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Theodore Adorno's criticism has interested me personally since I first encountered his and Max Horkheimer's media criticism as an undergraduate. As a dual magazine journalism and English major, his theories about advertising and the media (fun fact for anyone who's intereseted: Horkheimer and Adorno were German exhiles living and working in Hollywood) attracted me, and probably played some slight role in my decision not to become a journalist. I hadn't encountered his ideas about poetry before (though I knew something of his criticism of Enlightenment and Romantic thinking), but I find in it much of the same appeal I had for his other work, particularly in its discussion of the dialectic between the "I" and society. I think it is important to note, however, the difference in Adorno's definition of language from those held by many of the other poets and critics we've read this semester. Adorno notes this definition in his statement that "language mediates lyric poetry and society in their innermost core." The second direct object in the clause refers to this definition, that language "mediates" the individual's experience of the world and what society is on a broader level. This may seem closely alligned with Wittgenstein's propositon, that language is our experience of the world, but a world of difference lies between. For me, this distinction makes the idea of subjectivity constructed through language a much more real and sensible proposition. Adorno's thesis, "that the lyric work is always the subjective expression of a social antagonism," seems like a much more believable statement than some other theorists ideas of identity construction through subjectivity in language because of the place Adorno assigns language in his model. While he states that "language should not be absolutized as the voice of Being as opposed to the lyric subject," he does separate language from concepts and from society, though both use it and are connected by it. Language is "the medium of concepts," a substance for both making and conveying them, but the transmission is not a one-to-one send/recieve communication.

It seems that, like myself, most of the class more or less enjoyed all of the readings this week. Though they certainly weren’t the most complicated essays we’ve read this semester, I think all three of the selections we read for tonight put forth seemingly sensible arguments that we could all get our heads around and which seemed reasonable enough. Not that I haven’t enjoyed most of the other selections we’ve read this semester, but this was welcome.

I had a mixed response to the DuPlessis reading. After reading the first chapter, I really wanted to like it. Finally, I thought, someone not afraid to make something like a philogical argument despite (or thoughtfully considering) the pressures of and considerations presented by theory.

I think the Apollinaire excerpt is an interesting cultural artifact (and I can't think of a more fitting term for it than that). Though I of course didn't agree with all of it, I was impressed by how forward-looking parts of Apollinaire's argument are given the essay's date (I could see how Derrida and Foucault could have been influenced by his work, as the introduction notes).

Opening up the Bernstein article for the first time, I had no idea what to expect. Dr. Sherwood recommended I present on the article, but honestly I thought he was just trying to mess with my head; make me present on an article he thought would annoy me or that I'd probably disagree with, then watch me squirm my way through it. I don't know why I thought this, but in any event, I was surprised to find that I did, in fact, like the article and thought Bernstein made a good number of points that were both valid and, more importantly, worth making.

Some people, in their responses, seem bothered by the format of the "article" (by which name I'll refer to the piece from here on out, though I think Bernstein would prefer "poem"), and while I won't go so far as to say I never found it perhaps slightly annoying, overall I think the format reinforces Bernstein's "argument" in a very creative, but also utterly appropriate fashion. That is, the piece could have been written as a standard article quite easily, and making it look that way would involve no more effort than alternately pressing the "end" and "delete" keys on one's keyboard about a thousand times (though if one did this, I think Bernstein would contend that the meaning of the piece would also change). There is a sentence structure within the piece, and, though it gets a bit scattershot at times, "sentences" are arranged more or less arranged themeatically. The line breaks (which Bernstein considers every bit as meaningful as the words), however, interfere with our ability to read it in this (comfortable) way, and get "absorbed" in the piece through the conventions we expect in traditional essays. They therefore may be termed what Bernstein calls "anti-absorptive," in the relative context of this piece. That is, if we had expected a poem by William Carlos Williams rather than a critical article, the line breaks wouldn't function in the same way. Ultimately, however, the goal of the article remains absorption. Bernstein has a point (a quite political one at that) that he hopes the reader will agree with (though absorption and impermeability are also relative to the reader as well, so the choice is still yours). By emphasizing anti-absorptive techniques in his artiface (and thereby the notion of all writing as precisely that), he hopes to make his article ultimately more engrossing and absorptive. In my case I think it worked. I definately "got" this article on a first reading much more lucid and enriched manner than I did, for example, Forrest-Thompson. I could keep writing on this, but after tonight I think you'll all be quite tired of hearing about why I like Bernstein, so, I'll leave this at that.

