"What is immediacy, after all, but a denial or a loss of mediation? A desire for the frictionless assimilation of ideas and experiences without the necessity to collide with opposing and obstructing otherness."
I agree so hard with this piece so hard that it feels physical, but this quote in particular almost made me scream out "FUCK YES!" on a commuter train.
Thank you! Also: hello. It has been a while, I hope you're doing well, despite a) the heat, and b) the ambient madness.
I've been trying really hard to define what it is the peturbs me about the current "climate" in contemporary (esp. poetry) publishing, while simultaneously thinking about memory and mediation. This is the resulting melange. I don't know whether it's a complete picture, but it certainly captures something of the presiding malaise right now, so I'm glad what I wanted to say is coming across.
"I think the best intimate poems are those less concerned with the “flow” or “beauty” of their lyric phrasing, than they are with judiciously weighing each word and its placement within a line; this often produces slightly strange syntax, and a feeling that pressure is being applied to language in some way; that language is being thought about as substance and structure, not only as a delivery system." Placement, pressure, structure; language as substance worked in thought. Exactly. I hadn't heard about Grantagate but this is a really strong summary of the poetics of serious lyric. Or maybe serious isn't the right word. The good stuff anyway. The stuff I like.
Thank you. It's the stuff I like too. Increasingly. As an antidote to prevailing conditions. It's what I aspire to, although I'm still learning, and often make a complete tit of myself. Risk is the thing. I want a poetics of risk.
Yes I agree with your twitch. But do think that it would be beneficial to writers, readers and the landscape of literature if we had more (any) literary venues which had a broad public appeal. There does seem to have been a collision of dumbing down with a conceptual/experimental/political mode that is at worst cynical and at best niche, which has resulted in a diminished popular literary culture. Plus the broader context of print media in general plus corporatisation of everything.
Yes to all of this. I am especially interested in this collision in terms of poetry - the point at which "innovative"/ "conceptual"/ "experimental" poetries became self-policing enclaves, presided over by a preist class of (mostly) tenured interpreters, who seemed pretty disinterested in cultivating/ communicating with any kind of broader reading public/s. Which isn't about poetic strategy even remotely, more about how the work is disseminated, framed and received. I'm going to chew on this some more as my brain melts down to a beige puddle. :)
Well this is thoughtful, persuasive and full of things to chew on, thanks so much for sharing. I suppose the only bit that gave me a little pause was the idea that the writer's job is to create art which echoes the human condition at large. I don't know what "the human condition" is, so I worry about what/ who popular appeals to it are leaving behind. That entirely personal twitch aside, this is so useful on the mechanics of how publishing is failing both its community of writers, and its broader community of potential readers.
Having been raised without books, I had no idea that reading was so vital. I did not understand that I could hold power in my hands, and that if I handled a text with the right care – or carelessness – some of that power might transfer. The thing that gave me the hunger to escape was also my best means of escape.
AI cannot understand that intention is at least half the meaning of language. It can reproduce the shape of a sentence – that's about it. It doesn't know what it is to mean one thing by saying another. It has no understanding of tact, shame, bravado, hunger, revenge, mercy. It has no stake in the words. It doesn't know how to PLAY
You're so entirely right, and what a way of putting it! I think this is also why AI as a replacement for actual creative writing written by actual creative people is destined to fail: the hunger remains with us, it doesn't change, and AI writing is fundamentally, structurally, inherently incapable of satisfying that hunger. Because it can't play and it can't care. Writing well requires risk; the machine has no stakes.
"What is immediacy, after all, but a denial or a loss of mediation? A desire for the frictionless assimilation of ideas and experiences without the necessity to collide with opposing and obstructing otherness."
I agree so hard with this piece so hard that it feels physical, but this quote in particular almost made me scream out "FUCK YES!" on a commuter train.
Thank you! Also: hello. It has been a while, I hope you're doing well, despite a) the heat, and b) the ambient madness.
I've been trying really hard to define what it is the peturbs me about the current "climate" in contemporary (esp. poetry) publishing, while simultaneously thinking about memory and mediation. This is the resulting melange. I don't know whether it's a complete picture, but it certainly captures something of the presiding malaise right now, so I'm glad what I wanted to say is coming across.
"I think the best intimate poems are those less concerned with the “flow” or “beauty” of their lyric phrasing, than they are with judiciously weighing each word and its placement within a line; this often produces slightly strange syntax, and a feeling that pressure is being applied to language in some way; that language is being thought about as substance and structure, not only as a delivery system." Placement, pressure, structure; language as substance worked in thought. Exactly. I hadn't heard about Grantagate but this is a really strong summary of the poetics of serious lyric. Or maybe serious isn't the right word. The good stuff anyway. The stuff I like.
Thank you. It's the stuff I like too. Increasingly. As an antidote to prevailing conditions. It's what I aspire to, although I'm still learning, and often make a complete tit of myself. Risk is the thing. I want a poetics of risk.
I think I agree with much of this: https://litmagnews.substack.com/p/the-slow-and-sad-death-of-the-literary?utm_id=97757_v0_s00_e232_tv2_tp1_a1dennhavjjlu3&fbclid=IwY2xjawR8WWhleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETJZTGJFamZ0OWlqMFhNRUY1c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHha7_XyMiUK-CZa6isrVAu8mfce4ZItzwLNGvtv-EsqZDPkdJ13SKvzSb_ZC_aem_ugIaq3ZdB5Yfyhsyj1thLg
Yes I agree with your twitch. But do think that it would be beneficial to writers, readers and the landscape of literature if we had more (any) literary venues which had a broad public appeal. There does seem to have been a collision of dumbing down with a conceptual/experimental/political mode that is at worst cynical and at best niche, which has resulted in a diminished popular literary culture. Plus the broader context of print media in general plus corporatisation of everything.
Yes to all of this. I am especially interested in this collision in terms of poetry - the point at which "innovative"/ "conceptual"/ "experimental" poetries became self-policing enclaves, presided over by a preist class of (mostly) tenured interpreters, who seemed pretty disinterested in cultivating/ communicating with any kind of broader reading public/s. Which isn't about poetic strategy even remotely, more about how the work is disseminated, framed and received. I'm going to chew on this some more as my brain melts down to a beige puddle. :)
Well this is thoughtful, persuasive and full of things to chew on, thanks so much for sharing. I suppose the only bit that gave me a little pause was the idea that the writer's job is to create art which echoes the human condition at large. I don't know what "the human condition" is, so I worry about what/ who popular appeals to it are leaving behind. That entirely personal twitch aside, this is so useful on the mechanics of how publishing is failing both its community of writers, and its broader community of potential readers.
Having been raised without books, I had no idea that reading was so vital. I did not understand that I could hold power in my hands, and that if I handled a text with the right care – or carelessness – some of that power might transfer. The thing that gave me the hunger to escape was also my best means of escape.
AI cannot understand that intention is at least half the meaning of language. It can reproduce the shape of a sentence – that's about it. It doesn't know what it is to mean one thing by saying another. It has no understanding of tact, shame, bravado, hunger, revenge, mercy. It has no stake in the words. It doesn't know how to PLAY
You're so entirely right, and what a way of putting it! I think this is also why AI as a replacement for actual creative writing written by actual creative people is destined to fail: the hunger remains with us, it doesn't change, and AI writing is fundamentally, structurally, inherently incapable of satisfying that hunger. Because it can't play and it can't care. Writing well requires risk; the machine has no stakes.
Excellent piece, so true
Thank you. Also, now with fewer typos (!) For the correction of which I did not use AI. ;)
What a world we've made