The best American poem of past decade
M.H.Benders
I like to watch
I put my hand in my pocket
What do I feel
One hundred and ten stories
Of concrete and steel
I like to watch
That plane-shaped hole
Really gets me hot
But the big ball of fire
Is the money shot
I like to watch
I like to watch
The plane going in
I like to watch
The flame shooting out
People dive into the street
While I play with my meat
My steel melted
and my tower's coming down
The New York skyline
Will never be the same
But the guys who flew those planes
Had fucking amazing aim
I like to watch
There must have been a reason
But I don't understand
Why they hit the Pentagon
Instead of Disneyland
I like to watch
I like to watch
The plane going in
I like to watch
The flame shooting out
It's raining broken glass
While I sit on my ass
My steel melted
and my tower's coming down
I'd almost had enough
Of watching planes explode
Until they showed it in reverse
And I had to shoot my load
I like to watch
Now my hand's all sticky
And I can't find a rag
I guess I'll have to use
The american flag
I like to watch
Chris Korda - 'I like to Watch'
e e cummings
Not to far passed:
my father moved through dooms of love
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm
newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots
..stopping here, but it nicely goes on:
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C07040174
by e e cummings
--
Tom Bishop -- http://Poetry.Here.Nu
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
--Philip K. Dick
"M.H.Benders" <ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote in message news:3F116456...@kannibaal.nl...
Simon
"M.H.Benders" <ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote in message
news:3F116456...@kannibaal.nl...
Peter J Ross
<ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
all the way through.
Here, have some obita dicta:
The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
American.
The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
they could.
The other poets worth reading are English (e.g. Chaucer, Pope),
Scottish (e.g. Burns, Dunbar) or Irish (e.g. Yeats, Swift).
Pretty nearly everything written in English during the past 200 years
is bilge (e.g. Famous Seamus the writer of prose about bogs, Tennyson
the bee-murmurer, and the ineffable Street-cred Ted who never quite
admitted to himself that he wanted to shag crows).
Read Chaucer, Marlowe, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Burns and Gray. If you
insist on reading 20th-century poets, read Pound, Larkin and Wendy
fucking Cope!
Alteratively, read what your curriculum tells you to read, and become
yet another "correct" dullard like Strand, Kennedy, Hugo and Laux.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
(This is not a troll, this is just me being sick to the eye teeth of
the poncy "your-line-breaks-don't-quite-work" culture. Martijn, you
have converted me.)
--
PJR :-)
mhm34x8
M.H.Benders
Peter J Ross wrote:
Maybe even the best american poem ever:
It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
all the way through.
Korda spents most of his time in Holland and makes his records in
Germany, so he's actually a decent american.
It was actually a song lyric.
The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
they could.
I have noticed the same tendency. Not that I think Pound, the Berlusconi
of pompous rhyme, was even worth mentioning.
Most of these people don't survive a comparison with Kraftwerk anyway.
M.H.Benders
M.H.Benders
Peter J Ross wrote:
> The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
> Pound
Wasn't Pound just a stereotypical American weirdo?
M.H.Benders
Peter J Ross wrote:
> The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost,
Frost was a peanut compared to Brel.
M.H.Benders
Gonçalo Rodrigues
wrote:
>On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:53:26 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
><ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
>alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
>
>>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
>
>It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
>all the way through.
>
>Here, have some obita dicta:
>
>The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
>American.
>
Agreed, Geoffrey Hill is very good. Add J. Ashbery, american and still
living, and my favourite american poet of the second half, A. R.
Ammons -- he died recently, though (2001?) -- and you get all the
living or recently-deceased english-writing poets that matter.
>The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
>Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
>they could.
I don't know Robinson or Berryman. Eliot is so good that is a category
of its own. Pound, I think he is a prig and never much liked him (this
is a real personal bias, I know...) and Frost, well... he has his
moments.
You forgot Wallace Stevens, probably the only one that compares to
Eliot.
I haven't decided on Crane yet.
>
>The other poets worth reading are English (e.g. Chaucer, Pope),
>Scottish (e.g. Burns, Dunbar) or Irish (e.g. Yeats, Swift).
>
Of those I would retain Pope and Yeats (whose philosophy I despize). I
haven't read Chaucer (english not being my native lingo reading him is
kinda hard...) and Swift is a prose master more than a poet. I read
his Modest Proposal every six months as a therapeutical act in purging
the heart and the mind with its acidic sarcasm-beyond-sarcasm. I
haven't read either Burns or Dunbar.
You forgot Emily Dickinson. Simply the most singular and original of
american poets. And the extraordinaire Robert Browning.
Ah, and I was forgetting Hopkins.
Whitman? Who the hell is he? :-)
>Pretty nearly everything written in English during the past 200 years
>is bilge (e.g. Famous Seamus the writer of prose about bogs, Tennyson
>the bee-murmurer, and the ineffable Street-cred Ted who never quite
>admitted to himself that he wanted to shag crows).
>
>Read Chaucer, Marlowe, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Burns and Gray. If you
>insist on reading 20th-century poets, read Pound, Larkin and Wendy
>fucking Cope!
>
>Alteratively, read what your curriculum tells you to read, and become
>yet another "correct" dullard like Strand, Kennedy, Hugo and Laux.
>
>YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
>
>(This is not a troll, this is just me being sick to the eye teeth of
>the poncy "your-line-breaks-don't-quite-work" culture. Martijn, you
>have converted me.)
Despite our differences, what it always amazes me is how poetry
readers who strike me as having formed an opinion of their own tend to
agree. Their favouritisms tend to cluster around a common canon.
With my best regards,
G. Rodrigues
De nederlandsche Cacaofabriek
> You forgot Wallace Stevens, probably the only one that compares to
> Eliot.
I really like Wallace Stevens.
>
> I haven't decided on Crane yet.
>
> >
> >The other poets worth reading are English (e.g. Chaucer, Pope),
> >Scottish (e.g. Burns, Dunbar) or Irish (e.g. Yeats, Swift).
> >
>
> Of those I would retain Pope and Yeats (whose philosophy I despize).
Yeats is boring, unimaginative kitsch. I saw a program on t.v. the other
day of which the basic message seemed to be 'Yeats slept in this
guesthouse for 3 days'. Anyone who evokes that sort of programs can't
possibly have been any good.
M.H.Benders
Dale Houstman
Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 06:15:06 +0100, Peter J Ross <gad...@meow.org>
> wrote:
>
>
>>On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:53:26 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
>><ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
>>alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
>>
>>
>>>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
>>
>>It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
>>all the way through.
>>
>>Here, have some obita dicta:
>>
>>The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
>>American.
>>
>
>
> Agreed, Geoffrey Hill is very good. Add J. Ashbery, american and still
> living, and my favourite american poet of the second half, A. R.
> Ammons -- he died recently, though (2001?) -- and you get all the
> living or recently-deceased english-writing poets that matter.
>
Crap. I matter.
> I don't know Robinson or Berryman. Eliot is so good that is a category
> of its own. Pound, I think he is a prig and never much liked him (this
> is a real personal bias, I know...) and Frost, well... he has his
> moments.
Lots of them.
> You forgot Emily Dickinson. Simply the most singular and original of
> american poets. And the extraordinaire Robert Browning.
Dickinson is an acid test: people seem to either adore her or despise
her. I find her magnificent, and she has been an influence for a long
time now.
dmh
Dale Houstman
De nederlandsche Cacaofabriek wrote:
> "Gonçalo Rodrigues" wrote:
>
>
>>You forgot Wallace Stevens, probably the only one that compares to
>>Eliot.
>
>
> I really like Wallace Stevens.
You're not the only one. John Ashbery and myself seem to like him also.
>
> Yeats is boring, unimaginative kitsch. I saw a program on t.v. the other
> day of which the basic message seemed to be 'Yeats slept in this
> guesthouse for 3 days'. Anyone who evokes that sort of programs can't
> possibly have been any good.
>
> M.H.Benders
I rather like that, although I can't really think of anyone "celebrated"
who hasn't inspired at least one very bad television program: TV seems
to exist primarily to deseminate the merely adequate at best, and its
biographical attempts in particular appear to be dedicated to turning
interesting subjects into dry apples.
dmh
Julie Carter
wrote:
>> You forgot Emily Dickinson. Simply the most singular and original of
>> american poets. And the extraordinaire Robert Browning.
>
>Dickinson is an acid test: people seem to either adore her or despise
>her. I find her magnificent, and she has been an influence for a long
>time now.
Well, I don't actually despise her, but I do consider her occasionally
unreadable.
--
Julie Carter
Martijn Pije Benders
And, of course, Brel was a watermelon rind compared to Sara Umm Zaid,
the greatest of America's oppressed and over-looked Islamic Poets.
I wrote a poem of pure genius once, after a particularly grueling pije
eating contest in Rotterdam.
THE PIJE NOT EATEN
Two pijes side by side on a table wood,
And sorry I could not eat both
And yes, I'm a connoisseur, long I ate
And looked down at one as long as I could
To where it bent the pije pan;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better taste,
Because it was marangue and I wanted same;
Though as for that the pije cooling there
Had cooked them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
On plates no fork had removed nor did they lack.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how one pije tastes that way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two pijes side by side on a table, and I-
I took the one less tasted by,
And that was the delicious difference.
M.P.Benders
Michael Cook
"Gonçalo Rodrigues" <op7...@mail.telepac.pt> wrote in message
news:1dbahvciul6tedepr...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 06:15:06 +0100, Peter J Ross <gad...@meow.org>
> wrote:
>
> >On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:53:26 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
> ><ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
> >alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
> >
> >>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
> >
> >It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
> >all the way through.
> >
> >Here, have some obita dicta:
> >
> >The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
> >American.
> >
>
> Agreed, Geoffrey Hill is very good. Add J. Ashbery, american and still
> living, and my favourite american poet of the second half, A. R.
> Ammons -- he died recently, though (2001?) -- and you get all the
> living or recently-deceased english-writing poets that matter.
Geoffrey Hill, well, good night Irene. The guy is one of the best of a new
class of mediocrity, saddled with a language that he was taught, his poetry
seems a struggle to find common ground, almost apologetic.
> >The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
> >Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
> >they could.
i agree
> I don't know Robinson or Berryman. Eliot is so good that is a category
> of its own. Pound, I think he is a prig and never much liked him (this
> is a real personal bias, I know...) and Frost, well... he has his
> moments.
>
> You forgot Wallace Stevens, probably the only one that compares to
> Eliot.
you could be right...
> I haven't decided on Crane yet.
>
> >
> >The other poets worth reading are English (e.g. Chaucer, Pope),
> >Scottish (e.g. Burns, Dunbar) or Irish (e.g. Yeats, Swift).
> >
>
> Of those I would retain Pope and Yeats (whose philosophy I despize). I
> haven't read Chaucer (english not being my native lingo reading him is
> kinda hard...) and Swift is a prose master more than a poet. I read
> his Modest Proposal every six months as a therapeutical act in purging
> the heart and the mind with its acidic sarcasm-beyond-sarcasm. I
> haven't read either Burns or Dunbar.
>
> You forgot Emily Dickinson. Simply the most singular and original of
> american poets. And the extraordinaire Robert Browning.
>
> Ah, and I was forgetting Hopkins.
>
> Whitman? Who the hell is he? :-)
Historian, hedonist, failed nurse?
>
> >Pretty nearly everything written in English during the past 200 years
> >is bilge (e.g. Famous Seamus the writer of prose about bogs, Tennyson
> >the bee-murmurer, and the ineffable Street-cred Ted who never quite
> >admitted to himself that he wanted to shag crows).
i agree
> >
> >Read Chaucer, Marlowe, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Burns and Gray. If you
> >insist on reading 20th-century poets, read Pound, Larkin and Wendy
> >fucking Cope!
I'll have look up Cope
Larkin, the forgotten poet
rightly deservers a spot on your list
> >
> >Alteratively, read what your curriculum tells you to read, and become
> >yet another "correct" dullard like Strand, Kennedy, Hugo and Laux.
> >
but, i like Strand!
Dale Houstman
Hell, I'm "occasionally" unreadable! She wrote a lot and - I suspect -
sometimes rather quickly.
dmh
Aidan Tynan
Peter J Ross wrote in message
<09m9hvohh2s8n86n9...@4ax.com>...
>On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:53:26 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
><ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
>alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
>
>>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
>
>It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
>all the way through.
>
>Here, have some obita dicta:
>
>The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
>American.
Don't forget JH Prynne, and Peter Reading.
Anyway ALL know Andrew Motion is the greatest living English poet.
>
>The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
>Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
>they could.
>
>The other poets worth reading are English (e.g. Chaucer, Pope),
>Scottish (e.g. Burns, Dunbar) or Irish (e.g. Yeats, Swift).
>
>Pretty nearly everything written in English during the past 200 years
>is bilge (e.g. Famous Seamus the writer of prose about bogs,
Ahem. Read Station Island. Prose? Hardly, although he's a fine prosaist. And
he hasn't written a bog poem in years, btw. Helen Vendler's mongraph is a
good place to start if you want to understand Heaney's work.
Tennyson
>the bee-murmurer, and the ineffable Street-cred Ted who never quite
>admitted to himself that he wanted to shag crows).
>
>Read Chaucer, Marlowe, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Burns and Gray. If you
>insist on reading 20th-century poets, read Pound, Larkin and Wendy
>fucking Cope!
>
>Alteratively, read what your curriculum tells you to read, and become
>yet another "correct" dullard like Strand, Kennedy, Hugo and Laux.
There is nothing incorrect or extracurricular in the list you presented, all
the figures are very much canonical. You've simply whittled the canon down a
bit to suit your tastes rather than dispense with it. And why the hell isn't
Milton on your list?
-Aidan
Aidan Tynan
Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
<1dbahvciul6tedepr...@4ax.com>...
