laugher, then felt sheepish, like I was taking up the flag of a country I wasn’t sure I could defend. We tried to make a case for ourselves — “I laughed, ’cause it was good,” I offered, kind of lamely, over the shouts; my girlfriend sat, open mouthed. My guy friend said, “I thought it was an absolutely savage satire of the idiocy of pornography.”
“There was laughter as soon as the word ‘cock’ appeared!” shot back a man who found our defense unconvincing. It was then that I realized, these people weren’t questioning our etiquette: they were questioning our politics.
Make sure you read all the comments on that thing…
Make sure you read
Or make sure you don’t, if you want to spare yourself another dose of disillusionment.
If anything brings out the worst in people more than poetry, it’s comment boxes, eh?
Guilty as charged.
I hope you aren’t taking that text at face value. It completely misrepresents the event itself.
I’m tired of not taking texts at face value!
Well, sure, but it’s one persons account. You could at least listen to the audio and note how she mishears what’s going on and who is saying what….
I do appreciate the ironies: the solemn rush to propriety in response to a poem called “When I Looked At Your Cock, My Imagination Died”; the appeal to readerly comfort from a founding Flarfiste. All very precious, and predictable.
BB – where’s the flarfiste there? I admit I scanned the comments quickly and may have missed something.
Up. There, I see it. Never mind!
JD, from Eileen’s comment: “Ariana invited comments and I loved that Nada said what a lot of people were thinking.”
I really didn’t mean for this to turn into another Flarf post, though; I didn’t know Gordon was there until Don directed me to the comments.
Oh well. Gawker sites. What can you do.
LH: I’m very interesting in learning what you consider to be mis-transcriptions on my part.
No response. What a surprise!
Surprise? Having been away from my computer constitutes a surprise? I listened. It doesn’t seem to me that Myles is saying what the original piece seems to suggest she is saying…it also reads tone in ways that seem, well, one can interpret any way they like I suppose.
By the by, I said mishears, or perhaps mis-attributes is more precise.
But there again you read my silence the way that suited you as well.
The best part about Eileen Myles’s rather monumental nervous breakdown in the comment boxes there would be her vicious put-down remark to Jezebel about “shopping.”
No stray holiday shoppers at poetry readings. And God Bless Us, Every One!
Yes, Kent, but that’s different from the original article in question.
I guess you had to be there. I wasn’t. I could jump in and offer my opinion of the different versions of events being put forward, but since every publication even The New York Times usually gets everything wrong about every event they cover, it’s probably better to let Jenna be very interesting.
Michael, you know I’m going to say this but I’ll say it anyway. You kind of remind me of Eileen sometimes. And Franz. And Bill. And Kent. And me!
Jordan,
Happy Holidays.
Kent
Kent, did you know yerba mate has almost as much caffeine as Mountain Dew?
But Mountain Dew is more locally-grown.
JD, I know. And deep in my heart there’s a house that can hold just about all of you.
> deep in my heart
It’d be fine if you wanted us all to relocate to the spleen — that’s where the action is.
>did you know yerba mate has almost as much caf feine as Moun tain Dew?
Feliz Navidad, Jordan! Si, si, por supuesto, poeta. Y sin las calorias!
Muerte a Starbucks y al GAP.
> Muerte
Yes! Banana Republic Is Us and Us and Us!
>Banana Republic Is Us and Us and Us!
Uno, dos, tres, muchos Vietnams.
Art is Boring for the Same Reason We Surged in Afghanistan, by Stephen Paul Miller.
I don’t know what you guys are talking about, but I did figure out a nifty way to delete my comments on other people’s posts.
We’re just trying to bore any potential crossover audience to death.
Share the nifty!
Michael, I just figured out how to do that, too. Just this morning I deleted one I made to Silliman’s the other day, where I’d asked, terribly hurt, why he didn’t link to my post at Isola di Rifiuti on Steve Evans’s Attention Span. That was dumb, I said to myself, why would I ask a such a pleading question with such an obvious answer…
>We’re just trying to bore any potential crossover audience to death.
