The Making of a Radical Poetics: Modernist Forms in the Work of Bob Cobbing : Elements for an Exegesis of Cobbing’S Art
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ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output The Making of a Radical Poetics: Modernist Forms in the Work of Bob Cobbing : Elements for an Exegesis of Cobbing’s Art https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40209/ Version: Full Version Citation: Jackson, Mark Anthony (2016) The Making of a Radical Poet- ics: Modernist Forms in the Work of Bob Cobbing : Elements for an Exegesis of Cobbing’s Art. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email 1 The Making of a Radical Poetics: Modernist Forms in the Work of Bob Cobbing Elements for an Exegesis of Cobbing’s Art Mark Anthony Jackson PhD Department of English and Humanities Birkbeck College, University of London, 2016 I, Mark Jackson, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. _______________________________________________ 2 Abstract initially into approximate Ichronological survey Cobbing’s phases. considerable I discern formal and varied and aesthetic output, placing traits and it their development over time. I attempt to place the work within wider poetic and artistic traditions, namely avant-gardism, the British Poetry Revival, sound and visual poetry, and the exploration of artistic form. I propose an understanding of flow as an intersection of two axes: linear temporality (flow time) which exists outside of social time, and multidimensional or constellatory spatiality which is generated by certain artistic works. The body bridges social time and flow time through creative gestures and by unifying temporal elements. I trace the features of abstraction as they emerged throughout roughly the first half of the twentieth century in visual art, sound poetry and lexical poetry. I define poetic and artistic form, noting that radical works explore traditional boundaries of space, and discusses the politics of form. I examine theories of perception to arrive at a synthesis of form and perception in what I term the Event, where the engaged perceiver participates with the radical work in what constitutes a revolutionary activity. I include close Jade-Sound Poems, Domestic Ambient Noise and a sound Container Leaks readingsperformance of Cobbing’s of , applying my findings with regard to flow, abstraction, the politics of form, perception and space. which constitutes a new poetics and exemplifiesThe thesis avant-gardist concludes practice that Cobbing’s as a breaking work, out of old forms, can inspire radical modes of living if we engage creatively with the world. I believe this work provides a comprehensive challenging work in relation to addresses to formexegesis and forperception, understanding an interpretation Cobbing’s which is currently missing from the critical field. 3 Contents AcknowledgementsIntroduction …………………………………………………………………………... Cobbing: À L’aventure A Practical Demon…………………………………………………………………….. stration ………………………………………………………16 Terminology ………………………………………………………………………… 23 ChapterLaventure 1 ……………………………………………………………………………. Figure of the Creative 25 1942- ……………………………………………………………………. 33 1964-c.1970 …………………………………………………………………………… . 39 c.1970-mid- ………………………………………………………………………… 53 Mid-1980s-earlys 1990s ………………………………………………………………… 62 Early 1990s-2002 …………………………………………………………. 64 …………………………………………………………………. 68 ChapterDisrupting 2 the Solid, Sensible Business ………………………………….. (Towards a Vocabulary for) Flow 72 Flow and Theories of Selection………………………………………………….. .. 75 …………………………………………….... 77 Lines ……………………………………………………………………………………. Memory ………………………………………………………………………………… SpatialTemporal Axis Axis of Flow…………………………………………………………………o Thresholds and thef Flow Dissolution …………………………………………………………… of Socia 1 l Time ………………….…...... BodiesFlow as …………………………………………………………………………………… the Intersection of Bodies: Memory and Recognition . 101 The Elements of Flow: A New Poetics? … …………………………………… 4 Chapter 3 Mapping the Features of Abstraction …………………………………….…….. 111 Towards the Void ……………………………………………………….………... 116 Mallarmés Void …………………………………………………………………… 120 Cubism,K Futurism and Rayism ………………………………………………. 130 andinsky and Malevich ………………………………………………………. 133 Towards Abstraction in Sound Performance …………………………. 142 Williams and Stein ……………………………………………………………….. 154 The Instrumentalisation of Language ……………………………………. 156 ChapterTowards 4 a New Poetics? ………………………………………………………. Towards a Synthesis of Form and Perception 158 The Problem ……………………………… The Politic of Form …………………………………………………………..... 167 Revolutions of Form ………………………………………………………….......… 186 The Perce of the Word …………………………………………………….. .... 188 The Eventiving Body …………………………………………………………. 