>
>Despite our differences, what it always amazes me is how poetry
>readers who strike me as having formed an opinion of their own tend to
>agree. Their favouritisms tend to cluster around a common canon.
Doubtful. I've never met anyone who likes JH Prynne and Cesar Vallejo as
much as I do, and in the end that's a good thing. Canons are for the weak, I
prefer to dive unprepared into the sea of texts.
-Aidan
Aidan Tynan
De nederlandsche Cacaofabriek wrote in message
<3F1536C5...@cacaofabriek.com>...
>> Of those I would retain Pope and Yeats (whose philosophy I despize).
>
>Yeats is boring, unimaginative kitsch.
Joyce felt the same way, but until you can write as well as Joyce (or Yeats)
you should probably tone down your opinion.
I saw a program on t.v. the other
>day of which the basic message seemed to be 'Yeats slept in this
>guesthouse for 3 days'.
That kind of thing is common. There's a house in Ireland where Wittgenstein
lived for a few years, and it's now a hotel where guests scour the place for
the pages he supposedly used to block up drafty walls.
-Aidan
Gonçalo Rodrigues
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
First, the fact that you never met someone who liked Prynne or Vallejo
is rather irrelevant for what I said. But more importantly, canons are
for the strong; nay, for the strongest. From Homer to our days the
western canon is composed of literally hundreds of texts, the
survivors of an aesthetic war. And even if the only thing we did was
reading who would have the imaginative strength to tackle all those
texts, some of them fantastically difficult, neigh impenetreable?
I count myself among the weak. There are inumerous books that are very
important , but that I just do not possess the key to unlock them
(Virginia Woolf is a good example). There are canonical writers whose
philosophy is so at odds with what I believe that it has become
impossible to read them (Nietzche is a good example). And the list of
inadequacies as a reader goes on.
In the end, I follow Dr. Johnson, and view literature in general and
poetry in particular, as giving "what comes near to us, what we can
turn to use."
Dale Houstman
I hardly ever run across anyone who is conversant in some of my favorite
poets: Rimbaud, Andre Breton, Desnos, and several obscure Russian
avant-gardists I can never quite recall the names of: something like
Khelnikov? And so on. These sorts of "little canons" are rarely
exhaustive enough to embrace any sizeable audience. A lot of my
favorites end up in collections of "outsider" artists.
dmh
M.H.Benders
Aidan Tynan wrote:
>>>Of those I would retain Pope and Yeats (whose philosophy I despize).
>>
>>Yeats is boring, unimaginative kitsch.
>
> Joyce felt the same way, but until you can write as well as Joyce (or Yeats)
> you should probably tone down your opinion.
Well, until you can actually read dutch you'll just be just another
clueless irish nozzle. Probably.
M.H.Benders
M.H.Benders
Dale Houstman wrote:
> I hardly ever run across anyone who is conversant in some of my favorite
> poets: Rimbaud,
That's because he's french and Americans can read only english. And
being 5 % of the world population gives them the right to act like a
majority, even when the rest of the world actually speaks english far
better than they do.
M.H.Benders
Dennis M. Hammes
Canons are for the strong, and they're not about liking or disliking
them; that's why they're for the strong. They're about learning how
what was said was said, and that, too, is why they're for the
strong.
But the weak, under the influence of Authority, will go on
parroting what was said in the manner it was said because it was
said that way.
And go on calling it an education.
And this matters how?
If the canon can't turn the strong into parrots, how can the
parrots?
(Not to be confused with the merely headstrong, who don't turn
into anything at all.)
--
------(m+
~/:o)_|
To change the world
be that change.
http://scrawlmark.org
M.H.Benders
Dennis M. Hammes wrote:
> If the canon can't turn the strong into parrots, how can the
> parrots?
For crissake, get some medication, Hammes.
M.H.Benders
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Peter J Ross wrote in message
> <09m9hvohh2s8n86n9...@4ax.com>...
> >On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:53:26 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
> ><ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
> >alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
> >
> >>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
> >
> >It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
> >all the way through.
> >
> >Here, have some obita dicta:
> >
> >The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
> >American.
>
> Don't forget JH Prynne, and Peter Reading.
>
> Anyway ALL know Andrew Motion is the greatest living English poet.
Poetry in Motion?
See his gentle sway?
A Wave out on the ocean
Could never write that way?
>
> >
> >The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
> >Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
> >they could.
> >
> >The other poets worth reading are English (e.g. Chaucer, Pope),
> >Scottish (e.g. Burns, Dunbar) or Irish (e.g. Yeats, Swift).
> >
> >Pretty nearly everything written in English during the past 200 years
> >is bilge (e.g. Famous Seamus the writer of prose about bogs,
>
> Ahem. Read Station Island. Prose? Hardly, although he's a fine prosaist. And
> he hasn't written a bog poem in years, btw. Helen Vendler's mongraph is a
> good place to start if you want to understand Heaney's work.
>
> Tennyson
> >the bee-murmurer, and the ineffable Street-cred Ted who never quite
> >admitted to himself that he wanted to shag crows).
> >
> >Read Chaucer, Marlowe, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Burns and Gray. If you
> >insist on reading 20th-century poets, read Pound, Larkin and Wendy
> >fucking Cope!
> >
> >Alteratively, read what your curriculum tells you to read, and become
> >yet another "correct" dullard like Strand, Kennedy, Hugo and Laux.
>
> There is nothing incorrect or extracurricular in the list you presented, all
> the figures are very much canonical. You've simply whittled the canon down a
> bit to suit your tastes rather than dispense with it. And why the hell isn't
> Milton on your list?
>
> -Aidan
Possibly because he's of far more interest to the understanding of
Protestantism than to the understanding of poetry.
By contrast, Dante can be taken for his poetry (depending on how
much poetry the reader has, and parts of him remain poetry no matter
how much the reader has), his Catholicism (less, though, than
Milton, who is often merely polemic), or his Period Italian Politics
(the single greatest hazard to his poetry in any case, but then when
has that ever been otherwise? Politics began early on to destroy
Pound, and occasionally ruins even Frost).
Aidan Tynan
Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
>On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 18:41:52 +0100, "Aidan Tynan"
><atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
>><1dbahvciul6tedepr...@4ax.com>...
>>
>>>
>>>Despite our differences, what it always amazes me is how poetry
>>>readers who strike me as having formed an opinion of their own tend to
>>>agree. Their favouritisms tend to cluster around a common canon.
>>
>>Doubtful. I've never met anyone who likes JH Prynne and Cesar Vallejo as
>>much as I do, and in the end that's a good thing. Canons are for the weak,
I
>>prefer to dive unprepared into the sea of texts.
>>
>
>I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
>
>First, the fact that you never met someone who liked Prynne or Vallejo
>is rather irrelevant for what I said. But more importantly, canons are
>for the strong; nay, for the strongest. From Homer to our days
First off, the notion of literature, not to mention the literary canon, is a
recent one. The invention of the canon had more to do with nationalist
politics than good literature.
the
>western canon is composed of literally hundreds of texts, the
>survivors of an aesthetic war.
This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
"literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency, a similar
transparency to the one which prevented people prior to Marx conceiving of a
materialist dialectical history. Since the very notion of literature is a
bourgeois one, the canon itself has the same history of the bourgeois state,
so I'd argue -- just as Benjamin famously argued that civilisation is a
document of barbarity -- that the canon manifests the exclusions on which
any period in Western history since the invention of literature has based
itself. The idea of a literary canon today has become untenable, and its
concept is almost embarrassing for English Lit departments. Indeed, the idea
of preaching a canon has become so anachronistic that doing so attracts
opprobium and more attention than is warranted (cf Harold Bloom). Those who
cling to the idea of a canon are those who cling to conservative politics,
nationalism, puritanism, and religion, since the canon is a doctrine, a
thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith, ruthless
exegesis and loyalty. As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the
idea of a canon, a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
an explanatory model for the immense textual universe. I can see perfectly
clearly why Nietzsche's philosophy is abhorrent to you.
-Aidan
Aidan Tynan
Dale Houstman wrote in message <3F15974F...@citilink.com>...
>
>
>Aidan Tynan wrote:
>> Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
>> <1dbahvciul6tedepr...@4ax.com>...
>>
>>
>>>Despite our differences, what it always amazes me is how poetry
>>>readers who strike me as having formed an opinion of their own tend to
>>>agree. Their favouritisms tend to cluster around a common canon.
>>
>>
>> Doubtful. I've never met anyone who likes JH Prynne and Cesar Vallejo as
>> much as I do, and in the end that's a good thing. Canons are for the
weak, I
>> prefer to dive unprepared into the sea of texts.
>>
>> -Aidan
>>
>>
>
>I hardly ever run across anyone who is conversant in some of my favorite
>poets: Rimbaud, Andre Breton, Desnos, and several obscure Russian
>avant-gardists I can never quite recall the names of: something like
>Khelnikov?
Khlebnikov :) I came across him about a year ago while investigating strange
Russian books. I also like Kruchenykh and Remizov.
And so on. These sorts of "little canons" are rarely
>exhaustive enough to embrace any sizeable audience.
Which is why I like them, and why I dislike the big canons.
-Aidan
M.H.Benders
Aidan Tynan wrote:
> This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
> social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
> "literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
> is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency....
The canon is simply popidol culture for older people. There is some
great need to replace the idols of teenage culture with idols old
geezers can identify with - prefferably long dead because the more dead
they are the more perfect they can imagine them. Witness the insane
bleating of people like P.Hill when you dare make a suggestion or two
about their imperfections.
M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill
Anyone can read Dutch -- it's just English with half the words
removed.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>
>
>Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote:
>> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 06:15:06 +0100, Peter J Ross <gad...@meow.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:53:26 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
>>><ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
>>>alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
>>>
>>>It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
>>>all the way through.
>>>
>>>Here, have some obita dicta:
>>>
>>>The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
>>>American.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Agreed, Geoffrey Hill is very good. Add J. Ashbery, american and still
>> living, and my favourite american poet of the second half, A. R.
>> Ammons -- he died recently, though (2001?) -- and you get all the
>> living or recently-deceased english-writing poets that matter.
>>
>
>Crap. I matter.
>
>
>> I don't know Robinson or Berryman. Eliot is so good that is a category
>> of its own. Pound, I think he is a prig and never much liked him (this
>> is a real personal bias, I know...) and Frost, well... he has his
>> moments.
>
>Lots of them.
Way lots.
>> You forgot Emily Dickinson. Simply the most singular and original of
>> american poets. And the extraordinaire Robert Browning.
>
>Dickinson is an acid test: people seem to either adore her or despise
>her. I find her magnificent, and she has been an influence for a long
>time now.
Amen. Nor should one overlook Whitman. I don't /like/ his poetry -- I
think he was hopelessly self-indulgent -- but for those who are
willing to plow through the verbiage thickets to attain them, there
are some fine plants indeed.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>
>
>Peter J Ross wrote:
>
>Maybe even the best american poem ever:
>
>It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
>all the way through.
>
>Korda spents most of his time in Holland and makes his records in
>Germany, so he's actually a decent american.
>
>It was actually a song lyric.
>
>
>The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
>Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
>they could.
Well, of course. I mean, the German-American Bund notwithstanding,
there wasn't much of a market for fascists in America, now, was there?
Particularly psychotic ones like Pound.
Yup, you an always find someone twirly-eyed, mean, and moustachioed in
the old country -- or horse-faced, inbred, and overweening. A great
place, truly, for the angry young this-or-that, or the proud stuffed
intestine. Had it not become so terribly insignificant, a handful of
Americans would probably /still/ want to live there.
>I have noticed the same tendency. Not that I think Pound, the Berlusconi
>of pompous rhyme, was even worth mentioning.
>
>Most of these people don't survive a comparison with Kraftwerk anyway.
>
>M.H.Benders
Josh
Rose Kelleher
Peter J Ross wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:53:26 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
> <ben...@kannibaal.nl> chewed laurel leaves and spoke to
> alt.arts.poetry.comments as Apollo dictated:
>
> >Maybe even the best american poem ever:
>
> It's actually readable. I'm surprised. I don't often read modern poems
> all the way through.
>
> Here, have some obita dicta:
>
> The only living poet worth reading is Geoffrey Hill. He's English, not
> American.
>
> The only dead American poets worth reading are Robinson, Frost, Eliot,
> Pound and Berryman. Mostly they left their country of birth as soon as
> they could.
>
> The other poets worth reading are English (e.g. Chaucer, Pope),
> Scottish (e.g. Burns, Dunbar) or Irish (e.g. Yeats, Swift).
>
> Pretty nearly everything written in English during the past 200 years
> is bilge (e.g. Famous Seamus the writer of prose about bogs, Tennyson
> the bee-murmurer, and the ineffable Street-cred Ted who never quite
> admitted to himself that he wanted to shag crows).
>
> Read Chaucer, Marlowe, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Burns and Gray. If you
> insist on reading 20th-century poets, read Pound, Larkin and Wendy
> fucking Cope!
>
> Alteratively, read what your curriculum tells you to read, and become
> yet another "correct" dullard like Strand, Kennedy, Hugo and Laux.
>
> YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
>
> (This is not a troll, this is just me being sick to the eye teeth of
> the poncy "your-line-breaks-don't-quite-work" culture. Martijn, you
> have converted me.)
>
> --
> PJR :-)
> mhm34x8
Three questions:
1. What does "poncy" mean?
2. I thought you didn't like Wendy Cope. I loved her, then hated her, and
now I've settled for just moderately liking her.
3. Do these line breaks make me look fat?
Rose Kelleher
Aidan Tynan wrote:
I've heard that before, but usually from people who are already demonstrably
familiar with "The Canon." Don't you think it's a good idea to have some sort of
common foundation to work from? If for no other reason than to make discussion
easier.
I think it's a lot like what people always say about choosing a partner -- that
looks aren't important. What they usually mean, really, is that looks are only
the start of what they want.