If they’re not willing to be bored to death, I don’t think we want them here. But let me think some more about it. After I read the Stephen Paul Miller book (is he the brother of John David Smith?).
If you say “share the nifty” again, I’m going to break into gross, dominating laughter.
I just went to the “edit comments” section of DE’s wordpress page—I don’t have privileges to edit comments, but for some reason I can move them to another post. So I moved my ill-considered comment above to a post I wrote, where I do have privileges, & deleted it.
>We’re just trying to bore any potential crossover audience to death.
And here I thought we were laughing inappropriately.
Who cares whether RS links to whatevs or not?
Happy holidays, Michael.
Happy holidays. Tomorrow the high in Chicago is supposed to be 13 degrees. Fahrenheit. The temperature at which souls wither. But at least it will be a white Hanukkah.
Please delete all my internet comments from 4 pm eastern time 12.09.09 back to 1996. Thanks.
Henry, I could do that, but you would still be banned from the Buffalo listserv. Those people don’t think linearly!
>Please delete all my internet comments from 4 pm eastern time 12.09.09 back to 1996. Thanks.
Henry, this is the best internet comment you’ve made in thirteen years.
Wait, is Ron linking to Whatevs.net now?
Share the nifty!
Dot org. Piping Hot Content For Your Sexy Why Am I Doing This.
I’m going to move all of Jordan’s comments over to Kent’s John Barr post.
>Wait, is Ron linking to Whatevs.net now?
Well, he does seem to link to everything that shows up with “Silliman” on his Google Alert. And I mentioned him twice in that post!
Whatev.
>>Please delete all my internet comments from 4 pm eastern time 12.09.09 back to 1996. Thanks.
>Henry, this is the best internet comment you’ve made in thirteen years.
Who am I? Why do I have this long white beard? Why am I holding a meerschaum? What IS a meerschaum?
>I’m going to move all of Jordan’s comments over to Kent’s John Barr post.
Funny you should mention that. I’m going Christmas shopping with John this weekend. One stop at Border’s: He’s buying copies of the Fanon Reader for all his relatives, and I’m buying copies of Eileen’s latest for all of mine. Then we’re going to the mate bar.
>Henry, I could do that, but you would still be banned from the Buffalo listserv. Those people don’t think linearly!
Happy Hula-Hoops, Michael. Happy Fruit Loops. Happy Chicago Loop. May Buffalo get more snow than Chicago this time. Amen.
True story. I was shovelling snow this morning on the front walk, and what comes up in my shovel?
A hundred dollar bill!
there I was, for like half an hour, on my hands and knees, pawing through the snow. Nothing more, but I can’t complain.
> A hundred dollar bill
I’ve heard of people finding them in white stuff, but never quite like that.
>A hundred dollar bill!
they call ‘em “snow-fakes” in Ontario. Better go into the warming-house, sit down & have some hot cider, Kent.
I know it sounds incredible.
Cocksucker! I shouted.
Can we just circle back and marvel that at a poetry reading in New York City, somebody decided it would be a good idea to
HAVE A QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION??????
OMRTTTCUWADAH
>Cocksucker! I shouted.
Please, Kent. This is a serious discussion site. If you want to make comments conducive to vulgar chortling in trochees & dungarees, go on over to Harriet. Otherwise I may have to delete all my future comments from the worldwide web forever & ever. I mean it.
“Can we just circle back and marvel that at a poetry reading in New York City, somebody decided it would be a good idea to
HAVE A QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION??????”
YouTube has changed the paradigm, Jordan. Share “the nifty”.
> YouTube has changed the
I wrote a poem about this the other day!
I’d post it, but I’m too depressed about Maud Newton and Bookslut pointing toward the post that inspired this post.
