MODERN POETRY:
Social Struggles for Social Consents
This is the golden age of the poet as "costume". It's not about language at all. It's all about a struggle over who has the social right to take the pose of a poet. I suppose we can rationalize it as a political struggle that parallels the emergence of new political ideas and demographics in the last century. But I wish to advance a more profound statement: I think it has always been that way. I think that since the Age of Augustus western poets were selected based on the social right they were able to wrest from powerful protectors in any given society. In the Age of Imperial Democracy this is still true - its about who can capture the "social" high ground in order to enjoy a social right - in lieu of merits of language - to wear the nation's costume of poet.
The modern poet's role is carefully defined by several specific protocols (costumes). This is a time when there exists one poetic for those who belong to the same gender, another for those of the same sexual preference, another honoring one race or one ethnic tradition, etc. I see these poetics as mask and costume - public personas to front social struggles for social privileges. This struggle is fought out among a few influentially placed arbitrators. The public is not involved in this process. The public cannot name one living modern poet. The public does not memorize lines from modern poetry. The public does not buy modern poetry. Thus - and this is important to us - the public does not have any influence over modern poetics. The public - a true lover of costume - has gone to the arts that really do costumes right - pop music and film.
Among persons in control of who may publish their poetry in America, there is no objective, impartial arbitration of taste and style to break these balkanized struggles in modern poetry - the struggle of costumes and poses. And how can there be a non-subjective judgment on something as wraithlike as poetic style? There is not such a thing as objective literary criticism, because without a public there can be no competitive free market of merits. This is a time when academics take turns reviewing and publishing each others slim little volumes and helping each other achieve academic tenure in their respective writing programs; a time when their students - also wishing to enjoy a life of reading books - are tasked to sort out poetry contest manuscripts that do not follow their professor's poetic before its passed on to some - god bless them - judge - to decide which single manuscript shall be published that year. Once these slim volumes are produced in tiny runs of 1000 or so, they are quietly packed away or used as packing materials. This is nothing more than what was expected - they existed after all only to decorate an academic resume. Yet outside the incestuous circle of University presses there is only a nuclear winter for other voices.
Consequently, I believe it is an unequaled opportunity for a new experiment - now dropped as from Mars on an unsuspecting planet. The reader should be well warned.
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