If anyone is waiting with baited breath for discussion questions about Bernstein from me, er, exhale. I have a good deal of other stuff I'd like to talk about in relation to the article/poem (artiface?) and, judging by the some of the responses people have already posted (as well as the length and general weirdness of the thing), I think plenty of questions will generate themselves.

-Matt

This Thursday, I'll be leading the discussion of the Bernstein (e-reserve) article. In the article, Bernstein frequently refers to his own poetry (ideas he likes playing around with and such), but never directly quotes any of it. With that in mind, I thought some people might like to see Bernstein's ideas in action, so to speak. To that end, I've posted a sampling of some of his poems in the poem annotation section of the wiki. More are available at:

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/index2.html#poetry.

Browse at your leisure.

I think Randall Jarrell's article makes a valid point, not only about Modernism, but about literary genres in general. That is, they are never as static as structuralists or teachers using a genre or period based approach to literature would sometimes like us to believe. This isn't to say genres are not helpful for our understanding of literature or in some way valid, but simply that they are not so much static categories but fluid entities developing in a historical continuum. Ironically, as Jarrell points out, however, we often like to break Modernism, in Jarrell's time the most recent entry in poetic genre, into its own category, largely because it seems, on a structural level, so different from the preceding dominant schools of neo-Classicism and Romanticism. I think this tendency also stems from the belief that so much changed in the twentieth century; so many new luxuries entered the marketplace. Jarrell notes this point, both in discussion of late capitalism and of the importance of the car in William's poetry. This is a valid point; it is also one of the first things I think of when I think of Modernism. But the development of industrial capitalism and the rule of the market had already begun in Blake and Wordsworth's time, so in a sense it was there already. Poets like Blake also shared the deep skepticism of the new industrialism that so greatly influences Modernism. The most interesting portion of the article, for me, was the list of the features of Modernism Jarrell compiles. I was somewhat surprised by the number of similarities with Romanticism, despite the fact that I kind of already felt this way about the Romantic/Modernist divide before reading the article.

Moreover, as someone (I think Tino) already observed in his blog, critics are beginning to pose similar questions of the divide between Modernism and Post-Modernism, a point I believe Jarrell also anticipates. That is, Jarrell calls Modernism "the end of the line," and declares the movement dead (273). "How can poems be written that are more violent, disorganized, more obscure, more --supply your own adjective-- than those that have already been written," he questions (273). Post-modernism has succeeded in this respect (being more violent and disorganized at least), and in this sense seems an extension of Modernism's (now very prolonged) death. The focus in post-modernism has moved away from the Modernist individualism Jarrell declares a product of late-capitalism, but I think you could make the argument that this is also endemic of now-even-later capitalism. That is, the extension of the media, internet, multi-tasking etc. in our lives has begun pulling us in so many different directions that maintaining a stable sense of self or attempting to make sense of the world has become more difficult. The number of choices we may make on a daily basis, as well as the number of people with whom we interact day-to-day, has exploded, and while on one hand this seems empowering of the individual, it also draws attention to the fragmented nature of everything. For anyone who isn't lazy or naive, maintaining a stable sense of the correctness or authority of our beliefs becomes more difficult when a contradictory opinion is never more than a mouse click away. Post-modern literature often reflects this fragmented world view we've all come to either accept as stable, retreat from or attempt to deny (conservativism), or somehow compromise with (pretending things are simpler than we know they are to maintain our sanity). Jarrell also argues that Modernist tendencies began in France thirty years before they did in England because English verse simply wasn't ready, thus implying a belief that genres arise from historical needs or are dictated by political needs for expression. In this sense, post-Modernism arose from the continued march of late-capitalism, but this is not to indicate that we can definitively mark the start of post-modernism or deny its similarities with Modernism. All literature exists along a continuum of historical influence and argument (the latter being related to the distinction Jarrell draws between neo-Classicism and Romanticism). Thus, I don't know that I believe Modernism ever died as Jarrell declares it has.

In response to Kamal's post: I don't think I can get my head around Forrest-Thomson's BBC letter poem example either. I agree with her definition of continuity: "Our reading must work through the level of meaning into the external world and then, via the non-semantic levels of Artiface, back into the poem, enriched by the exernal contexts of reference in which it is found momentarily merged." That is to say, I think continuity exists when we read anything, and that it is an especially relavent in the context of poetry. I would also agree that the line between poetry and prose can get rather blurry, in certain impressionist or modernist novels, for example. But I can't really accept that textual layout is the only thing differentiating poetry from normal prose any more than Kamal can. I agree that our reading of poetry can be based on convention, but a different textual layout is only one such convention (or set of conventions). Also, I think her statement, "the differences between prose and verse passage are the result of a change in conventional expectations, modes of attention, and interpretive strategies, rather than the result of any alteration of the linguistic material itself," somewhat ignores the differences in material practice of the two different sets of authors in question, journalists and poets. In some ways the two are similar, journalism emphasizes saying as much as possible in as little space as possible, so journalists often have to think about the words they use more carefully than those writing business memos or class essays, for example, though perhaps not as carefull as poets. But their aims in using language are totally different, and even if language isn't as controlable or refferential as "communications" models of writing assert it is, I don't know that the intent of the author is irrelavent either. That isn't to say we should judge art by what we think it says, ultimately by its "comment on life," but can't we take it for that, at least to an extent and on a personal level?