>Can we just circle back and marvel that at a poetry reading in New York City, somebody decided it would be a good idea to HAVE A QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION??????
Not until you admit that editors at the New Yorker would have taken out the comma.
>If you want to make comments conducive to vulgar chortling in trochees & dungarees, go on over to Harriet.
Trochees? Henry, I’m disappointed in you.
“Cocksucker! I shouted,” is two amphibrachs.
> taken out
Or added one between that and at?
Here’s the question I would have asked: “Why are we spending a Saturday afternoon doing anything other but adoring our loved ones? Is this a grotesque parody of religion or something?”
Also, if I were there, and again, I wasn’t, so I really don’t know what happened, but I might have asked a follow-up: “If I report to the reeducation camp of my own volition, will I be treated better or worse than if they show up at my door and take me away?”
Then I’d probably ask for some modeling tips, product hints, etc.
Quick quiz: Who posting to this thread knows who was reading with Ariana Reines.
Bonus question: Without googling now, name one publication by Ariana Reines.
>Or added one between that and at?
No. I know the New Yorker is crazy for commas before prepositions, but the PP there is clearly restrictive. They would have just taken the comma out, I suspect.
But on a serious note, and since Jordan offers what he would have asked, I will candidly offer what I think I would have asked, had I been grilled by Nada Gordon, or Eileen Myles, or whomever, as to why I chose to laugh when the poet said the word “cock”:
“Um, What the fuck business of yours is it, you uptight little twit of a poetry cop, why I laughed when I I did?”
Or at least I would have slapped my forehead and said, two blocks down the street, Damn, Why didn’t I think of asking *that*?
> I would have asked
You and everyone else whose experience of the event is filtered through the Jezebel post.
>Trochees? Henry, I’m disappointed in you.
>“Cocksucker! I shouted,” is two amphibrachs.
The person who posted this, Kent Johnson, may be correct about the scansion of the phrase quoted : but he is misinformed about chortling, which scans consistently, over time (we are talking centuries here) & across most inflected languages, as TROCHEE’D.
I would normally address this person, Kent Johnson, directly, but, first of all, I don’t speak directly with anyone who uses that kind of language, &, secondly, I don’t think Kent Johnson is who he says he is.
Has anyone besides Milton considered that the pursuit of fame is strictly a form of idolatry? I mean of self-idolatry? That is, it is the worship of this earthly bodily form, which is destined to pass away. A spiritual danger to the soul, that is.
Silly people. This is a love story. Girl hates “poetry;” girl meets poet who hates “poetry;” girl overcomes obstacles thrown in their way by “friends;” by the end they’re holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. This is right out of a Taylor Swift script.
Jordan said:
>You and everyone else whose experience of the event is filtered through the Jezebel post.
It seems pretty clear to me (from the initial account, the recording, and the vicious comment at the Jezebel blog by one of the participants) that there was a group attempt to verbally mug and humiliate certain “outsider” attendees at the Bowery reading. The victims of this were deemed guilty, the record shows, of laughing at the wrong time during the reading of a poem. The vulgar PC censure directed their way represents Stalinist behavior through and through, and deserves to be strongly called out.
That said, my comment above was written under the influence of anger. And though I think some version of the retort I imagined would’ve been entirely justified in the actual circumstances, I probably shouldn’t have entered such graphic language here. I’ve very rarely use off-color language in comment boxes, and using it in such directed way is actually something of an internet first, for me, I believe.
But the conduct exhibited at the Bowery reading seems both reprehensible and insidious to me. And it should be prominently noted.
Actually, that’s one interpretation. Fine, but just one. I listened all the way through and didn’t sense that. Not that poetry readings can’t feel constrained in that way…
“But the conduct exhibited at the Bowery reading seems both reprehensible and insidious to me. And it should be prominently noted.”
Really? Really?
