Radical Collages

24 The Nation. July 2/9, 1988 - not in the sense of which persons, but rather persons of what order? How Radical Collages will they be constituted,understand their own “individuality,” and relate HANK LAZER Language writing challenges Ameri- this to such audiencesas each attempts can poets to be something other than to construct? Such questions qeboth ou will not find the poems of ornanients to the national culture and to literary and social. ‘language poets”in The Arner- resist what Laura Riding once called Silliman, who worked for a number of ican Poetry Review, The New “the forced professionalization of poet- years inthe California prison movement Y Yorkei or Poetty; you will sel- ry.” In The New Sentence, a collection and is currently the executive editor of dom see their work reviewed there or in of essays,Ron Sillirnan reminds us, Socialist Review, argues that The New York Times; nor will many of thembe offered teaching positions or the primary ideologicalmessage of poetry lies not its explicit content, readingsthrough the M.F.A. industry , IN THIS REVIEW in political though that may be, but in and theassociated writing programs. the attitude towardreception it de- But for overtwenty years, in maga- THE NEW SENTENCE, By Ron mands of the reader. It is this “attitude zines such as Jogiars (1964-65), Toftel’s Sillimn. Roof Books. 209 pp. Pa- toward information,’’ whichis carried (1971-81), This (1971 to the present) and per $10. forward by the recipient. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (1978-Sl), For Silliman, -tics must be concerned the language poets have been buildinga LIT. By Ron Silliman. Potes & Poets Press. 70 pp. Paper $7.50. with the process by which writing is or- poetry network outside the universities ganized politically into literature,” and and official verse culture. By now, this ARTIFICE ABSORPTION. “there can be no suchthing as a formal movement(based principally in New OF problem in poetry which is not a social York City and inthe San Francisco bay By Charles3emtein. Singing Horse Press. 71 pp. Paper $5. one as well.” area) has given us a body of writingthat Silliman, who has published thirteen may bethe most significant in American books of poetry, has been at work on a TfigSCIPHTST.’ByCharles Berrt- . poetry since the modernists.Readers massive project The Alphabet stein. & Moon Press. 179 pp. called since unfamiliar with language writingwill, in Sun 1980. He has completed seventeen of The $16.95, Paper $11.95. all probability, initially read this new Alphabefs twenty-sixbooks, of which poetry with frustration and anger. But FURTHER READING Lit (for the letter X”) is the twelfth. Lit this discomfort, a common reaction to typifiesSilliman’s structuralist work: new art generally, is analogous to the The book consists of twelvesections, antagonism to the poetry of John Ash- IN THE AMERICAN TREE. Edited Ron Silliman. Ndtidnal each with a formal relationship to the bery fifteen years ago orto the writings by number twelve. The guiding structural of Eliot and Found earlier in the cen- Poetty Foundation. 628 pp. $45. Paper $18.95. concept for Lit is stated in section eight, tury. Language writingtoo calls for new from Thoreau’s Journal: “Let there be reading skills. as many distinct plants as the soil and Following upon the most adventur- “LANGUAGE’ POBTRIES. Ed- ited by Douglas Messerli. New the light can sustain.” ous work of Gertrude Stein, Louis Zu- In spite of its careful constructions, kofsky, William Carlos Williams and Directions. 192 pp. $21.95. Paper $8.95. Lit feels neither rigid nor constrained. Jack Spicer,language writing can be SUiman’swriting is fun to read: Its seen as an oppositional literary practice DISTRIBUTION pleasure liesin the gradual unfoldingof that questions many of the assumptions intricate forms and in the mix of puns, of mainstream poetry. Instead of con- The Segue Foundation, 303 East declarations,sounds and sights from sidering poetry as a staging ground for our daily environment,the range of ref- the creation and expression of an “au- EighthStreet, New Pork, NY 10009. erences from philosophy to baseball. In thentic” voice and personality, language the course of Lit, we encounter an out- poetry arises out of an “exploded self,” rageous array of sentences: ”Hjstoryleads blursgenre boundaries (not only the SmU Press Distributidn Inc., 1814 Sari Pablo Avenue,Berkeley, to the t-shirt”; “Between language and boundary between poetry and prose but CA thought/stands cop”; “A minor leaguer 94702. a also the ones between poet and critic, to be named Later”; “I don’t intend to between poetry and criticism) and seeks homogenize my meaning for the sake of Sun & Moon Press, P.O. Box actively collaborative relationships be- enemy”; “The shadowof Stein cross- 481 170, Los Angels, 90048- an tween reader and writer. If there is a CA es the text.” As with the repetition and central assumption