As for me, I'm just canon fodder. I'm not afraid to read other poets (and why
would anyone be? Oooh, are the tough guys from that other poetry neighborhood
going to steal my lunch money?), so not "weak" in that sense, but perhaps you
mean weak as in not well read, in which case bingo.
Joshua P. Hill
<atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>
>Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
><344bhvkend5b2oc3f...@4ax.com>...
>>On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 18:41:52 +0100, "Aidan Tynan"
>><atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
>>><1dbahvciul6tedepr...@4ax.com>...
>>>
>>>>
>>>>Despite our differences, what it always amazes me is how poetry
>>>>readers who strike me as having formed an opinion of their own tend to
>>>>agree. Their favouritisms tend to cluster around a common canon.
>>>
>>>Doubtful. I've never met anyone who likes JH Prynne and Cesar Vallejo as
>>>much as I do, and in the end that's a good thing. Canons are for the weak,
>I
>>>prefer to dive unprepared into the sea of texts.
>>>
>>
>>I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
>>
>>First, the fact that you never met someone who liked Prynne or Vallejo
>>is rather irrelevant for what I said. But more importantly, canons are
>>for the strong; nay, for the strongest. From Homer to our days
>
>First off, the notion of literature, not to mention the literary canon, is a
>recent one. The invention of the canon had more to do with nationalist
>politics than good literature.
No, it goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. Earlier, really,
given the propensity of even pre-literate societies to pass on
favorite stories as part of their culture; but we call what came later
"literature" because it happened to be written, and so was preserved
in a relatively immutable form.
The notion that this had primarily to do with nationalist politics is
rather far out; the canon tends as often as not to be international in
nature, but more than that, to the extent it exists, nationalism is as
often as not absent in the nature of the people who made and continue
to make literature; -- or, where it is present, it is but one tiny
part of it, as in the case of Shakespeare. (Those who were most
jingoistic may sometimes create works that are canonical -- but that
jingoism is always working against them, since by its nature a
canonical work has to appeal to people of different times, places, and
cultures.)
>the
>>western canon is composed of literally hundreds of texts, the
>>survivors of an aesthetic war.
>
>This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
>social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
>"literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
>is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency, a similar
>transparency to the one which prevented people prior to Marx conceiving of a
>materialist dialectical history. Since the very notion of literature is a
>bourgeois one,
The notion of literature was an aristocratic one long before it was
adopted by the bourgeoisie, indeed, long before there was a
bourgeoisie.
> the canon itself has the same history of the bourgeois state,
>so I'd argue -- just as Benjamin famously argued that civilisation is a
>document of barbarity -- that the canon manifests the exclusions on which
>any period in Western history since the invention of literature has based
>itself. The idea of a literary canon today has become untenable, and its
>concept is almost embarrassing for English Lit departments. Indeed, the idea
>of preaching a canon has become so anachronistic that doing so attracts
>opprobium and more attention than is warranted (cf Harold Bloom). Those who
>cling to the idea of a canon are those who cling to conservative politics,
>nationalism, puritanism, and religion, since the canon is a doctrine, a
>thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith, ruthless
>exegesis and loyalty.
Aidan, you are far too smart for this stuff. You're letting yourself
be carried along by a mob spouting precisely the sort of ideological
claptrap you profess to dislike.
Think for /yourself,/ man! You've demonstrated, again and again, that
you have the intelligence to do so, but you seem so taken with the
authority of your preceptors that you never question their authority.
> As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the
>idea of a canon, a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
Do you really think that the only man ever to improvise a six-part
fugue wrote music which appealed to those whose capabilities were
"adequate"? The fellow who wrote symphonies at six?
Aidan, the "canonical" works were created by people of supernal
ability and skill, and they were recognized immediately by those of
similar ability and skill. And they were kept alive over the centuries
by those same people, while often wonderful but lesser works came,
created a sensation, and went.
If you cannot yet /hear/ this -- if you cannot yet /understand/ this,
not intellectually, but through appreciation of the works themselves
-- you are wasting your time studying literature or music or painting
or any other art, because it will have no more meaning to you than a
symphony has for the tone deaf -- it will be nothing but a bunch of
dried and crackling and faintly musty sheaves, to be decoded like
Linear B and emptily and endlessly pontificated upon like the ranks of
the seraphim and cherubim.
Anyone reasonably bright can regurgitate lit crit, or philosophy.
Learning to appreciate great art is harder, takes far longer;
certainly I didn't, when I was your age, and also cloistered
academically.
>an explanatory model for the immense textual universe. I can see perfectly
>clearly why Nietzsche's philosophy is abhorrent to you.
That "explanatory model" has been winning for some time now -- planes
fly, penicillin cures. You might ask yourself why so many of those who
are supposedly among our most educated deny that -- not scientists, of
course, who increasingly treat philosophers and other humanists with
much the same kindly uninterest one normally reserves for mentally
retarded cousins -- but those who deal with the sort of text that is
more susceptible to distortion.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Next: theoretical physics, as explained by the town fool.
Look, guy -- not everyone shares your limitations, mental, emotional,
or moral: some people are able to appreciate a triple fugue, just as
some are able to appreciate number theory and non-Euclidean geometry*.
______
*The psychologically astute will note that one killfiled individual
here, who most assuredly does appreciate a triple fugue, is also your
sole supporter and admirer (saving of course one of great ability who,
like Churchill with Stalin, allies himself with the monster only
insofar as it suits his political needs).
Can it be, then, that this individual -- that this most erudite of
erudites -- can it be that he /most loves/ what he /most disdains?/
/How/ now?
Can it be, that he most hates what most he loves?
Doth Apollo not dance secretly with /Pan,/ cloaked by general sleep,
dappled by moon and dimness, in the nighttime glade of dreams? How
now? -- And having tasted of the grape, doth not sun god forget the
sun, forget the Parnassan ascent, the awed sore trust of task, and
trip too sloshed with god of wood, all hoof and sweat and joy? -- How
now?
And do then not /day/ and /sobriety/ bring /regret,/ and /unwed
children?/
How now. Therein flawed, the drunken expustulations of Nietzsche;
therein blessed, the compass and the rule, and the wicked nuns that
give them thwack.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>That's because he's french and Americans can read only english. And
>being 5 % of the world population gives them the right to act like a
>majority, even when the rest of the world actually speaks english far
>better than they do.
Heh
Message brought to you by the dog that tried to quack
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Except in academia.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
What he said.
Josh
Aidan Tynan
Rose Kelleher wrote in message <3F16038C...@hotmail.com>...
>
>
>Aidan Tynan wrote:
>
>> Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
>> <1dbahvciul6tedepr...@4ax.com>...
>>
>> >
>> >Despite our differences, what it always amazes me is how poetry
>> >readers who strike me as having formed an opinion of their own tend to
>> >agree. Their favouritisms tend to cluster around a common canon.
>>
>> Doubtful. I've never met anyone who likes JH Prynne and Cesar Vallejo as
>> much as I do, and in the end that's a good thing. Canons are for the
weak, I
>> prefer to dive unprepared into the sea of texts.
>>
>
>I've heard that before, but usually from people who are already
demonstrably
>familiar with "The Canon."
What are you implying? :)
Don't you think it's a good idea to have some sort of
>common foundation to work from? If for no other reason than to make
discussion
>easier.
In that sense, the canon should only be a starting point, a means for
getting rid of it.
>
>I think it's a lot like what people always say about choosing a partner --
that
>looks aren't important. What they usually mean, really, is that looks are
only
>the start of what they want.
>
>As for me, I'm just canon fodder. I'm not afraid to read other poets (and
why
>would anyone be?
You'd be surprised. Harold Bloom often complains about his sacred canon
being tainted, and he directs this against feminist scholars mostly.
Oooh, are the tough guys from that other poetry neighborhood
>going to steal my lunch money?), so not "weak" in that sense, but perhaps
you
>mean weak as in not well read, in which case bingo.
I meant weak as in those who are unwilling to discover their own personal
canon, or those afraid of saying such and such a canonical writer isn't any
good.
-Aidan
Aidan Tynan
Joshua P. Hill wrote in message ...
>
>Aidan, you are far too smart for this stuff. You're letting yourself
>be carried along by a mob spouting precisely the sort of ideological
>claptrap you profess to dislike.
>
>Think for /yourself,/ man! You've demonstrated, again and again, that
>you have the intelligence to do so, but you seem so taken with the
>authority of your preceptors that you never question their authority.
We all have our mentors and influences, and if I seem to be spouting
ideological claptrap then it's only because I found humanist and liberal
interpretations of art and culture just as supremely ideological. I do think
for myself in that I'm constantly re-evaluating and revising my ideas, but I
dare say you probably think all us Marxist post-structuralist types all
sound the same anyway.
>
>> As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the
>>idea of a canon, a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
>
>Do you really think that the only man ever to improvise a six-part
>fugue wrote music which appealed to those whose capabilities were
>"adequate"? The fellow who wrote symphonies at six?
>
>Aidan, the "canonical" works were created by people of supernal
>ability and skill, and they were recognized immediately by those of
>similar ability and skill.
This is the kind of liberal humanist thinking that I became so distrustful
of a few years ago. It's simply not the type of interpretation I'm
interested in, not that I'm denying the abilities of a Bach or a
Shakespeare, but that there are different ways of examining art and culture,
ways that don't depend on valourising the interiority of the artist, ways I
that I find far more revealing and interesting. If I sound massively
revisionist, overambitious or associate too closely with academic trends
then it's because I'm young, over-eager and under-educated.
-Aidan
Rose Kelleher
Aidan Tynan wrote:
> Rose Kelleher wrote in message <3F16038C...@hotmail.com>...
> >
> >
> >Aidan Tynan wrote:
> >
> >> Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message
> >> <1dbahvciul6tedepr...@4ax.com>...
> >>
> >> >
> >> >Despite our differences, what it always amazes me is how poetry
> >> >readers who strike me as having formed an opinion of their own tend to
> >> >agree. Their favouritisms tend to cluster around a common canon.
> >>
> >> Doubtful. I've never met anyone who likes JH Prynne and Cesar Vallejo as
> >> much as I do, and in the end that's a good thing. Canons are for the
> weak, I
> >> prefer to dive unprepared into the sea of texts.
> >>
> >
> >I've heard that before, but usually from people who are already
> demonstrably
> >familiar with "The Canon."
>
> What are you implying? :)
>
LOL, you know very well I was including you in the "usually from people"
people.
>
> Don't you think it's a good idea to have some sort of
> >common foundation to work from? If for no other reason than to make
> discussion
> >easier.
>
> In that sense, the canon should only be a starting point, a means for
> getting rid of it.
>
> >
> >I think it's a lot like what people always say about choosing a partner --
> that
> >looks aren't important. What they usually mean, really, is that looks are
> only
> >the start of what they want.
> >
> >As for me, I'm just canon fodder. I'm not afraid to read other poets (and
> why
> >would anyone be?
>
> You'd be surprised. Harold Bloom often complains about his sacred canon
> being tainted, and he directs this against feminist scholars mostly.
>
I assume you mean feminist scholars who encourage others to read female poets
who aren't part of his tradition. He's probably not afraid of expansion, so
much as the idea that diversity will result in people's discarding the canon
entirely, so that we have no common core of poets -- literature professors
walking around saying, "Who's this Keats fellow that Bloom is always yammering
about?"
>
> Oooh, are the tough guys from that other poetry neighborhood
> >going to steal my lunch money?), so not "weak" in that sense, but perhaps
> you
> >mean weak as in not well read, in which case bingo.
>
> I meant weak as in those who are unwilling to discover their own personal
> canon, or those afraid of saying such and such a canonical writer isn't any
> good.
>
Hard to imagine such timid people exist. Maybe they just don't feel qualified
to say.
Just sharing the pov from the peanut gallery...
pandora
"Dale Houstman" <dm...@citilink.com> wrote in message
news:3F1589D9...@citilink.com...
>
>
> Julie Carter wrote:
> > On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 06:57:47 -0500, Dale Houstman <dm...@citilink.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>You forgot Emily Dickinson. Simply the most singular and original of
> >>>american poets. And the extraordinaire Robert Browning.
> >>
> >>Dickinson is an acid test: people seem to either adore her or despise
> >>her. I find her magnificent, and she has been an influence for a long
> >>time now.
> >
> >
> > unreadable.
> >
> >
> Hell, I'm "occasionally" unreadable! She wrote a lot and - I suspect -
> sometimes rather quickly.
I agree, however, a lot of what she wrote I like.
pandora
> dmh
>
M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill wrote:
>>The canon is simply popidol culture for older people. There is some
>>great need to replace the idols of teenage culture with idols old
>>geezers can identify with - prefferably long dead because the more dead
>>they are the more perfect they can imagine them. Witness the insane
>>bleating of people like P.Hill when you dare make a suggestion or two
>>about their imperfections.
>
>
> Next: theoretical physics, as explained by the town fool.
>
> Look, guy -- not everyone shares your limitations, mental, emotional,
> or moral: some people are able to appreciate a triple fugue, just as
> some are able to appreciate number theory and non-Euclidean geometry*.
You desperately need medication: you can't even distinguish between
idolising a person and listening to a fugue, nor can you understand that
a thing like a fugue has its own limitations. You're in a highly
delusional state of mind and as such having arguments with you is
nearout impossible - you've made yourself just another Hammes who
blabbers on and on about things that are unrelated to the subject being
discussed, and like Hammes you conceive yourself as the highest point of
refference - narcism run wild which produces the most uninteresting kind
of rational excrement.
M.H.Benders
Dennis M. Hammes
Fer chirssake, Benders, get your /own/ pie.
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 01:33:15 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
> <ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >Aidan Tynan wrote:
> >
> >> This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
> >> social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
> >> "literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
> >> is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency....