Why do I suspect that when they finally drag us all up against the wall for wasting our lives on the internet, and the subcomandante yells “Fire!” a non-trivial contingent of the condemned will lend their last breaths to the words, “That’s just your opinion!”?
“when they finally drag us all up against the wall for wasting our lives”…
I just ran into Michael Gizzi on the street. Transcript of our conversation:
MG: I saw your name somewhere… I forget… well, you’re everywhere…
HG: [sigh] been very… lately…
MG: it was something about Keith Waldrop. You were defending him… I thought, ‘hey this is good’… turned out to be you…
HG: I’ve been very silly on the internet lately [sigh]… for the last 15 years [sigh]…
MG: Well, what else is it good for?
>Actually, that’s one interpretation.
Sure. It’s the right one. Others are wrong.
>Really? Really?
Yes. Yes.
Empathy fail all around — the laughers, the audience-interrogators, the laughers-as-grievance-airing-blog-posters, the audience-interrogators-as-defensive/aggressive-blog-commenters, the blog-commenters-who-weren’t-there-interrogating-the-audience-members-who-were, etc etc. Me too.
Merry Christmas!
I used to get stage fright in the junior high drama club. Severe stomach cramps. I think this is a love story about stage fright. But maybe I’m being overly subjective.
Empathy fail
But that’s the problem with acting like cops: it only encourages more of the same, all the way out to the supermeta squad car I’m writing from now.
I don’t see why I have to have been at some event to form an opinion on what happened there. EM’s contemptible response to Jenna in the comments stream tells me all I need to know. Jenna’s right, Eileen’s wrong. Period.
That first sentence is meant less seriously than the ones that follow. Although I did form an opinion about this year’s Country Music Awards without actually attending the event.
> I don’t see why
Judge not?
> But that’s the problem
Point taken, dipped in chocolate, packed in gift box and wrapped, sent 2-day air.
What’d Burroughs say, scratch an American, find a cop?
If they were laughing rudely, so what.
Unless, as I suggested before, the Saturday readings are a secular church thing.
Whose idea was that, I.A. Richards, maybe? that poetry could only survive as a secular version of religious practice.
Still, the analogy doesn’t change the facts – some people laughed at something that sure as hell sounds at least partly funny to me. Then some other people said ‘who are you to be laughing.’
That’s the nightmare I had the night before I read in that series the first time, 1995 I think? that they chased me out of the Ear Inn and submachinegunned me.
Then there was the time right before Kenneth died that Alan Davi*s heckled my reading of one of Kenneth’s last poems.
What is it about religion that brings out the worst in people.
By the way, Kent, there’s a context for all those remarks about shopping in that Jezebel post. It makes me smile, the idea of anyone strolling up the Bowery with boutique-y shopping bags in 1995. Muerte to Starbucks and the Gap indeed.
If they were laughing rudely, so what.
Exactly. You stand up in front of a crowd, you take your chances. I thought it was always thus, but somewhere along the line something (the cosseting of coterie-batting? defensive masochism?) made poets think admiration a thing to be deserved, not earned.
Yes, I’d say there is plenty there about the occasion to justify a response. In any case, if “being there” were a prerequisite to commenting on things, we’d have very little to comment on. Others who *were* there are free to jump in and counter the concerns, of course. We might have an interesing discussion.
I agree with Bobby’s observation that maintaining silence on something like this (not directed at Jordan– he’s made some excellent remarks) amounts to a kind of passive encouragement of the behavior in question. The bigger problem, as I see it, though I know it’s not the most popular view to have, is that the actions at this reading could be seen as a symptomatic outburst of certain group-think, cliquish predispositions that are quite well-entrenched on the post-avant scene.
That’s just the way it works, some might say. That’s the way *some* people want it to work, is what I would say…
> symptomatic outburst
Co-sign.
> might have an interesting discussion
And then again wouldn’t we be more likely to have another round of interrogations and hysterics.
In my experience, people who make a point of saying they hate poetry or poetry’s gone down the wrong path are poets themselves.