Had a minute before class so I typed up a few observations/ questions, more to come:

On page 89, towards the end of “Figurative Language” Thomas Mclaughlin poses the question many have for deconstructionists like himself: “But what would we do with that awareness [that “spectacular figures of speech can attune us to the almost invisible figures at work throughout language and culture, and thus to the power of language over perception”]. He eventually settles on the statement that “if figures tell us anything, it’s that meaning is up for grabs, that the world can be shaped in an endless variety of forms, that language is a battleground of value systems. The challenge of figures is to make sure we are aware of their presence in discourse and their effects on our thought—but also to engage in the production of figures ourselves, in service of our own values” (McLaughlin 90). But what, however, are those values? Where do they lie, are they not systems in themselves and if we formulate them figuratively aren’t we really conceding their unity, power, and applicability to specifics from the outset? Can we know something is a metaphor and still give it power? If binaries are usually privileged, should we always choose the underprivileged term?

What is your favorite/the most memorable part of the poem (image, section, sound image, whatever)? I’m not looking for anything in depth here, just think about and maybe highlight what you like, for whatever reason or by any criteria you choose.

What sort of “portrait” is this? In what way is it “complete?” How might what you may know about Picasso contribute to an understanding of the title/ how this might be a “complete portrait.”

Is there a “tension” in the poem that you can define? What might Easthope or another New critic have to say about a poem like this?

From Composition as Explanation by Gertrude Stein:
“It is very likely that nearly every one has been very nearly certain that something that is interesting is interesting them. Can they and do they. It is very interesting that nothing inside in them, that is when you consider the very long history of how every one ever acted or has felt, it is very interesting that nothing inside in them in all of them makes it connectedly different. By this I mean this. The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen.”
How is this statement, part of Stein’s definition aesthetic theory, related to Easthope’s definition of poetry as discursive? How does it affect your reading of the poem (how you read the poem, what you might “read into” the poem, how you would think about or approach interpreting the poem)?

I thought the pentameter chapter from Easthope was damned interesting. His discussion of counterpoint helped me understand something that always confused me about pentameter, namely, why it never seems as regular in practice as simply studying the form of the meter would have you believe. I think the interaction between meter and the regular pronunciation of words in normal (non-poetic) diction is often downplayed in our study of poetry, which usually considers meter only as an abstract. I also think he makes a good point, drawing on Althusser and, though he doesn’t acknowledge it directly, The Eighteenth Brumaire (of Napoleon Bonaparte) by Karl Marx (all that stuff about dressing the national tongue “in the clothes of antiquity” in order to consolidate and solidify authority in the hands of the bourgeois—p. 64), about how pentameter has historically been defined as “natural” when it is in fact anything but. We’ve all heard the human heartbeat argument before; and I do agree with his argument that declaring a form of speech that restrains emotional outburst as “natural,” does (or did, anyway) serve to construct its readers as passive subjects.

What, precisely, we do with all this remains another question entirely. If we all started writing accentual poetry, the chant which emphasizes community over the individual, would we all become revolutionaries and build some sort of socialist utopia? Er, not so sure, but I think that is where Easthope is going with this. Again, though he doesn’t mention it specifically, I hear echoes of The Eighteenth Brumaire here. For those of you who haven’t read it (and you should, it’s damned interesting and can shed some light on the source of much of our current political administration’s power, here in America that is, but I digress), I quote here (in translation of course):

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can only create its poetry from the future, not from the past. It cannot begin its own work until it has sloughed off all its superstitious regard for the past. Earlier revolutions have needed world-historical reminiscences to deaden their awareness of their own content. In order to arrive at its own content the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead. Previously the phrase transcended the content, here the content transcends the phrase

I see Easthope as defending much of this doctrine, which, F.Y.I. is the only thing Marx ever wrote explicitly concerning literature, in the chapter. He demonstrates how pentameter originally associated itself (wrongly, in his opinion) with classical poetry, (as Napoleon dressed his troops in Roman costume, according to Marx) in order to affirm its legitimacy and “naturalness.” His defense of accentual poetry also seems to coincide with Marx’s delightfully vague description of the poetry he would like to see in the future. That is, it does not fix line length or dictate where accents must fall, but only demands a given number of accents, but not syllables, in a line. Thus, “in accentual metre (sic) the stress of the intonation and the abstract pattern coincide and reinforce each other” (73). Pentameter constrains speech and thereby the most emphatic expression of content, accentual meter reinforces it, and thereby lets the content guide the poetry.