> >
> >The canon is simply popidol culture for older people. There is some
> >great need to replace the idols of teenage culture with idols old
> >geezers can identify with - prefferably long dead because the more dead
> >they are the more perfect they can imagine them. Witness the insane
> >bleating of people like P.Hill when you dare make a suggestion or two
> >about their imperfections.
>
> Next: theoretical physics, as explained by the town fool.
"Next"? SDR already explained Brown Matter on another thread.
Dennis M. Hammes
Yes. You can examine them the way the Tomble examines them, and
Generate a three-putt Invention on Hopkins the same way a tiger
wood.
"We'll take a little from here" *rip* "and a little from here"
*rip* "and..."
And turn it into shit, yes.
Two things about the Borge Method.
The composite /was not taped together/.
And Borge could play the original pieces...
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> "Aidan Tynan" <atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote in message news:<i3lRa.23376$pK2....@news.indigo.ie>...
> espouses a doctrine, no?
> I am finding more and more that I do not care for that doctrine.
>
> > a thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith,
> > ruthless exegesis and loyalty.
>
> on the tongue."!!!
>
> I agree with Josh, get away (pleease) from repeating what your
> professors and certain writers say. I will add, even if that break
> and that freedom results in you getting lower grades for awhile.
> Re-learn, remember, how to _think your own thoughts._
>
> That and really nothing else is the value of education, and of
> literature.
>
> > As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the idea of a canon,
>
> _actual_ canon, do they not?
>
> > a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
>
> intelligence -- to actually _understand_ the Western literary canon as
> it exists today. Next, add onto it what you encounter in comparative
> lit.
>
>
>
> > -Aidan
This is UseNet. We only add Kiddy Litter.
Dennis M. Hammes
Hence the gram-quacker pie crust.
Dennis M. Hammes
The big canons are 'way too loud for such small classrooms, anyway.
Gonçalo Rodrigues
<atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>>>Doubtful. I've never met anyone who likes JH Prynne and Cesar Vallejo as
>>>much as I do, and in the end that's a good thing. Canons are for the weak,
>I
>>>prefer to dive unprepared into the sea of texts.
>>>
>>
>>I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
>>
>>First, the fact that you never met someone who liked Prynne or Vallejo
>>is rather irrelevant for what I said. But more importantly, canons are
>>for the strong; nay, for the strongest. From Homer to our days
>
>First off, the notion of literature, not to mention the literary canon, is a
>recent one. The invention of the canon had more to do with nationalist
>politics than good literature.
>
It's a great boon of humility to be misunderstood. But it's even
better to be only half misunderstood.
The concept of canon, as a catalogue of approved texts is indeed
recent. It can be traced back to the eighteenth century. But the
conceiving of authors or texts as having transcended mere time and
mortality goes back to the greeks.
>This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
>social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
>"literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
>is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency, a similar
>transparency to the one which prevented people prior to Marx conceiving of a
>materialist dialectical history. Since the very notion of literature is a
>bourgeois one, the canon itself has the same history of the bourgeois state,
>so I'd argue -- just as Benjamin famously argued that civilisation is a
>document of barbarity -- that the canon manifests the exclusions on which
>any period in Western history since the invention of literature has based
>itself. The idea of a literary canon today has become untenable, and its
>concept is almost embarrassing for English Lit departments. Indeed, the idea
>of preaching a canon has become so anachronistic that doing so attracts
>opprobium and more attention than is warranted (cf Harold Bloom).
The misconception is only yours.
The Academia has to answer the question: What are we going to teach?,
and as such, the word canon does have a very brutal practical
importance. But I'm not interested in the literary academia -- If you
want to argue with them, be my guest.
Canon is always choice. For the ordinary reader it is a kind of
beacon, illuminating not only what should be read but, maybe even more
importantly nowadays, keeping in darkness what should not be read.
But, as with all important things in life, the self is the ultimate
arbiter.
I believe (and I am completely Harold Bloom-ian in this) that the
canonical choice was made by strong authors who arrived late and felt
themselves chosen by earlier strong authors. You seem to believe that
the choice was made by social institutions with less-than-aesthetical
reasons. Sure. I won't even bother to refute you.
I just doubt this difference has any practical consequences. I don't
know about Prynne, but Cesar Vallejo is a perfectly canonical author
(at least) in the spanish-speaking world, even if you have never met
anyone who likes him.
And looking at the list of authors in Dr. Johnson's "Lives of the
Poets", I wonder why the "bourgeois state" chose, say, Pope and
Dryden, and forgot Promfret and Yalden. Maybe you are up to the task
and champion these as two great undeservedly forgotten poets?
>Those who
>cling to the idea of a canon are those who cling to conservative politics,
>nationalism, puritanism, and religion, since the canon is a doctrine, a
>thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith, ruthless
>exegesis and loyalty. As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the
>idea of a canon, a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
>an explanatory model for the immense textual universe. I can see perfectly
>clearly why Nietzsche's philosophy is abhorrent to you.
This doesn't deserve any answer other than don't be foolish.
So, to end this already too long thread, I stand by what I said
earlier: For deep, long-time readers, their personal canons overlap
very much with the, necessarily fluid, western canon.
With my best regards,
G. Rodrigues
p.s: And please, as someone else remarked (albeit inadequately) the
world is more than just the United States.
Dennis M. Hammes
Akademe? "Nuts!"
Nothing was heard in the wood
but the hurrying pens of the canon.
Canon to left of them! Canon to right of them!
Into the forest primeval
Wrote the six hundred!
And seventeen panzer divisions
All quailed at the name of the canon
no matter how tiny they drew it.
But Priscilla still bloom'd in the dooryard,
"Why don't you speak for yourself, Josh?"
De nederlandsche Cacaofabriek
> > > This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
> > > social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
> > > "literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
> > > is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency....
> >
> >
> > The canon is simply popidol culture for older people.
>
> Not even for members of the MLA. The so-called canon is simply a survey
> of Western literature beginning with the Greeks. Or, perhaps now, beginning
> with the Gilgamesh epic.
Not even close. The canon was not created by authors or but by
institutions, and it serves the same function as the 'list of saints'
does in the catholic church' - it points a finger towards others to show
how they have to behave in order to be accepted as 'great' by the
vulgar. This 'list of saints' was not created by the saints themselves,
whomever they might be, but by authorities who felt that the vulgar need
a hierarchy above them in order to control their development. The
western canon is no more a 'simple survey' as the Bible is a 'simple
survey' of events that happened around the turn of the millenium. Most
of the authors in the so-called western canon are pretty lousy, but they
somehow represent the vulgarity people look for in literature. Hence
Keats, that dull sod with an old sow's imagination, gets canonized and
Burns not.
> > There is some great need to replace the idols of teenage culture with
> > idols old geezers can identify with -
>
> and you think old geezers identify with Aeschuylus and Thomas Mann (or
> have even heard of them
When Americans try to mention names they perceive as obscure I'm always
having the time of my life. Thomas Mann is one of the most well known
names in modern day literature, but hey, don't let that stop you from
being a didactic mammal.
M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill
Ah.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<scraw...@arvig.net.spumf> wrote:
>"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 01:33:15 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
>> <ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >Aidan Tynan wrote:
>> >
>> >> This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
>> >> social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
>> >> "literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
>> >> is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency....
>> >
>> >The canon is simply popidol culture for older people. There is some
>> >great need to replace the idols of teenage culture with idols old
>> >geezers can identify with - prefferably long dead because the more dead
>> >they are the more perfect they can imagine them. Witness the insane
>> >bleating of people like P.Hill when you dare make a suggestion or two
>> >about their imperfections.
>>
>> Next: theoretical physics, as explained by the town fool.
>
>"Next"? SDR already explained Brown Matter on another thread.
We don't even mention the Dark One's name hereabouts.
Anyway, the dark doesn't matter.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<in...@cacaofabriek.com> wrote:
>cythera wrote:
>
>> > > This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
>> > > social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
>> > > "literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
>> > > is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency....
>> >
>> >
>> > The canon is simply popidol culture for older people.
>>
>> Not even for members of the MLA. The so-called canon is simply a survey
>> of Western literature beginning with the Greeks. Or, perhaps now, beginning
>> with the Gilgamesh epic.
>
>Not even close. The canon was not created by authors or but by
>institutions,
Just more evidence that you know nothing of history.
>Most
>of the authors in the so-called western canon are pretty lousy
Hey, another quote for my Martijnisms file. Do you ever tire of making
a fool of yourself?
>When Americans try to mention names they perceive as obscure I'm always
>having the time of my life. Thomas Mann is one of the most well known
>names in modern day literature, but hey, don't let that stop you from
>being a didactic mammal.
Er, Cythera didn't mention those names because they were "obscure."
And what the hell is a "didactic mammal," a non-reptilian instructor?
/Another/ quote for my Martijinisms file; things are good.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>
>Joshua P. Hill wrote in message ...
>
>>
>>Aidan, you are far too smart for this stuff. You're letting yourself
>>be carried along by a mob spouting precisely the sort of ideological
>>claptrap you profess to dislike.
>>
>>Think for /yourself,/ man! You've demonstrated, again and again, that
>>you have the intelligence to do so, but you seem so taken with the
>>authority of your preceptors that you never question their authority.
>
>We all have our mentors and influences, and if I seem to be spouting
>ideological claptrap then it's only because I found humanist and liberal
>interpretations of art and culture just as supremely ideological. I do think
>for myself in that I'm constantly re-evaluating and revising my ideas, but I
>dare say you probably think all us Marxist post-structuralist types all
>sound the same anyway.
Had to think about that last a moment. It isn't really true: what you
say almost inevitably makes sense. I wish I could say that about all
postmodernists, but I've seen the worst kind of gibberish.
In fact, I'm far more apt to disagree with your /emphasis/ than what
you say. Forex, there's no question that political ideology (a sloppy
word, as always, so I've taken the liberty of making a guess as to
what you meant) plays a role in interpretations of art and culture.
But it is far from the primary role.
Einstein said that a theory should be simple, but not excessively so;
to the extent I disagree with your thought it's because I believe
you've adopted extreme positions that don't accurately reflect a much
subtler reality.
>>
>>> As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the
>>>idea of a canon, a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
>>
>>Do you really think that the only man ever to improvise a six-part
>>fugue wrote music which appealed to those whose capabilities were
>>"adequate"? The fellow who wrote symphonies at six?
>>
>>Aidan, the "canonical" works were created by people of supernal
>>ability and skill, and they were recognized immediately by those of
>>similar ability and skill.
>
>This is the kind of liberal humanist thinking that I became so distrustful
>of a few years ago. It's simply not the type of interpretation I'm
>interested in, not that I'm denying the abilities of a Bach or a
>Shakespeare, but that there are different ways of examining art and culture,
>ways that don't depend on valourising the interiority of the artist, ways I
>that I find far more revealing and interesting.
But I don't think that the appreciation of Bach and Shakespeare
depends on that sort of valorization, real though it has been in the
academic establishment, and partially justifiable as it is insofar as
the creation of great art so frequently requires struggle on the part
of the artist himself. In fact, I would argue that the overemphasis on
"quality" in art has done more to damage art in the last 100 years
than anything except perhaps its opposite extreme, the sold-out
commercialism that today characterizes so much popular art, since it
leads the "serious" artist to place himself /above/ the audience and
create instead for a self-perpetuating circle jerk of artists,
critics, and academics. But I invoked the extraordinary skill and
ability of the greatest artists merely as evidence for those who
cannot yet hear the genius within the works themselves (or in some
cases will never be able to hear), and to counterbalance the
assertion, made so often and so inaccurately by those unfamiliar with
the history of art, that the elevation of some timeless works is
somehow the product of the academic establishment.
>If I sound massively
>revisionist, overambitious or associate too closely with academic trends
>then it's because I'm young, over-eager and under-educated.
Well, yes. I was the same way when I was your age, and for the same
reasons, albeit the issues and doctrines were then as now largely of
their time -- or really, of the generation before, since teachers are
apt to teach the conclusions they reached when they themselves were
young.
Today's academic dogmas are largely a reaction to the issues of the
Vietnam years. What bothers me is that so many who teach them seem
unable or unwilling to place their own beliefs in that perspective, to
localize themselves within the dialectic and move on. One of the most
important things I learned from Nietzsche was the advantage of
questioning, ruthlessly, one's own values and assumptions, of arguing
for the other side. It is not a comfortable thing to do -- if it is
comfortable, you aren't doing it -- but I've found it immensely
productive.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
>"Aidan Tynan" <atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote in message news:<i3lRa.23376$pK2....@news.indigo.ie>...
>> since the canon is a doctrine,
>
>If true, then postmodernism is likewise a doctrine, or rather,
>espouses a doctrine, no?
>I am finding more and more that I do not care for that doctrine.
One of the things people like to stick the post-modernists with is the
contradiction between their insistence on the evanescence of doctrine
and their own adherence to it.
>> a thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith,
>> ruthless exegesis and loyalty.
>
>"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly
>on the tongue."!!!
>
>I agree with Josh, get away (pleease) from repeating what your
>professors and certain writers say. I will add, even if that break
>and that freedom results in you getting lower grades for awhile.
>Re-learn, remember, how to _think your own thoughts._
>
>That and really nothing else is the value of education, and of
>literature.
Agreed 100%, save that if I wanted an academic career, I'd keep my
mouth shut. Not that I've ever taken my own advice: mouths r us.
>> As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the idea of a canon,
>
>
>Well, according to this philosophy, said weaknesses help produce an
>_actual_ canon, do they not?
>
>> a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
>
>It takes a rather enormous amount of capability -- knowledge and
>intelligence -- to actually _understand_ the Western literary canon as
>it exists today. Next, add onto it what you encounter in comparative
>lit.
I remember doing it the other way around, too. I was so loaded up with
-- and frequently interested in -- the academic that the texts took a
back seat. Then, when I went back later and re-read them in a
cap-and-glown-free environment, I was delighted with the marvels they
revealed.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<op7...@mail.telepac.pt> wrote:
>So, to end this already too long thread, I stand by what I said
>earlier: For deep, long-time readers, their personal canons overlap
>very much with the, necessarily fluid, western canon.