The more I look at this from a distance, the more I think Jenna Sauers stopped in at the Bowery because she wants someone to read her poems.
Yeah, this is the thing for me: “Judge not” doesn’t apply if it’s true that some people laughed at something that was funny & then some other people got all National Review’s-worst-nightmare-about-PC on their ass. Screw that. I’m laughing on the outside, bee-yotch. And I’m judging.
> doesn’t apply
It doesn’t?
Nah. Judging is underrated.
>I agree with Bobby’s observation that maintaining silence on something like this…amounts to a kind of passive encouragement of the behavior in question.
Assuming I interpreted his remark accurately! He might have meant it a bit differently.
No, I don’t think I share your didactic mood, Kent. I thought the scene Jenna described was ridiculous and wanted to say so. I’m paddling desperately to avoid the group-therapy whirlpool that caused this whole mess.
>poetry’s gone down the wrong path
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
>Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
Ah, but you know, close reading shows Frost actually says (he’s a sly one!) that the paths really *weren’t* the same.
Have to disagree. My favorite part about teaching that poem is showing the kids that Frost is actually subtly critical of the “road less traveled by” ethos. Ooh, look at me, I am going down this slightly more worn path, where I might stub a toe or step on a bee! Who’s laughing! Let the laughers stand up!
“The Road Less Traveled By” qualifies as one of Bok & Bobby’s 2-sided cryptograms.
Ahem. Do you mean to refer to “The Road Not Taken,” by the American poet Robert Frost?
Um, yeah, of course, Michael, that’s the road I didn’t take. QED, or something.
“less worn” not more.
>The more I look at this from a distance, the more I think Jenna Sauers stopped in at the Bowery because she wants someone to read her poems.
Corollary of this theory : the high tension in the room was generated by the desire of each member of the audience to be performing INSTEAD of the featured artist.
Corollary to the corollary: When everything’s performative, what good is performance?
Well, on occasion it leads to cannibalism, which is strongly marked for value in some gluten-free cultures.
> the desire of each
On second thought I want to edit this – the high tension in every room is caused by the irritation of every poet in the world not to be the one performing – limiting it to the people in the specific audience is, as we’ve seen, a mistake.
On another note, will someone please tell Jon Favreau to stop making the President say “Make no mistake.”
another
Heh.
>On another note, will someone please tell Jon Favreau to stop making the President say “Make no mistake.”
On a 3rd note : MAKE NO MISTAKE, the “You Know” Virus (YKV – highly contagious) originated in the desire, y’ know, of millions of people (especially NPR talking heads) to SOUND LIKE OBAMA. Talk about performance envy!
> Corollary
Co-sign.
> underrated
Noted.
Wait, wait, seriously, I typed quickly and didn’t really read the lines you quoted, which are key to the now worn “revisionist” reading, and I meant *were* the same, not *weren’t*–the reading I mean (and that you mean) is right in my old Voices and Visions book, and it’s the reading I teach the kids, too. I mean everyone teaches it now. There’s an essay in the Columbia Encyclopedia of American Poetry, twenty years ago, or so, where someone first offers the now accepted interpretation– can’t remember his name. This comment sounds totally unbelievable now. But I REALLY don’t have a Frost poster of two roads diverging in a wood on my wall.
A man driving in Vermont comes to a fork in the road with two signs to White River Junction. He asks a farmer standing there if “it makes any difference which road I take.” The farmer replies: “Not to me it doesn’t.”
Too bad that farmer wasn’t at the poetry reading.
Let the laughers stand up!
And the cheese stands alone …
If that is representative, farmers in Vermont are more polite to city slickers than farmers in Illinois.
> I don’t see why I have to have been at some event
> to form an opinion on what happened there.
Of course you don’t! In fact, it’s easier if you weren’t.
I should have said, I don’t see why I have to have been at some event to form an objectively true idea of what happened there.