203 Chapter 5 …………………………………………………………………...………. Cobbing Synthesised The Critical Fiel………………………………………………………………….…. Jade-Sound Poemd ………………………………………………………………….. Domestic Amb s ……………………………………………………………….... 237 Containe ient Noise …………………………………………………….. 244 Cobbing Syntr Leaks ……………………………………………………………..…….. 248 Conclusion hesised …………………………………………………………… Beyond a New Poetics 252 ………………………………………………………………..… Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………… 5 List of illustrations . 34 Fig. Shore Poem……………………………………………………………………………… ... .. .…….... 47 Fig. 3 Thefrom G Destruction…………… in Art …………………………………………………… .… 49 Fig. 4 from Destruction in Art ……………………………………………………….…… 50 Fig. 5 from Whississippi ……………………………………………………… ……. 51 Fig. 6 Pablo Picasso: Les………………………………………………………………… Demoiselles d’Avignon . … Fig. 7 Carlo Carrà: Demonstration for Intervention…………………………… in the War .….. Fig. 8 Kasimir Malevich: Black Square ……… …... Fig. 9 Pages from Jade-Sound Poems …………………………………………..… 221 Fig. 10 from Domestic Ambient Noise………………………………………………… (November 1994), 1st variation . 238 Fig. 11 from Domestic Ambient Noise (November 1994), 5th variation . 240 All Bob Cobbing illustrations included are reproduced with the kind permission of the Cobbing family. 6 Acknowledgements There are a number of people without whom this work would never have reached completion. My supervisor Will Rowe has been an inspiration and showed immense dedication to the work. His belief in me has been humbling. Big thanks to Mike Diss and Caroline Edwards for reading and advice, and to Tim Fletcher for the extended loan of Cobbing material. And special thanks to Alayne, Milo and Ruby for putting up with my library disappearances and countless hours at the computer. 7 Introduction Cobbing: À L’aventure If one perceives art as anything other than strange, one does not perceive it at all. - Theodor Adorno1 Adventure Aventure Aventureux Adventure Aventure Aventureuse Adventurous A laventure - Bob Cobbing2 A Practical Demonstration In The Poethical Wager Joan Retallack mentions Bob Cobbing in a paragraph-long list of artists which includes Gertrude Stein, Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Virginia Woolf, Stéphane Mallarmé, Filippo Marinetti, Kurt Schwitters, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, Jackson Mac Low and Ian Hamilton Finlay.3 the femaleThis with is Retallacks the silenced, list of some lost female literary revolutionaries, not merely, equating literally, women. Such a list invisible,neo-feminist unintelligible contextualisation other – of it, reveals the marginal nature of , ands Retallackswork and the prestigious company of radical, twentieth-century artists RetallackCobbing rightly identifies it to be part of. By most standards these work, if increasingly less so by the passing artists strangenessof time that and Adorno their locatesbroad influence, a cultural can value, be saida shared to be terrain strange. between And it artist,is in this perceiver and artwork wherein transfigurations may take place. Retallack continues: 1 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 262. 2 Bob Cobbing, , in ABC in Sound, 5th edn (London: Writers Forum, 1994) (no page numbers). 3 Joan Retallack, The Poethical Wager (London: University of California Press, 2003), p. 136. The A Poem 8 art, particularly literature, helps form the direction and quality of attention, the intelligences, the senses we bring into contact with contemporary experience. A related question concerns the ways in which contemporary poetics invites us into an ethos of the the key. This is an imaginativecollaborative activity making that of materially meaning. Making,affects the poesis, life one is lives always in language How can writing and reading be integral to making sense and newsense[…]. (sometimes taken for nonsense) as we enact an ongoing poetics of daily life?4 spanning six decades of the twentieth century and poking its head Cobbingsaround the work, corner of the current one, as difficult and, indeed, strange as adherents and detractors alike find it, provides occasion for us to explore ideas. I argue that Retallacks Cobbingsperception. visual These poetry characteristics and sound link performance to Modernist launch concerns considerations around form of attention and and abstraction. Underpinning this is a provocation of the senses which, though Modernist in character, connects with our contemporary experience, in particular a collaborative making of meaning between writer, reader, text and writing collaborators. Retalla critical perspective– is valuable in attempting to make sense, indeed newsense,cks In a rallying call to all commentators on of Cobbings challenging work. 5 poetry, Retallack writes that she is in