Again, what do we do with all this is another question, but I found Easthope’s take on all this to be quite interesting- especially in light of the echoes of Marx I hear in it. In short, that particular passage from Marx has historically taken on quite an array of meanings and many a book has been burnt because of it. Chairman Mao, for example, took it to mean that the only sorts of books worth reading (i.e. the only one’s people should be allowed to read) were one’s whose content upheld the triumph and solidarity of the proletariat. In short, I’m glad to read something intelligent done with it, for a change.

My reaction to the Easthope reading corresponds with my reaction to most “post”-al theories; it’s not so much that I disagree with most of it, it’s that I don’t necessarily want to agree with it. It is unsettling, and it raises a number of questions for someone training for a career as an English educator (especially one with ambitions towards actually teaching something, rather than proctoring weekly book club meetings). Easthope situates his definition of poetry within a broadly Marxist framework in that a poem is, for him, a material product. What, however, does the critic produce? Is deconstruction really a road we want to go down (as Easthope presumably indicates we should in his statement “the whole enterprise of Part Two is to read the poetic discourse against the way it presents itself to be read?” (47). Deconstruction followed to its logical end is anarchy. Granted, as Easthope observes in his reading of Althusser and Lacan, our constructions of ourselves are misrecognitions, as discourse constructs us as subjects who view ourselves as autonomous individuals, but we still need these constructions, we can do nothing without them. Again, what should we “do” with this understanding.

This isn’t to say I didn’t like the reading, in fact, I think it’s the most interesting thing we’ve been assigned thus far. Louis Althusser, who Easthope seems to like, is actually my favorite literary theorist. I also appreciated the fact that, for a guy arguing against the very idea of perfect lucidity in writing, Easthope is always clear about exactly where he is coming from. He thereby avoids the other problem I often have with “post”-al theory, namely, that it is poorly written. Theories arise from debates with one another, granted, but they also arise from internal debate. Whose Marxism/structuralism/new historicism etc. becomes an important question which must be addressed. There is nothing inherently wrong with blending ideas from different theories, but doing so without noting precisely how you perceive those ideas, in addition to whose ideas they were in the first place (grounding your argument) is incredibly frustrating for the reader, or for me at least.

I also found the juxtaposition of the Easthope and Lowell readings interesting, in that I think Lowell addresses an element of poetry Easthope largely ignores. Where, in the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes model Easthope supports, does the musical rhythm of a poem reside, or does it inhabit its own axis. Easthope seems to associate it with the phonetic level of speech, and it would seem to inhabit the vocal (signifier/enunciation) side of his model, but otherwise, I don’t think he does much to address the question. Perhaps his discussion of iambic pentameter in chapter four will illuminate things.

I was impressed by F.R. Leavis’ defense of modern poetry, especially in relation to its publication in 1932. I largely agree with his complaint about the effect of Victorian poetry on popular conceptions of poetry, that it has made readers of poetry “become accustomed to the idea that certain things are poetical, e.g. flowers, dawn, dew, birds, love, archaisms, and country-place names” (197). Today, some 70 years after Leavis first made this point, I think this idea is still with us, not only in society at-large, but also in the English classroom at the high school and collegiate levels. We might not necessarily teach ideas about flowers being poetic, but in organizing historically/genre based classes, or writing about poems in terms of their relations to genres and history, we often begin to organize our ideas along such lines. The Classical poets alluded to the Greeks and often emphasized carpe deim, for example; the Romantics really liked nature and put children on a pedestal. While these classifications may be useful and largely justifiable, I think Leavis believes, as I do, that we must always remember that things are never so simple, and that we cannot and should not define poetry, as a term, along the lines of its subject matter; that is, we should not dismiss something as doggerel because it is not about what we think poetry should be about. For Leavis, of course, this does not mean we cannot criticize particular schools or periods of poetry along other lines; this is precisely what he does with nineteenth century poetry. His definition of what constitutes good poetry, as I can extrapolate it, draws on a Marxist definition of history. For Leavis, the poet is the product and chronicler of his (or her) time; he has for his materials the forms and poetic fashions, which he may use or break with as is warranted by their appropriateness to the social climate of his contemporary world (a similar point to the one Elliot makes about the poet’s duty towards history). The ultimate measure of a poem lies in the correspondence of its expression (the merger of form and content) to the realities (social, political, economic, aesthetic, etc.) of its time of production. “All that we can fairly ask of the poet is that he shall show himself to have been fully alive in our time,” Leavis writes (197). He doesn’t like the escapist attitude of the Victorians, treating poetry as a refuge, largely because he feels we cannot really do that, escape from the world into language, because language is our relation with the world, and we cannot escape those relations. In this area again I think I agree with him.