It's remarkable, isn't it? Even if one assumes that some emphasize the
canonical works because they're more like to have read them or because
they believe they should, the correlation is far, far greater than
chance would suggest.
And deep and long-time has a lot to do with it. I find that, with
time, great works seem ever-richer and more delightful, while the
lesser ones fade away.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>I meant weak as in those who are unwilling to discover their own personal
>canon, or those afraid of saying such and such a canonical writer isn't any
>good.
In truth, every time I've done that last I've come to regret it,
because with further exposure to the work I've become increasingly
sensitive to what it is about it that's extraordinary. (Except for D H
Lawrence. D H Lawrence sucks!) That doesn't mean I have an /affinity/
for it -- there are lots of artists that I just don't like on a purely
personal level, Walt Whitman, say. But at the very least, I come to
understand what other people get from it, and what it's limitations
are, and, something that intrigues me more and more, how those
limitations sometimes contribute to its uniqueness and success.
Anyway, I doubt that very many lovers of great art discover it purely
because it's handed down from on high. How many works by Bocherini and
Smocherini and Tocherini did I listen to on my way to appreciation of
the musical canon? Thousands, literally, most of them pleasant, some
of them wonderful -- but, in the end, none of them Bach.
Josh
Rose Kelleher
"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
Sorry to interrupt, but that deserves a standing ovation from balcony seats.
Please continue.
Rose Kelleher
"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 04:30:02 +0100, "Aidan Tynan"
> <atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>
> >I meant weak as in those who are unwilling to discover their own personal
> >canon, or those afraid of saying such and such a canonical writer isn't any
> >good.
>
> In truth, every time I've done that last I've come to regret it,
> because with further exposure to the work I've become increasingly
> sensitive to what it is about it that's extraordinary. (Except for D H
> Lawrence. D H Lawrence sucks!)
I'm curious, why do you hate DHL so much? I think most of his poetry sucks, but
once in a while he produces fireworks that make you go, "Ahhh," and the rest is
forgivable.
If you're in the mood to rant, I'm listening.
Julie Carter
P. Hill <joshhill.R...@snet.net> view hallooed:
>Anyway, I doubt that very many lovers of great art discover it purely
>because it's handed down from on high. How many works by Bocherini and
>Smocherini and Tocherini did I listen to on my way to appreciation of
>the musical canon? Thousands, literally, most of them pleasant, some
>of them wonderful -- but, in the end, none of them Bach.
And thank god for that, because if you take how much you love Bach,
that's approximately half of how much I loathe him.
And no, I really don't think it's a matter of one of us being right
and the other wrong, or perhaps I should say that it doesn't *have* to
be such a matter.
The problem with the canon, with any canon, is that it presumes the
taste of the individual must, absolutely must, be subordinate to the
taste of a group.
--
Julie Carter
Aidan Tynan
cythera wrote in message ...
>> since the canon is a doctrine,
>
>If true, then postmodernism is likewise a doctrine, or rather,
>espouses a doctrine, no?
First things first, postmodernism encompasses a cultural frame (late
twentieth century west), historic antecedents (modernism and romanticism), a
critical sensibility (taken from Marx and later the Frankfurt school, the
idea that society can be the object of thought and critique) and a
scepticism of certainties regarding the autonomous nature of artworks,
artists and the grand truths of science and progress. Jameson calls
postmodernism a cultural logic for late capitalism. He describes getting
lost in a hotel a postmodern experience. It is no more or less a doctrine
than any other historico-cultural period and accompanying critiques, except
possibly that postmoderism realises its own artificiality, its own
autochthonous nature.
>I am finding more and more that I do not care for that doctrine.
It depends on what you mean. Postmodernism is anti-doctrinal in that it
links people of diverse and conflicting views (Fukuyama and Baudrillard, for
example). As a cultural logic it can relate to high mass consumerist
capitalism, the hegemony of pop culture, the blending of low and high art,
the loss of intentionality in art, the ideology of liberal democracy, the
end of history, or any number of things different critics have come up with
to describe what we in the west are currently living through. Fukuyama
describes liberal democratic society as the zenith of human accomplishment,
and so declares that history has ended, and he is quite happy with this.
Baudrillard declares that high mass consummerist culture has destroyed the
"real" and states that western culture is the nadir of humanity. Others like
Jameson and Eagleton denounce both the likes of Fukuyama and Baudrillard,
and remain commited to dialetical Marxism as a means to improve the world.
They are all postmodernists. Postmodernism, if it is anything, is an
*opportunity* to elaborate on the state of the contemporary West without
using the analytical models that the Enlightenment has bequethed to us,
without singing hymns to Man, without praising the constant accumulation of
money, without believing that art will save us in the end.
>
>
>> a thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith,
>> ruthless exegesis and loyalty.
>
>"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly
>on the tongue."!!!
>
>I agree with Josh, get away (pleease) from repeating what your
>professors and certain writers say.
I will take that from Josh, but not from you: please, if you think I am
repeating anyone, specify who and what I'm repeating.
I will add, even if that break
>and that freedom results in you getting lower grades for awhile.
>Re-learn, remember, how to _think your own thoughts._
Hah. It is you who are now repeating Josh, who was simply reiterating the
typical Bloomian critique.
-Aidan
Aidan Tynan
Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message ...
>
>p.s: And please, as someone else remarked (albeit inadequately) the
>world is more than just the United States.
As an Irishman, I'll agree, but only partly.
-Aidan
Dale Houstman
I'm not certain what the intent of those who decide to make a canon is,
but it's never seemed oppressive to me, and it's never derailed me on my
way to an artist who lives in the proscribed "boonies." Like in most
things, I suppose the mass will always be sheep, and maybe the canon
gives them something to either aspire toward or to scan lightly so they
can come off "edgercated" at the weenie roast, but it's only - to some
of us - a somewhat amusing list, not unilke the AFI's little burps of
hierarchy, and isn't important one way or another.
dmh
Julie Carter
Houstman <dm...@citilink.com> view hallooed:
>I'm not certain what the intent of those who decide to make a canon is,
>but it's never seemed oppressive to me, and it's never derailed me on my
>way to an artist who lives in the proscribed "boonies." Like in most
>things, I suppose the mass will always be sheep, and maybe the canon
>gives them something to either aspire toward or to scan lightly so they
>can come off "edgercated" at the weenie roast, but it's only - to some
>of us - a somewhat amusing list, not unilke the AFI's little burps of
>hierarchy, and isn't important one way or another.
It's not important until someone claims that not liking Bach, to use
an example, is objectively wrong.
--
Julie Carter
Aidan Tynan
Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message ...
>better to be only half misunderstood.
>
>The concept of canon, as a catalogue of approved texts is indeed
>recent. It can be traced back to the eighteenth century. But the
>conceiving of authors or texts as having transcended mere time and
>mortality goes back to the greeks.
I wasn't arguing otherwise.
>
>>This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
>>social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
>>"literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the
best
>>is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency, a similar
>>transparency to the one which prevented people prior to Marx conceiving of
a
>>materialist dialectical history. Since the very notion of literature is a
>>bourgeois one, the canon itself has the same history of the bourgeois
state,
>>so I'd argue -- just as Benjamin famously argued that civilisation is a
>>document of barbarity -- that the canon manifests the exclusions on which
>>any period in Western history since the invention of literature has based
>>itself. The idea of a literary canon today has become untenable, and its
>>concept is almost embarrassing for English Lit departments. Indeed, the
idea
>>of preaching a canon has become so anachronistic that doing so attracts
>>opprobium and more attention than is warranted (cf Harold Bloom).
>
>The misconception is only yours.
>
>The Academia has to answer the question: What are we going to teach?,
>and as such, the word canon does have a very brutal practical
>importance.
Academia teaches whatever it wants, and the students will read even less.
Canons are useful, THE Canon is block to pluralism. I don't know if you ever
studied Eng Lit., but most universities now carry a number of courses to
make a certain pluralism possible.
But I'm not interested in the literary academia -- If you
>want to argue with them, be my guest.
>
>Canon is always choice. For the ordinary reader it is a kind of
>beacon, illuminating not only what should be read but, maybe even more
>importantly nowadays, keeping in darkness what should not be read.
Thou shalt not read ...
>But, as with all important things in life, the self is the ultimate
>arbiter.
Okay, but this is not the Canon, it's personal taste.
>
>I believe (and I am completely Harold Bloom-ian in this) that the
>canonical choice was made by strong authors who arrived late and felt
>themselves chosen by earlier strong authors. You seem to believe that
>the choice was made by social institutions with less-than-aesthetical
>reasons. Sure. I won't even bother to refute you.
Why don't you? I can find no other description of the Canon than "what got
taught in schools".
>
>I just doubt this difference has any practical consequences. I don't
>know about Prynne, but Cesar Vallejo is a perfectly canonical author
>(at least) in the spanish-speaking world, even if you have never met
>anyone who likes him.
>
>And looking at the list of authors in Dr. Johnson's "Lives of the
>Poets", I wonder why the "bourgeois state" chose, say, Pope and
>Dryden, and forgot Promfret and Yalden. Maybe you are up to the task
>and champion these as two great undeservedly forgotten poets?
Well, no, but I could rant and rave about Austen and Scott being Canonical
and not Maria Edgeworth, but I'd only bore everyone and get accused of being
academic, which I'm tired of.
>
>>Those who
>>cling to the idea of a canon are those who cling to conservative politics,
>>nationalism, puritanism, and religion, since the canon is a doctrine, a
>>thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith, ruthless
>>exegesis and loyalty. As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the
>>idea of a canon, a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
>>an explanatory model for the immense textual universe. I can see perfectly
>>clearly why Nietzsche's philosophy is abhorrent to you.
>
>This doesn't deserve any answer other than don't be foolish.
I'm the first to admit my ideas are foolish, but I never claimed to be
intelligent in the first place.
>
>So, to end this already too long thread, I stand by what I said
>earlier: For deep, long-time readers, their personal canons overlap
>very much with the, necessarily fluid, western canon.
>
>With my best regards,
>G. Rodrigues
>
>p.s: And please, as someone else remarked (albeit inadequately) the
>world is more than just the United States.
The world is more than your noosereader.
-Aidan
For whom the hangman's news was spun
Aidan Tynan
M.H.Benders
Dale Houstman wrote:
> I'm not certain what the intent of those who decide to make a canon is,
> but it's never seemed oppressive to me,
That's probably because you've never severely criticized anyone who is
supposed to be part of it.
It's people like P.Hill who will tell you that you make yourself
ridiculous when you deny Bach is a great musician 'because he is part of
the canon' i.o.w. some dumb list universities have made up for their
students.
It doesn't matter what arguments you have - the fact that Bach is liked
by a lot of people *makes* him great, just like Tahiti is a very
beautiful place because many people think so. That's the dumb oppressive
world of a fake inttelectual, who, instead of investigating the world of
aesthetics takes the opinions of others for granted and sells it as his
own.
M.H.Benders
Julie Carter
"M.H.Benders" <ben...@kannibaal.nl> view hallooed:
Or vice versa: Allowing only personal taste to dictate what the
opinions of others *should* be.
That some choices are laughable (say, Britney Spears as a great
musician) doesn't mean there are choices that are necessary.
--
Julie Carter
Rose Kelleher
Julie Carter wrote:
OK, now I get it. You should be the official translator for this bunch.
And Dale, you've misspelled "edjamacated."
(and now off to the weenie roast...)
>
> --
> Julie Carter
Joshua P. Hill
<atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>
>Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote in message ...
>Academia teaches whatever it wants, and the students will read even less.
>Canons are useful, THE Canon is block to pluralism. I don't know if you ever
>studied Eng Lit., but most universities now carry a number of courses to
>make a certain pluralism possible.
Out of curiosity, I just checked my alma mater's catalog and, with the
exception of a course on "race and racism," it looks like they're
teaching the same old same old.
>>I believe (and I am completely Harold Bloom-ian in this) that the
>>canonical choice was made by strong authors who arrived late and felt
>>themselves chosen by earlier strong authors. You seem to believe that
>>the choice was made by social institutions with less-than-aesthetical
>>reasons. Sure. I won't even bother to refute you.
>
>Why don't you? I can find no other description of the Canon than "what got
>taught in schools".
Then you aren't reading in the right place, or you're applying the
word too literally, mistaking the label for what it represents.
The "canon" is merely a series of overlapping formalizations of the
works that have been so consistently valued by the most talented and
best-educated among us. Those works persist, where choices of personal
taste do not, precisely because of that common ground. One generation
says we like books A, B, and C; the next generation says we like books
B, D, and E; the next generation says we like books B, F, and G. What
tends to persist? Book B. The merely personal, the purely temporal
evaporate, having served their purpose.
(Jonson famously observed of Shakespeare that he was not of an age,
but for all time. It is not to be supposed that genius isn't
recognized in its own age, for almost inevitably, it is recognized, by
genius and great talent. Posterity merely ratifies the choice of
genius, for genius remains relatively consistent in its appreciation,
while mediocrity wanders all over the place like a hound that cannot
get a scent.)
>>>Those who
>>>cling to the idea of a canon are those who cling to conservative politics,
>>>nationalism, puritanism, and religion, since the canon is a doctrine, a
>>>thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith, ruthless
>>>exegesis and loyalty. As you say, the weaknesses of readers *produce* the
>>>idea of a canon, a list of texts to which one's capabilities are adequate,
>>>an explanatory model for the immense textual universe. I can see perfectly
>>>clearly why Nietzsche's philosophy is abhorrent to you.
>>
>>This doesn't deserve any answer other than don't be foolish.
>
>I'm the first to admit my ideas are foolish, but I never claimed to be
>intelligent in the first place.