in language writing, 9377. modulation of basic rhythm and melo- it is that language is experience-engen- dies in the minimalist music of Philip dering, rather than that the writer’s task “Poetry is part of a larger, oppositional Glass and Steve Reich, key words and is to find language to re-present experi- strategy and cannot beviewed as an end sentences echo throughout Lit, provid- ences that, somehow, exist outsideof or in itself.” His coritribution to language inga pleasing familiarity and recur- prior to language. writing and to our particular momentin rence. Silliman’s humor partakesof the literary histofl is to fuse the aesthetic exuberant, deflatingcoolness of the Hank Lazer’s essays have appeared in and the political: postmodern, whether he is parodying the VirginiaQuarterly, Southern Review, The problem of poetry at the end of proverbial- “Natureabhors a dachs- Boundary 2 and elsewhere. the 20th century is who shall write it, hund”-or parodying the moderns: “I -.July2 /9, 1988 The Nation. 25 kn0w.a houseof mud and wattles made “point scratching paper’s skin”; midway 1 (no I don’t)’’; “Tamed by Milton, I lie in the book, “A/young Asian manwear- I on Mother’s head”; “make it noise”;and ingthick glasses watchesme write this I “The antennae of the race have been through the window of the laundromat “How to tell you how much YS I snapped off by idle youth.” where/two small boys circle the wash- means to me? Not hard atall. I Silliman, who never graduated from ers, playing tag”; near the book’s end, I just tell youhow breathlessly I college but who, by the time he was 21, “activity grounded in its own proceed- I awat each copy, how enthu- I had hadpoems accepted by Poetry, ing,bleeding store-bought ink onto siastically I tell my friends about It, how quickly I devour I Chicago Review, Southern Review, Tri- spongy page.” the contents.I have thorough- I Quarter& and others, can employ a con- There is a distinctlyutopian strain to ly enjoyed each copy smce its I ventionallylyrical style-“India my In- Silliman’s writing, perhaps because‘?he fmt appearance 1~1my mall- I diana, say that particulars do not fade nor writercannot organize her desires for box . I thank you for sendmg I rust consumed in their owndust, or that writing without some visionof the world YS to me so 1 can resubscrlbe I memory’s fair, an old funeral barelythe toward which one hopes to work, and to not only your magazine but to yourphilosophy of the I scene of thought’s return”-but the dis- without having some conceptof how lit- erotic.” I play of a lyrical bauble is not his goal. erature might participate in such a fu- JOYCE WOODY I Instead, he immerses us in a welter-of ture.” Silliman’s writing inspiresus pre- Llncoln Park MI I L details, dictions, awarenesses and per- ciselybecause of its kind of labor: I spectives, as in the fifth paragraph of “Among the several social functions of I the final section of Lit: poetry is that of posing a model of un- The yard understood as a mixture of alienated work: it stands in relation to motives, porch paint spotting sage and the restof society both as utopian possi- ’ spider, sawdust and old boards kill- bility and constant reminder of just how I Journal of Erotlc Arts I ing the lawn, strange bird half yodels bad things are.” I ~l6uIJS&l in the plum tree against the sound of In contrast to Silliman’s poetryof the a garden hose inside a trash can or declarative sentence, Charles Bernstein’s I another bird’s higher trill, ears absorb writing presents greater initial stylistic while the eye scans, skinsenses the difficulties, in part because it blurs the fog’s damp, butt upon the step, sound boundaries between poetry and philos- of a broom in which driveway, wind felt in eyebrow’s hair, here in the little ophy. The Sophist, his most recent col- things (who I am), three flies articulate lection of poetry, attempts to undo the the sky betweenporch & tree, poetry is damage that hasaccumulated since that this thought thus, body but a .Western culture absorbed Plato’s fear metaphor (who I was) for a medical of poetry. Silliman describes Bernstein’s model of that thing lit. Of late much stance as one that enables him “to ‘liber- work, little light, leads humor stutter- ate’ philosophy from its contextof pro- ing home, getthe lead out (of the pen- fessional pedantry by preferringthe de- cil, the penis), the point scratching centralized,economic marginality of paper‘s skin seen to signify mind means poetry as the discourse through which the made marks the maker‘s mask (meet to proceed.” In Artifice Absorption, science), ear stitched to side of head, of hard wood weds floor to foot (I am a book-length essay on poetics written not that), float from word to word as in the form of a poem, Bernstein de- if there were a reason, as if there were clares his “insistence/thatpoetry be reason,beyond as and es.

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