That said, there are a few points in the excerpt in which he completely loses me. What, for one, is this discussion of, or rather against, anthropology about? I refer to the section in his discussion of The Waste-Land which reads

The part that science has played in the process of disintegration is matter of commonplace: anthropology is, in the present context, a peculiarly significant expression of the scientific spirit. To the anthropological eye beliefs, religions, and moralities are human habits – in their odd variety too human. Where the anthropological outlook prevails, sanctions wither (199)

What is Leavis suggesting here, that there is something transcendent or metaphysical about religion outside of human belief; perhaps that poetry should be treated this way? What are the withering sanctions to which he refers? He seems to contrast this scientific/objective eye towards culture with the unifying expression of Elliot’s poem he finds in Tiresias’ all-encompassing god’s eye, but what is he doing in this contrast? To what extent is Leavis resisting proto-New Critical ideas, to what extent is producing them?

Oddly enough, this semester has provided my first exposure to New Criticism as a theory (i.e. it's the first time I'm reading it's foundational texts). I had teachers in high school who definately used it to teach literature, especially poetry, but I had never studied it's mechanics, so to speak- what it looks at specifically and why. I mark this as odd because in earning my degree in English and Textual studies from Syracuse, a program pretty evenly divided between literature and theory, we never studied it specifically as a critical theory. At most, teachers would emphasize close reading as an important skill to develop, a focus a writer should not loose sight of. The program's required introductory theory course, however, brushed over actual study of the school of criticism, assuming we had some exposure to it in high school and thereby already knew what it was all about, while simultaneously positing it as an enemy, the opponent of "theory," and thereby representative of all that is wrong with the world. Not suprising, Syracuse being the bastion of pinko commie liberalism that it is.
Reading Brooks' "The Well Wrought Urn" made me aware of some of the misconceptions I may have had about New Criticism. Perhaps they aren't misconceptions per se, but the Brooks book certainly defied my expectations. First of all, I was struck by how positive Brooks generally remains throughout the reading. He does make passing references to purportedly "great" poems, and clearly has heirarchical ideas in mind, but he does not write off whole schools of poetry, esp. modern poetry, as I think quite a few of his contemporaries did. He also doesn't engage in pointing out or even mention some of the philisophical fallicies I thought New Criticism loved so much. Again, perhaps Brooks might not be 100 percent typical of the school; I read this selection in conjunction with an assigned reading for 676: Critcal Methods, Ransom's "Criticism Inc." and found Ransom, another foundational New Critic, to be much more interested in dictating what is and isn't art and which art is best through a standardized method of inquiry modeled on science. Brooks, however, clearly distinguishes art from science (as well as from history and biography). I also like his definition of the poet as "maker," a definition that makes room for modern poetry where Ransom rights it off completely.
As my study at Syracuse taught me, New Criticism can be ripped to shreds from a number of theoretical angles; I won't engage in that here. I do have some problems with the theory, but I think studying it in this, an exclusively poetic context, has provided me a much greater understanding not only of what it says, but why that is. Reading Brooks has also demonstrated how it can be put to good use in the right hands.

I had an ambivalent reaction to Hollander’s Rhyme’s Reason; on one hand I found it excellent for its condensation and coalescence of the most important concepts in the study of poetry, on the other I felt embarrassed about how much I should know about poetry, on a basic skills or “toolbox” level, that I don’t. That is, while I recognized nearly every term in the book, I found I could define almost none of them offhand. This feeling was exacerbated by what I felt to be the primary strength of Hollander’s book, the level of simplicity to which he breaks down the material. I felt like I was trying to re-learn much of what I should have learned in high school or as an undergraduate, except in many ways it was a more difficult process than even that. Over the summer, for example, I took a class that involved reading some Nathaniel Hawthorne, an author I had not read since high school. Yet I found Hawthorne came back for me much more readily. Perhaps part of the problem here is that the tools of poetic interpretation involve a sort of academic discipline we don’t exercise very much in our study of novels and most drama.