OK, I know I'm kibitzing here, but you really are being way too
humble. No one here has ever questioned your intelligence; it's
manifest. But your errneous-to-the-point-of-almost-complete-inversion
association of "canonical" art with "conservative politics,
nationalism, puritanism, and religion" is at such variance with that
intelligence that it's hard to overlook. And this, I suppose, comes
from an inadequate ratio of experience to propaganda.
If you remembered the modernist generation as I do, you would know
that they were far more open-minded than the post-modernists of my
generation, and, now, yours. No one, in those days, feared academic
anathema for the expression of opinion or dissent; today, even many
professors are scared to stray from the path of ideological rightness.
And they were no more conservative, nationalistic, puritan, or
religious than the academics of today.
Josh
M.H.Benders
cythera wrote:
> But as I clearly stated in my post, most people do not read
> literature.
Most _americans_ do not read literature. And if they do read literature,
it has to be approved by a 'vast majority of academics' and 'great minds'.
> This right here is to Martijn:
> Most people, _like I said,_Martijn, don't read. They watch
> television. In fact, according to you, that was how you yourself
> learned English.
Bollocks. I learned English from having a Hungerian girlfriend, and from
reading books.
> ~and now, though she is not canonical, and, even more shocking, though
> she is American!
.....and as such presently sucking up to Josh (it's only a matter of
time before 'Hammes' 'Artsy' and 'Chuck' join the discussion in an
orgasmic array towards dev null....)
M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill
If you had any notion of how egregiously inaccurate your assertions
are, you'd kill yourself.
Josh
M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill wrote:
> The "canon" is merely a series of overlapping formalizations of the
> works that have been so consistently valued by the most talented and
> best-educated among us. Those works persist, where choices of personal
> taste do not, precisely because of that common ground.
There is no 'common ground', you fake dweeb. Nabokov disliked Joyce and
a hundred other 'famous writers', Joyce disliked Yeats, Yeats disliked
Wilde, Wilde disliked Beardsly, and so on and on and on. There is
absolutely no author that is liked by everyone, and even would there be
someone like that the fact that he's liked by everyone is meaningless.
M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
But I don't think the canon presupposes any such thing -- or, rather,
since the canon doesn't make presumptions, I don't think those who
/make/ the canon assume any such thing. -- If anything, the canon
represents a /minority/ taste -- the cumulative taste of those who are
most intimately familiar with, and most attuned to, art.
And that, to me, is one of the saddest things about the current
anti-canonical fashion. God knows, we don't need anyone to defend rap,
or situation comedies, or Maya Angelous; the air is thick with them.
We /do/ need to encourage people to hear, and listen to, works that
are a bit deeper, and less evanescent -- and that will provide
infinite rewards to those who can be convinced to lay aside their
Playstations and put a bit of effort into works that, paying many
times over the effort put into them, provide commensurately greater
rewards.
Beyond that, I think there are really two separate issues here:
One is the matter of personal taste. It would be silly for me to
suggest that someone should change his personal likes and dislikes,
insofar as they represent his own needs and his own psychology.
On the other hand, there's the matter of objective quality. Works of
art do, in fact, have objective merit; we judge it here all the time,
including those who are most vociferous in their criticism of great
art. And the canon consists largely of accumulated wisdom regarding
that objective quality.
I find it more than a little bit ironic that some of the voices here
that most loudly decry the canon are those who are most active in
saying this poem is good or that poem is bad, and telling people
they're silly if they like this and silly if they like that. How can
we recognize objective quality in the work of those who post here, and
fail to recognize its existence in the work of others?
But -- the recognition of objective quality is not the same as
personal taste. It requires a certain degree of ability, a certain
degree of exposure to art. And again, we recognize that here. When
newbies complain that we're telling them they can't like poems about
cats or Christianity, we say, no, we're not telling you that you can't
like poems about cats or Christianity, we're saying that this is a
/bad/ poem about cats or Christianity -- technically coarse,
uninspired, what have you.
Those who dislike Bach for purely /personal/ reasons -- and I've
always assumed, incidentally, that you were in that category, since
you mentioned it in passing some years back -- are merely expressing
their personal taste.
Those, OTOH, who dislike Bach because they are not familiar with his
music and with the sophisticated musical style in which he wrote -- or
because they lack an ear for music -- are simply wrong. Their
judgement is based on ignorance, nothing more.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<RoseKe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
>> But I don't think that the appreciation of Bach and Shakespeare
>> depends on that sort of valorization, real though it has been in the
>> academic establishment, and partially justifiable as it is insofar as
>> the creation of great art so frequently requires struggle on the part
>> of the artist himself. In fact, I would argue that the overemphasis on
>> "quality" in art has done more to damage art in the last 100 years
>> than anything except perhaps its opposite extreme, the sold-out
>> commercialism that today characterizes so much popular art, since it
>> leads the "serious" artist to place himself /above/ the audience and
>> create instead for a self-perpetuating circle jerk of artists,
>> critics, and academics.
>
>Sorry to interrupt, but that deserves a standing ovation from balcony seats.
>
>Please continue.
What's the emoticon for a bow?
Josh
Gonçalo Rodrigues
<ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>
>
>Joshua P. Hill wrote:
>
>> The "canon" is merely a series of overlapping formalizations of the
>> works that have been so consistently valued by the most talented and
>> best-educated among us. Those works persist, where choices of personal
>> taste do not, precisely because of that common ground.
>
>There is no 'common ground', you fake dweeb. Nabokov disliked Joyce and
Hmm... I suggest, in case you haven't done it yet, you read Nabokov's
Lectures on Literature and the chapter about Ulysses.
>a hundred other 'famous writers', Joyce disliked Yeats, Yeats disliked
>Wilde, Wilde disliked Beardsly, and so on and on and on. There is
>absolutely no author that is liked by everyone, and even would there be
>someone like that the fact that he's liked by everyone is meaningless.
And you think this is a serious objection to the concept of canon?
BTW, if you reply to my post, I ask you to refrain from such epithets
as "fake dweeb". Hurling insults is a rather crude entertainment.
>
>M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill
<atynan@don't.need.spam.eircom.net> wrote:
>It depends on what you mean. Postmodernism is anti-doctrinal in that it
>links people of diverse and conflicting views (Fukuyama and Baudrillard, for
>example). As a cultural logic it can relate to high mass consumerist
>capitalism, the hegemony of pop culture, the blending of low and high art,
>the loss of intentionality in art, the ideology of liberal democracy, the
>end of history, or any number of things different critics have come up with
>to describe what we in the west are currently living through. Fukuyama
>describes liberal democratic society as the zenith of human accomplishment,
>and so declares that history has ended, and he is quite happy with this.
>Baudrillard declares that high mass consummerist culture has destroyed the
>"real" and states that western culture is the nadir of humanity. Others like
>Jameson and Eagleton denounce both the likes of Fukuyama and Baudrillard,
>and remain commited to dialetical Marxism as a means to improve the world.
>They are all postmodernists.
>Postmodernism, if it is anything, is an
>*opportunity* to elaborate on the state of the contemporary West without
>using the analytical models that the Enlightenment has bequethed to us,
>without singing hymns to Man, without praising the constant accumulation of
>money, without believing that art will save us in the end.
This elicits a very funny image of a weird professor leading his class
in hymns to the stock market and the saving grace of Hamlet.
Do you really think that's what was taught back then, in the dark ages
when I was young?
Apothecary:
Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua’s law
Is death to any he that utters them.
Romeo:
Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,
And fear’st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back;
The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law:
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
Apothecary:
My poverty, but not my will, consents
or
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born Infant's tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
or
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more;
and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became
as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old
city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good
old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he
let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know
that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some
people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing
that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well
that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in
less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite
enough for him.
or
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this --
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed --
More filled with signs and portents for the soul --
More fraught with menace to the universe.
Do these penultimately canonical works praise the constant
accumulation of money? One of my objections to post-modernism is that
it does precisely what you accuse the humanistic tradition of doing:
demotes art to a matter of economic relationships, of tedious if
sometimes meritorious political struggles.
>>> a thing which survives by vitiating pluralism and demanding faith,
>>> ruthless exegesis and loyalty.
>>
>>"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly
>>on the tongue."!!!
>>
>>I agree with Josh, get away (pleease) from repeating what your
>>professors and certain writers say.
>
>I will take that from Josh, but not from you: please, if you think I am
>repeating anyone, specify who and what I'm repeating.
>
>I will add, even if that break
>>and that freedom results in you getting lower grades for awhile.
>>Re-learn, remember, how to _think your own thoughts._
>
>Hah. It is you who are now repeating Josh, who was simply reiterating the
>typical Bloomian critique.
Not reiterating it -- a few interviews aside, I've never read Bloom:
for better or worse, my conclusions are my own. (One of the benefits
of such persnickety intellectual independence is that it serves as a
parity check of sorts upon one's results.)
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<RoseKe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I'm curious, why do you hate DHL so much? I think most of his poetry sucks, but
>once in a while he produces fireworks that make you go, "Ahhh," and the rest is
>forgivable.
>If you're in the mood to rant, I'm listening.
Mostly because he elevates the irrational. He argues against the
possibility of logic, of thought, and too often he substitutes those
fireworks -- which can, I agree, be striking -- above intellectual
integrity.
Then too, I find his work contrived. I mean, "The Rocking Horse
Winner"? Oscar Wilde would have said something very funny about that
one.
Josh
Julie Carter
<joshhill.R...@snet.net> wrote:
>Those who dislike Bach for purely /personal/ reasons -- and I've
>always assumed, incidentally, that you were in that category, since
>you mentioned it in passing some years back -- are merely expressing
>their personal taste.
>
>Those, OTOH, who dislike Bach because they are not familiar with his
>music and with the sophisticated musical style in which he wrote -- or
>because they lack an ear for music -- are simply wrong. Their
>judgement is based on ignorance, nothing more.
But determine which is which.
We can assess poetry on technical merits, and those merits will have
some objective value. So, if something is really poorly written,
which most of what I call "bad poetry" is, I can defend that.
But once you get beyond that, I cannot really defend my love of Edna
St. Vincent Millay on any objective grounds. She isn't good because I
say so, or because others say so, or because we can all vote on it, or
because she writes of these things rather than those. All I can say
is that she isn't illiterate and that I love her writing.
The problem with the system as you've set it up is that you can simply
say that I lack an ear for music if I don't agree with you ("you"
being used in a general sense, rather than a specific one).
I dislike Bach because Bach bores the ever-living snot out of me. I
dislike him in the same way I dislike listening to a fly drone at a
window pane. Does that turn it into a personal reason, or a lack of
ear? I can point to objective reasons I could consider him
repetitive, and then say that subjectively, repetition of that sort
annoys me. Fugues annoy me. Heck, the Bach pieces I used to use as
warm up exercises annoyed me!
Having a strong opinion and defending it is not the same thing as
creating or defending a canon. I can consider someone else's taste
inferior to my own (or superior) without feeling there's anything
objective about the process.
--
Julie Carter
Rose Kelleher
"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:31:33 -0400, Rose Kelleher
> <RoseKe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I'm curious, why do you hate DHL so much? I think most of his poetry sucks, but
> >once in a while he produces fireworks that make you go, "Ahhh," and the rest is
> >forgivable.
> >If you're in the mood to rant, I'm listening.
>
> Mostly because he elevates the irrational. He argues against the
> possibility of logic, of thought, and too often he substitutes those
> fireworks -- which can, I agree, be striking -- above intellectual
> integrity.
>
Ugh, imagine reading nothing but logical poems with intellectual integrity. You make
poetry sound like no fun at all! The poems of his that I like I like because
they're sensual, celebrating the power/beauty/mystery of the physical world.
But then, I'm not into Bach. I'd rather listen to funk, bluegrass, Maori warrior
chants, etc. (See a pattern here? :) Whatever -- when we don't have open minds we
can both miss out on something good.
>
> Then too, I find his work contrived. I mean, "The Rocking Horse
> Winner"? Oscar Wilde would have said something very funny about that
> one.
I love that story -- for its weird, creepy entertainment value, not for any
integrity it may or may not have.
>
> Josh
M.H.Benders
Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote:
>>There is no 'common ground', you fake dweeb. Nabokov disliked Joyce and
>
> Hmm... I suggest, in case you haven't done it yet, you read Nabokov's
> Lectures on Literature and the chapter about Ulysses.
'I happen to find second-rate and ephemeral the
works of a number of puffed-up writers-- such as Camus, Lorca,
Kazantzakis, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Thomas Wolfe, and
literally hundreds of other "great" second-raters. And for
this, of course, I'm automatically disliked by their
camp-followers, kitsch-followers, fashion-followers, and all
kinds of automatons. Generally speaking, Vm supremely
indifferent to adverse criticism in regard to my fiction. But
on the other hand, I enjoy retaliating when some pompous dunce
finds fault with my translations and divulges a farcical
ignorance of the Russian language and literature.'
"Finnegans Wake is nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony
folklore, a cold
pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room, most
aggravating to the insomniac! I am. Moreover, I always detested
regional literature full of quaint old-timers and imitated
pronunciation. Finnegans Wake's facade disguises a very
conventional and drab tenement house, and only the infrequent
snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter
insipidity. I know I am going to be excommunicated for this
pronouncement."
I am bored by writers who join the social-comment racket.
I despise the corny Philistine fad of flaunting four-letter
words. I also refuse to find merit in a novel just because it
is by a brave Black in Africa or a brave White in Russia-- or
by any representative of any single group in America. Frankly,
a national, folklore, class, masonic, religious, or any other
communal aura involuntarily prejudices me against a novel,
making It harder for me to peel the offered fruit so as to get
at the nectar of possible talent. I could name, but will not, a
number of modern artists whom I read purely for pleasure, and
not for edification. I find comic the amalgamation of certain
writers under a common label of, say, "Cape Codpiece Peace
Resistance" or "Welsh Working-Upperclass Rehabilitation" or
"New Hairwave School." Incidentally, I frequently hear the
distant whining of people who complain in print that I dislike
the writers whom they venerate such as Faulkner, Mann,
Camus, Dreiser, and of course Dostoevski. But I can assure them
that because I detest certain writers I am not impairing the
well-being of the plaintiffs in whom the images of my victims
happen to form organic galaxies of esteem. I can prove, indeed,
that the works of those authors really exist independently and
separately from the organs of affection throbbing in the
systems of irate strangers.
Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of
my mind? I may have aired this before but I'd like to repeat
that I detest not one but four doctors: Dr. Freud, Dr. Zhivago,
Dr. Schweitzer, and Dr. Castro. Of course, the first takes the
fig, as the fellows say in the dissecting-room. I've no
intention to dream the drab middle-class dreams of an Austrian
crank with a shabby umbrella. I also suggest that the Freudian
faith leads to dangerous ethical consequences, such as when a
filthy murderer with the brain of a tapeworm is given a lighter
sentence because his mother spanked him too much or too
little-- it works both ways. The Freudian racket looks to me as
much of a farce as the jumbo thingurn of polished wood with a
polished hole in the middle which doesn't represent anything
except the gaping face of the Philistine who is told it is a
great sculpture produced by the greatest living caveman.
This congeniality is another illusion. I loathe Gogol's
moralistic slant, I am depressed and puzzled by his utter
inability to describe young women, I deplore his obsession with
religion. Verbal inventiveness is not really a bond between
authors, it is merely a garland. He would have been appalled by
my novels and denounced as vicious the innocent, and rather
superficial, little sketch of his life that I produced
twenty-five years ago. Much more successful, because based on
longer and deeper research, was the life of Chernyshevski (in
my novel The Gift), whose works I found risible, but
whose fate moved me more strongly than did Gogol's. What
Chernyshevski would have thought of it is another question--
but at least the plain truth of documents is on my side. That,
and only that, is what I would ask of my biographer-- plain
facts, no symbol-searching, no jumping at attractive but
preposterous conclusions, no Marxist bunkum, no Freudian rot.
'I prefer the experimental decade that coincided with my
boyhood-- Sornov, Benois (Peter Ustinov's uncle, you know),
Vrubel, Dobuzhinski, etc. Malevich and Kandinsky mean nothing
to me and I have always found Chagall's stuff intolerably
primitive and grotesque.'
M.H.Benders
Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 23:07:55 +0200, "M.H.Benders"
> <ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>Joshua P. Hill wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The "canon" is merely a series of overlapping formalizations of the
>>>works that have been so consistently valued by the most talented and
>>>best-educated among us. Those works persist, where choices of personal
>>>taste do not, precisely because of that common ground.
>>
>>There is no 'common ground', you fake dweeb. Nabokov disliked Joyce and
>
>
> Hmm... I suggest, in case you haven't done it yet, you read Nabokov's
> Lectures on Literature and the chapter about Ulysses.
Q: Are there contemporary writers you follow with great
pleasure?
A: There are several such writers, but I shall not name them.
Anonymous pleasure hurts nobody.
Q: Do you follow some with great pain?
A: No. Many accepted authors simply do not exist for me.
Their names are engraved on empty graves, their books are
dummies, they are complete nonentities insofar as my taste in
reading is concerned. Brecht, Faulkner, Camus, many others,
mean absolutely nothing to me, and I must fight a suspicion of
conspiracy against my brain when I see blandly accepted as
"great literature" by critics and fellow authors Lady
Chatterley's copulations or the pretentious nonsense of Mr.
Pound, that total fake. I note he has replaced Dr. Schweitzer
in some homes.
Q: **As an admirer of Borges and Joyce you seem to share
their pleasure in teasing the reader with tricks and puns and
puzzles. What do you think the relationship should be between
reader and author?
A: I do not recollect any puns in Borges but then I read him
only in translation. Anyway, his delicate little tales and
miniature Minotaurs have nothing in common with Joyce's great
machines. Nor do I find many puzzles in that most lucid of
novels, Ulysses. On the other hand, I detest
Finnegans Wake in which a cancerous growth of fancy
word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the
folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory.
Q: What have you learned from Joyce?
A: Nothing.
> BTW, if you reply to my post, I ask you to refrain from such epithets
> as "fake dweeb". Hurling insults is a rather crude entertainment.
Well, you do sound like a fake dweeb. I have no idea who you are, actually,
but so far none of your arguments have been very impressive and I can't
recall reading any work of yours. If you want people to respect you you
have to earn that respect.
M.H.Benders
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 15:10:24 +0200, De nederlandsche Cacaofabriek
> <in...@cacaofabriek.com> wrote:
>
> >cythera wrote:
> >
> >> > > This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
> >> > > social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
> >> > > "literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > The canon is simply popidol culture for older people.
> >>
> >> Not even for members of the MLA. The so-called canon is simply a survey
> >> of Western literature beginning with the Greeks. Or, perhaps now, beginning
> >> with the Gilgamesh epic.
> >
> >Not even close. The canon was not created by authors or but by
> >institutions,
>
> Just more evidence that you know nothing of history.
>
> >Most
> >of the authors in the so-called western canon are pretty lousy
>
> Hey, another quote for my Martijnisms file. Do you ever tire of making
> a fool of yourself?
>
> >When Americans try to mention names they perceive as obscure I'm always
> >having the time of my life. Thomas Mann is one of the most well known
> >names in modern day literature, but hey, don't let that stop you from
> >being a didactic mammal.
>
> Er, Cythera didn't mention those names because they were "obscure."
>
> And what the hell is a "didactic mammal," a non-reptilian instructor?
> /Another/ quote for my Martijinisms file; things are good.
>
> Josh
A featherless biped that speaks in didactyls.
Martijn speaks in pterodactyls.
He's Old European.
But is he bipedal?
Chuckles, e.g., is a bipedal messenger, but speaks only in grunts.
Perhaps Martijn is bipiedal.
--
------(m+
~/:o)_|
To change the world
be that change.
http://scrawlmark.org
Joshua P. Hill
<ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>cythera wrote:
>
>> But as I clearly stated in my post, most people do not read
>> literature.
>
>Most _americans_ do not read literature. And if they do read literature,
>it has to be approved by a 'vast majority of academics' and 'great minds'.
You know, you would be much more convincing if you didn't make this
stuff up.
>Bollocks. I learned English from having a Hungerian girlfriend
Explains much.
>.....and as such presently sucking up to Josh (it's only a matter of
>time before 'Hammes' 'Artsy' and 'Chuck' join the discussion in an
>orgasmic array towards dev null....)
Oh, yeah, Cythera is really known for sucking up to me.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
"Fake dweeb?" As opposed to what, a real dweeb?
As to your argument, I'm afraid it's just another expression of
ignorance. Nowhere did I say that there is an author who is liked by
everyone. That is neither implied, nor is it necessary: genius is
simply more likely to appreciate genius -- far more so than chance
allows.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<kell...@ramblingrose.com> wrote:
>
>"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
>
>> Mostly because he elevates the irrational. He argues against the
>> possibility of logic, of thought, and too often he substitutes those
>> fireworks -- which can, I agree, be striking -- above intellectual
>> integrity.
>>
>
>Ugh, imagine reading nothing but logical poems with intellectual integrity. You make
>poetry sound like no fun at all! The poems of his that I like I like because
>they're sensual, celebrating the power/beauty/mystery of the physical world.
>
>But then, I'm not into Bach. I'd rather listen to funk, bluegrass, Maori warrior
>chants, etc. (See a pattern here? :) Whatever -- when we don't have open minds we
>can both miss out on something good.
The thing is, I'm not arguing for an absence of emotion -- I just
don't happen to believe in denying the possibility of rationality.
Emotion and cognition aren't mutually exclusive, and that could
nowhere be better illustrated than in the music of Bach, who wrote
both the most intellectually sophisticated music ever written and the
most emotionally powerful -- check out in particular the St. Matthew
Passion, which literally tears one apart with a sublimity of grief.
>> Then too, I find his work contrived. I mean, "The Rocking Horse
>> Winner"? Oscar Wilde would have said something very funny about that
>> one.
>
>I love that story -- for its weird, creepy entertainment value, not for any
>integrity it may or may not have.
Heh -- I always find myself thinking "he must be kidding!"
Josh
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Joshua P. Hill <joshhill.R...@snet.net> wrote in message news:<ioddhv02hjore8djm...@4ax.com>...
> > On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 15:10:24 +0200, De nederlandsche Cacaofabriek
> > <in...@cacaofabriek.com> wrote:
> >
> > >cythera wrote:
> > >
> > >> > > This is the great misconception. Canonical texts exist because certain
> > >> > > social instutions exist -- the nation state, the university, the notion of
> > >> > > "literature". The idea that the canon is the process through which the best
> > >> > > is recognised is a product of a certain historical transparency....
> > >> >
> > >> >
> > >> > The canon is simply popidol culture for older people.
> > >>
> > >> Not even for members of the MLA. The so-called canon is simply a survey
> > >> of Western literature beginning with the Greeks. Or, perhaps now,
> > >> beginning with the Gilgamesh epic.
> > >
> > >Not even close. The canon was not created by authors or but by
> > >institutions,
> >
> > Just more evidence that you know nothing of history.
> >
> > >Most
> > >of the authors in the so-called western canon are pretty lousy
> >
> > Hey, another quote for my Martijnisms file. Do you ever tire of making
> > a fool of yourself?
> >
> > >When Americans try to mention names they perceive as obscure I'm always
> > >having the time of my life. Thomas Mann is one of the most well known
> > >names in modern day literature, but hey, don't let that stop you from
> > >being a didactic mammal.
> >
> > Er, Cythera didn't mention those names because they were "obscure."
>
Martijn takes anything with "pie" in it.
(But what's a "cemeal"? English for /schlemiel/? Martijn as a
pie schlemiel, now /there's/ a thought.)
> approach to
> reading my comments and comprehending them. Perhaps the fact that I
> live in the United States angered him so that his cognition partially
> shut down.
True; he gets pie-eyed rather easily.
>
> For whatever reason that he chopped up the post, here is what he
> excised:
>
> Martijn explicating his thesis that "the canon is simply popidol
See? He can't even /spell/ "bipedal" when he needs to.
> culture for older people."
> > There is some great need to replace the idols of teenage culture with
> > idols old geezers can identify with -
>
> me:
> >and you think old geezers identify with Aeschuylus and Thomas Mann
> >(or have even heard of them)
>
> Thomas Mann is, obviously, one of the best-known names in modern lit.
> How kind of Martijn to point that out to me so ~now~ I know. He
> misses the possibility that I may have chosen that author because he
> _is_ well known.
Hey, even I know Thomas, Man; "Do not go gentile in that good pie."
>
> But as I clearly stated in my post, most people do not read
> literature.
Most people don't read anything, period. 2/3 of h.s. graduates
cannot read toy-assembly instructions and get the job done thereby;
1/3 cannot read a want-ad or bus schedule.
(Not me; Columbia University makes that determination about every
five years.)
> (and although recently _Death in Venice_ was made into an opera, nor
> do most people outside of Italy listen to opera.)
Tsk. Got my intro to real opera in the Augsburger Staatsoper.
Texaco sponsored the Met broadcasts in season since the mid-30s.
They dropped their sponsorship a couple months ago, though, because
the gas-guzzling market seems to've shifted to a younger crowd than
listens to opera.
MPR broadcasts a recorded opera every Sunday night, a MN
production if they've got one, which is a choice of the Minnesota,
the Twin Cities, the Walker, or the Duluth companies at least. The
Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre will do one of the more popular
operas if they happen to "have the voices this year"; e.g., they
once approached me to be the Fiddler (evidently because I had the
beard, the belly, the baritone, and the fiddle) but I was working
evenings at the time, and the only paid position in the entire setup
is the Community Orchestra's conductor; the theater's director is
usually from one of the campuses.
The setup is fairly common in "cities" over 50,000.
Granted the production is more often a "musical" than an opera
(Trollwood's doing /Peter Pan/ at the moment, a magnificent /West
Side Story/ a few years back), one of the best English productions
of /Le Nozzi/ I've ever heard was done here (as was one of the
poorest); one of the better /Amahl/s was a Bemidji Community
production (I was with their orchestra some years 'way back).
> The above-mentioned
> novella was also made into a fairly-recent motion picture, yet not
> only is Mann not an "older people's" pop idol, and a hero with whom
> they identify, but, I repeat, most people have no idea who he is.
>
> This right here is to Martijn:
> Most people, _like I said,_Martijn, don't read. They watch
> television. In fact, according to you, that was how you yourself
> learned English. Which might in part explain the habitual
> small-mindedness you have fallen into.
More likely it explains his definition of "American" the same way
Basil Fawlty and Hyacinth Bucket define "British" over here.
Think how blessed we are to be represented to the world by
/Friends/.
Or Homer Simpson.
>
> ~and now, though she is not canonical, and, even more shocking, though
> she is American! I am going to go treat myself to one of the
> promises-to-be good horror stories of Ms. Joyce Carol Oates.
She should be eating them, not caroling about them.
>
>
>
>
> > And what the hell is a "didactic mammal," a non-reptilian instructor?
> > /Another/ quote for my Martijinisms file; things are good.
> >
> > Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:31:04 -0400, Joshua P. Hill
><joshhill.R...@snet.net> wrote:
>
>>Those who dislike Bach for purely /personal/ reasons -- and I've
>>always assumed, incidentally, that you were in that category, since
>>you mentioned it in passing some years back -- are merely expressing
>>their personal taste.
>>
>>Those, OTOH, who dislike Bach because they are not familiar with his
>>music and with the sophisticated musical style in which he wrote -- or
>>because they lack an ear for music -- are simply wrong. Their
>>judgement is based on ignorance, nothing more.
