Let's all change our names every few months

Invective Verse
Jennifer Moxley

In these times it is easy to become uselessly polemical when given the choice between the right wing and fighting against the right wing. And in this bind we are debating on "where poetry comes from," or what is its "use value." I'm not sure if I want to know where poetry comes from. I do know that if I were to describe what goes through my mind when I write I'd be ceaselessly ridiculed and no one would ever speak to me again. As far as use value goes, I say stop sulking about being misunderstood, ignored, or having to fight for your unique aesthetic and look around you. There is a specter haunting poetry, and it's not The Paris Review. Now I do not deny that discussions about poetry, whether aesthetic, political, or both, are useful and interesting, but considering the state of things in the world we should put down that cup of coffee and start getting angry. Let us assume time is limited and forget about defining the creative process or trying to determine the value of poetry, after all it keeps happening in spite of (or because of) MTV and rampant social injustice. Let us heave no more sighs unless we are falling in love. We should be disgusted with our boredom considering spring and all the beauty of this privilege we have called poetry. We should not assume, however, that our vision of "truth" (though we may stupidly think it's the right one) will be heard simply because it's ill poetic form. Even screaming from the rooftops "We are telling the truth!" doesn't mean anything unless a million people do it. I know some of us feel unduly isolated since poetry is pretty much ignored, but we aren't alone. We're in the same stew as other ignored ideas, arts, and people who are unfairly driven to a preoccupation with the question "who the fuck are we anyway?" But just because we are poets doesn't mean we should simply give up, as though we were "kept" lovers, what little power we do have by crawling into an abyss of solipsism or expecting some greater power to change our lives. Instead we should annoy the power mongers by using poetic propaganda to launch a ruthless critique of them and their buddies and to expose the world of contradictions surrounding us. For poetry, my friends, is like a sit-in at the luncheonette of language, and we should refuse to get up and walk across the street to the "poets only" diner. Poetry is the insistence that we partake in the expression of our lives, in all their various contexts and manifestations. The importance freedom is paramount and we must insist upon it by demanding money and support from the state and demanding free distribution of all independent poetry publications. Having won these goals we should categorically refuse to be insular or troubled. We can forget about money by making the wealthy reinstitute a benefactor economy (until after the revolution), that way we can have their money as well as infiltrate their homes and insult them at their cocktail parties. You are probably wondering "but what shall we wear?" I say whatever you want, but come in style drag out those accessories and suede shoes, then we'll all go out afterwards for pie in the sky. We must also capture back the public domain for poetry! Let us insist on writing all freeway signs, tax forms and public awareness leaflets. Let's then stop sending poems to Sulfur magazine and journals like it. Let's all change our names every few months and see if anyone being ugly bags of mostly narcissism and start picking fights with those who would have us fight against ourselves.

No jornal Oblek, 1993.

1. How do you conceive of innovative poetry in America after Language Poetry?
2. How do you define your own practice in relation to Language Poetry?

After Language Poetry
Jennifer Moxley

There are many ways your question could be interpreted. On the one hand, "How do you conceive of innovative poetry in America after Language poetry?" could mean, "how is it possible to conceive of such a thing." As if Language poetry foretold the end of all innovation by virtue of its late-century formalist extremism. Strange though this may sound, it is a "position" held by some-poets who feel that we can no longer "make it new," nor should we. In the wake of this belief, some return to the innovative formal programs which preceded Language poetry, writing out of formal ideas connected with Black Mountain, the New York School, Berkeley Renaissance or Beats, ideas that are by no means exhausted, and which continue apace among younger and older writers alike, as if Language poetry never happened. I've also seen other young writers argue, with some resignation, that though there is "nothing new under the sun," the innovations the Language poets adopted from the European avant-garde are still rich with possibility and there is no good reason to abandon them. The appeal of Language poetry's energy, defiance, politics and, though greatly overlooked in critical writing on their work, fun has spawned an enormous number of adherents, many of whom have written some great poetry in the last couple of decades. However, because Language poetry was the last credible avant-garde in the US to be critically assimilated (a process which is still on-going) all poetry that uses the formal devices they favored (whether radical juxtaposition, paratactic prose, or, for that matter, even field composition!) gets subsumed under the category "Language poetry," not unlike when everything "strange" became "surrealist." Of course, in time all of this will straighten itself out and, to future generations of readers, invisible distinctions will become glaringly obvious, as will the differences among the Language poets themselves. The question, then, is not perhaps, "how do you conceive of innovative poetry after Language poetry," but rather why would you want to do such a thing? The answer for me, here greatly simplified, is twofold. The first is selfish, "because as a reader one gets bored with the same old kind of poetry!" The second is serious, "because as a poet, the burden is upon me to find the best formal solution to express this particular historical moment in such a way as to expose its logic (or illogic) at every linguistic level, from the intimate life of the individual to the larger geo-political world and on out into the universe. I realized that sounds rather grand, but then again, what's worth doing is worth being deluded about.

As for your second question, "How do you define your own relationship to Language Poetry," I can say that, though I was reluctant to admit it at the time, as a set of theories about writing Language poetry ceased being of any help to me about 1989. This however was not before I had been inspired by their insistence on keeping poetry political and their significant continuation of the tradition of the small magazine and small press. More significantly still, it was through Language poetry that I was introduced to many of the writers I continue to hold very dear, poets such as Zukofsky, Oppen, Duncan and Creeley, to name only a few. Also, though the theoretical framework behind the movement ceased to answer all my formal needs, I continue to admire much of the poetry being written by individuals associated with Language poetry, poets whose personal work has continued to grow and change. Here I might name Bob Perelman, Rae Armantrout and Michael Gottlieb, but that would just be the beginning of a longer list.

(daqui)