Oddly apropos:
I never thought I’d hear Kent say anything bad about the Midwest!
A suggestion: get offline and confront youselves in solitude and fight it out and see if you might actually have some poetry in you. I mean, it seems pretty doubtful to me, but you never know.
Suggestion: give up EVERYTHING for poetry.
speaking of the midwest…
I just wrote an open letter to Franz Wright.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/12/the-best-poetry-of-the-year/#comment-26796
p.s. This was a foolish message, which I’m trying to get Harriet to delete right now. Oh, blogs…
Let it be, Henry, let it be.
Gone with the dust devils, Jordan. I had watched the new “Taking of Pelham 1-2-3″ & had imbibed too much Jim Beam. Denzel Washington trying to talk calmly with John Travolta seemed similar to these tense dialogues with Franz Wright. But I then threw way too much personal family data into that Open Letter. Deep-6′d. But thanks. I should just let the FW thing be, for the holidays at least.
Drinking and posting don’t mix, true, but it was a sweet sound note. Ah well.
Well, ol’ Franz & I are now “under moderation” at the Harriet blog. That’s fine – I was getting distempered, I suppose. Plus ca change. Poets are silly troublemakers who ought to follow the protocols of good literary & personal behavior more carefully. I guess I should be making a “best of” list, or writing a “sum-up” of the decade, or some such drivel. Sail on & happy holidays everybody!
You & Franz should start up yr own blog called “Lariat”! Or “Ozzie”! & then you can write open letters to Don Share & Travis Nichols that they will never read! Btw, you’re both now on moderation here too! Take that! Put that in yr Buffalo Bills cap & smoke it! Just kidding! About smoking a cap! Those fibers are probably carcinogenic!
You’ve got to quit smoking those expensive black jeans, Michael. It’s the fibers, man – grown in Mexico.
The 2 best poets in America – one famous, the other a nobody (what was that guy’s name again? Fritz?) – on moderation at the Poetry Foundation. How terribly ironic… what does this say about the future of poetry in the next decade? I’m afraid the prognosis is not froggy.
All good things in moderation, or; whatever.
Yes! Yes! Good things! OK, signing off here for 5 minutes or so
Please bear with me, kindly DE hosts & friends, while I meditate yet a little more on the recent FW/HG collision. Maybe I have been within my rights to call Franz on it, in that public way; & maybe it brought some things to light, & som e of it was pretty funny. But I can’t say I feel all that good about it.
I don’t think Kent Johnson would have written that sort of “open letter”, though FW has been more verbally contemptuous toward KJ than toward me. KJ is sensitive to certain emotional dimensions; he probably found my grandstanding unkind, & as usual, egocentric.
Franz Wright can speak crudely & haughtily & disdainfully… yet he was communicating a principle (let’s call it the corruption-of-poetic value-by-superficial-&-complacent-intellectual-blather principle). & I would say that while he has a very strong intuitive poetic gift & sensibility – just as his father did – he’s certainly not wise to the ways of glib internet back & forth : or, he simply rejects those ways.
I respect that position, &, to some extent, identify with the principle. & we who are habituated to digital & virtual semi-relationships & interactions may find it difficult to appreciate that some people outside the reverb dome do not feel obliged to play nice or be polite.
I myself, coming from Minnesota Nice Central, & also never having learned a martial art, would rather be polite. I believe in good manners & showing respect to others, even though I can be a very mean weasel sometimes (ask my 3 younger brothers).
Ultimately however there is something above & beyond poetry, above & beyond ourselves, to which we ought to devote our hearts & minds & souls & strength. & this is the source that brings peace & rest & delight & wisdom & courage & &…. Franz or Henry or Kent or Michael or anyone may, in their innermost counsel & deepest heart, hold some person or truth or principle in the pinnacle of honor & personal devotion, their holiest of holies…
well, let’s keep that in mind as we argue about who or what is right or wrong. Angels we have heard on high.