>
>But determine which is which.
>
>We can assess poetry on technical merits, and those merits will have
>some objective value. So, if something is really poorly written,
>which most of what I call "bad poetry" is, I can defend that.
>
>But once you get beyond that, I cannot really defend my love of Edna
>St. Vincent Millay on any objective grounds. She isn't good because I
>say so, or because others say so, or because we can all vote on it, or
>because she writes of these things rather than those. All I can say
>is that she isn't illiterate and that I love her writing.
But I've seen nothing that suggests that there's a dividing line at
which one can say "OK, I can't divide things into better and worse."
Craft keeps getting better, inspiration more profound, along a
continuum that runs from Sharon to Shakespeare.
What does become more difficult, what does require more
sophistication, is the act of judgement.
>The problem with the system as you've set it up is that you can simply
>say that I lack an ear for music if I don't agree with you ("you"
>being used in a general sense, rather than a specific one).
>
>I dislike Bach because Bach bores the ever-living snot out of me. I
>dislike him in the same way I dislike listening to a fly drone at a
>window pane. Does that turn it into a personal reason, or a lack of
>ear? I can point to objective reasons I could consider him
>repetitive, and then say that subjectively, repetition of that sort
>annoys me. Fugues annoy me. Heck, the Bach pieces I used to use as
>warm up exercises annoyed me!
And yet, there's no composer who is less repetitive, whose work was
more filled with invention. Not inevitably so -- Bach wrote some
clunkers, like any composer -- but as Beethoven, who knew Bach mostly
from the Well-Tempered Clavier, put it, "He should not have been
called 'Bach' ('brook') but 'Meer' ('ocean'), owing to the
inexhaustible richness of his musical ideas."
That you don't hear that but are bored instead doesn't really surprise
me, since I reacted the same way to the Well-Tempered Clavier when I
was younger. But Bach is the most difficult of composers. In my own
experience, the impression of boredom changes as one listens (as an
adult) and is supplanted by the opposite: one is always hearing the
works fresh when the works of other masters have grown stale and
fallen away.
I'm beginning to suspect that you were exposed to Bach too young, and,
having acquired a certain distaste, chose not to pursue his music when
you were ready to appreciate it. (I don't posit any lack of /ability/
on your part; your tastes and abilities in poetry, your training in
music, and your mother's tastes are strong evidence against that.)
>Having a strong opinion and defending it is not the same thing as
>creating or defending a canon. I can consider someone else's taste
>inferior to my own (or superior) without feeling there's anything
>objective about the process.
How then can you call it inferior or superior?
I attribute objectivity to some aspects of taste because I can hear
the difference: one or another of two works I enjoy is better. In this
respect, the evaluation of art is a matter of exposure, talent, and
skill, which has the characteristic that those with the exposure,
talent, and skill are aware of the difference, but those without it
aren't. It is like being able to distinguish red and green, and being
with someone who is colorblind, and insists they're the same color.
More than that, it's as if one started life being colorblind, and
became, through some remarkable new treatment, suddenly able to
appreciate the spectrum. I attribute objectivity to some aspects of
taste because I've noticed that as my own tastes became more
sophisticated with time, I came to appreciate some works more and
others less, and because others have told me they had the same
experience, and because my tastes grew closer to the tastes of those
of great knowledge and ability.
How many people do you know who used to like classical music, but now
think popular music is better? It just doesn't work that way: it's
almost inevitably ways the other way around. (I say "almost" because
someone will surely and tediously drag up his Uncle Joe, who began
life as the concertmaster for the Philharmonic and ended up a fiddler
at country dances, if I don't.)
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<ben...@kannibaal.nl> wrote:
>Gonçalo Rodrigues wrote:
>>>Joshua P. Hill wrote:
>>>
>>>>The "canon" is merely a series of overlapping formalizations of the
>>>>works that have been so consistently valued by the most talented and
>>>>best-educated among us. Those works persist, where choices of personal
>>>>taste do not, precisely because of that common ground.
>>>
>>>There is no 'common ground', you fake dweeb. Nabokov disliked Joyce and
>>
>> Hmm... I suggest, in case you haven't done it yet, you read Nabokov's
>> Lectures on Literature and the chapter about Ulysses.
<snip ludicrous attempt to weasel out of your mistake>
>Well, you do sound like a fake dweeb. I have no idea who you are, actually,
>but so far none of your arguments have been very impressive and I can't
>recall reading any work of yours. If you want people to respect you you
>have to earn that respect.
Come off it, doadywits. Nabokov was famously critical of other
writers, but of Joyce, he said, ""My stuff is patball to his champion
game."
I daresay you're the only one who lost respect here.
Josh
Dale Houstman
Julie Carter wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:45:38 -0500, in alt.arts.poetry.comments Dale
> Houstman <dm...@citilink.com> view hallooed:
>
>
>>I'm not certain what the intent of those who decide to make a canon is,
>>but it's never seemed oppressive to me, and it's never derailed me on my
>>way to an artist who lives in the proscribed "boonies." Like in most
>>things, I suppose the mass will always be sheep, and maybe the canon
>>gives them something to either aspire toward or to scan lightly so they
>>can come off "edgercated" at the weenie roast, but it's only - to some
>>of us - a somewhat amusing list, not unilke the AFI's little burps of
>>hierarchy, and isn't important one way or another.
>
>
> It's not important until someone claims that not liking Bach, to use
> an example, is objectively wrong.
>
I agree. I get the same response from some when I say I don't like
ballet (except for the music) or opera (except Henry Purcell). What
people do with the canon is a different issue though: there are a lot of
loose canons out there I suppose.
dmh
Julie Carter
<joshhill.R...@snet.net> wrote:
>>The problem with the system as you've set it up is that you can simply
>>say that I lack an ear for music if I don't agree with you ("you"
>>being used in a general sense, rather than a specific one).
>>
>>I dislike Bach because Bach bores the ever-living snot out of me. I
>>dislike him in the same way I dislike listening to a fly drone at a
>>window pane. Does that turn it into a personal reason, or a lack of
>>ear? I can point to objective reasons I could consider him
>>repetitive, and then say that subjectively, repetition of that sort
>>annoys me. Fugues annoy me. Heck, the Bach pieces I used to use as
>>warm up exercises annoyed me!
>
>And yet, there's no composer who is less repetitive, whose work was
>more filled with invention.
Your adulation is speaking. Unfortunately, your adulation doesn't
move me.
>Not inevitably so -- Bach wrote some
>clunkers, like any composer -- but as Beethoven, who knew Bach mostly
>from the Well-Tempered Clavier, put it, "He should not have been
>called 'Bach' ('brook') but 'Meer' ('ocean'), owing to the
>inexhaustible richness of his musical ideas."
Yeah, and baseball players chose Vernon Wells over Milton Bradley.
>That you don't hear that but are bored instead doesn't really surprise
>me, since I reacted the same way to the Well-Tempered Clavier when I
>was younger. But Bach is the most difficult of composers. In my own
>experience, the impression of boredom changes as one listens (as an
>adult) and is supplanted by the opposite: one is always hearing the
>works fresh when the works of other masters have grown stale and
>fallen away.
Josh, your condescension isn't appreciated. I don't like Bach. I
don't insist that you fawn over composers I do like. I'd appreciate a
return of the favor.
I have heard so much goddamned Bach it's enough to make my ears bleed.
I loathe it. I loathe it beyond words. Repetitive? Saying a fugue
isn't repetitive is simply a lie.
>I'm beginning to suspect that you were exposed to Bach too young, and,
>having acquired a certain distaste, chose not to pursue his music when
>you were ready to appreciate it. (I don't posit any lack of /ability/
>on your part; your tastes and abilities in poetry, your training in
>music, and your mother's tastes are strong evidence against that.)
Blah blah blah. If I don't like Bach, you posit, it's a problem with
me. Can't be a problem with Bach.
>>Having a strong opinion and defending it is not the same thing as
>>creating or defending a canon. I can consider someone else's taste
>>inferior to my own (or superior) without feeling there's anything
>>objective about the process.
>
>How then can you call it inferior or superior?
The same way I can call a Wendy's hamburger better than a McDonald's
hamburger. I like them better, or I feel one is more informed (or
more likely to be informed) than another.
>I attribute objectivity to some aspects of taste because I can hear
>the difference: one or another of two works I enjoy is better. In this
>respect, the evaluation of art is a matter of exposure, talent, and
>skill, which has the characteristic that those with the exposure,
>talent, and skill are aware of the difference, but those without it
>aren't. It is like being able to distinguish red and green, and being
>with someone who is colorblind, and insists they're the same color.
Except, really, prove you have talent and skill.
>More than that, it's as if one started life being colorblind, and
>became, through some remarkable new treatment, suddenly able to
>appreciate the spectrum. I attribute objectivity to some aspects of
>taste because I've noticed that as my own tastes became more
>sophisticated with time, I came to appreciate some works more and
>others less, and because others have told me they had the same
>experience, and because my tastes grew closer to the tastes of those
>of great knowledge and ability.
Except, prove your tastes became more refined and not more banal, or
more influenced by the opinions of others, or more closed minded. Age
generally doesn't improve cognitive abilities; it certainly doesn't
improve one's hearing.
>How many people do you know who used to like classical music, but now
>think popular music is better? It just doesn't work that way: it's
>almost inevitably ways the other way around. (I say "almost" because
>someone will surely and tediously drag up his Uncle Joe, who began
>life as the concertmaster for the Philharmonic and ended up a fiddler
>at country dances, if I don't.)
Better in what way? I'd rather listen to bluegrass than classical
music. Other than Verdi, I rarely listen to classical music at all,
despite my very long history with the genre. I enjoy the textures of
the human voice too much to stick with non-operatic classical music.
Much of it bores me. Some of it annoys me.
In any case, you appear to be trying to use some sort of popularity
contest as proof of value. More people like crappy pop records than
like Mozart. If you think any argument that begins with "how many
people do you know..." is going to sway me, think again! (Which has
me thinking of that unfortunate Ford commercial that plays during
Indians games. Ack!)
As I said, prove that there's anything objective in what you claim to
be objective. All you're saying is that it's objective and real, and
if anyone has a different experience it's because they are less
educated, or less aware.
And then you get to claim that all the educated, aware people agree
with you, which is always a neat trick.
--
Julie Carter
Dale Houstman
M.H.Benders wrote:
>
>
> Dale Houstman wrote:
>
>> I'm not certain what the intent of those who decide to make a canon
>> is, but it's never seemed oppressive to me,
>
>
> That's probably because you've never severely criticized anyone who is
> supposed to be part of it.
I most probably don't hang around such people. All of my friends have
rather wide tastes, and - though I attended college - I remained immne
to the merely Academic.
>
> It's people like P.Hill who will tell you that you make yourself
> ridiculous when you deny Bach is a great musician 'because he is part of
> the canon' i.o.w. some dumb list universities have made up for their
> students.
Well, I personally wouldn't deny Bach is a great musician, because I
rather like him. But I will defend anyone's right to dislike him.
>
> It doesn't matter what arguments you have - the fact that Bach is liked
> by a lot of people *makes* him great, just like Tahiti is a very
> beautiful place because many people think so. That's the dumb oppressive
> world of a fake inttelectual, who, instead of investigating the world of
> aesthetics takes the opinions of others for granted and sells it as his
> own.
>
>
I don't know ehat makes this ir that person "great," only whether or not
I derive pleasure and related emotions from them. You're obviously
correct that there are many people (fake intellectuals and otherwise)
who merely mouth what they have learned renders them acceptable. I would
only say that this is an understandable phenomena, given the state of
modern culture and its corrupt merging with celebrity and instant samrts.
dmh
>
Julie Carter
wrote:
>I agree. I get the same response from some when I say I don't like
>ballet (except for the music) or opera (except Henry Purcell). What
>people do with the canon is a different issue though: there are a lot of
>loose canons out there I suppose.
See, I love opera to a rather sickening and scary degree, but I
absolutely understand why you wouldn't. Opera can have flaws in
musicality, sense, and any other possible flaw, especially given the
combination between extreme singing voices, silly lyrics, and often
pompous music.
On the other hand, I love it. And that's only a problem when I sing
along!
Ballet doesn't do a whole lot for me, either. I can admire the
obvious skills involved, but please don't make me go to one again.
--
Julie Carter
Dale Houstman
Rose Kelleher wrote:
>
> Julie Carter wrote:
>
>
>>On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:45:38 -0500, in alt.arts.poetry.comments Dale
>>Houstman <dm...@citilink.com> view hallooed:
>>
>>
>>>I'm not certain what the intent of those who decide to make a canon is,
>>>but it's never seemed oppressive to me, and it's never derailed me on my
>>>way to an artist who lives in the proscribed "boonies." Like in most
>>>things, I suppose the mass will always be sheep, and maybe the canon
>>>gives them something to either aspire toward or to scan lightly so they
>>>can come off "edgercated" at the weenie roast, but it's only - to some
>>>of us - a somewhat amusing list, not unilke the AFI's little burps of
>>>hierarchy, and isn't important one way or another.
>>
>>It's not important until someone claims that not liking Bach, to use
>>an example, is objectively wrong.
>>
>
>
> OK, now I get it. You should be the official translator for this bunch.
>
> And Dale, you've misspelled "edjamacated."
It's a local dierlech...
>
> (and now off to the weenie roast...)
>
>
Cook up some Nietzsche for me...
dmh
M.H.Benders
Joshua P. Hill wrote:
> Come off it, doadywits. Nabokov was famously critical of other
> writers, but of Joyce, he said, ""My stuff is patball to his champion
> game."
And he also called his major opus a 'cold pudding'. And he also said he
learned nothing from Joyce.
For your information: Ulysses was his first book. And it's the only book
of him Nabokov liked.
That doesn't sound like 'one genius appreciating the other', now does
it? Fuck you and your vulgar 'genius' archetype anyway.
M.H.Benders