Literary Magazines??? and The Capilano Review

I don’t think I’ve ever had my writing published before in a Canadian literary magazine, and that’s why it’s an extra pleasure to have some of my poems out in the latest issue of The Capilano Review. But there’s a lot of other excellent work in the issue as well.

Anybody have any thoughts on the state of the literary magazine relative to avant/experimental/innovative poetry these days? Is all going well, with the addition of many web magazines that can reach a broad readership when there’s a readership to reach? Is the print journal dead or withering or doing just fine? Has the increase in fuzzy middle ground poetry completely blurred the distinction between what is or isn’t avant literature, or between what is or isn’t a journal devoted to that literature? To what extent do you read literary magazines at all when there are so many other ways to get a poetry fix? Has the post-Ron Silliman blog discussion universe changed the value of the lit magazine? These days I live too far outside most of the larger urban avant poetry communities to know how much of a role literary magazines are playing in any of them in the last few years, although small press publication in Los Angeles has been an important factor in my recent reading. Who reads any of the magazines that are out there, if they’re out there, and what magazines do you read, if any?

In any case, some of the highlights of the fall 2008 issue of The Capilano Review:

–An interview of Louis Cabri by Roger Farr, featuring among other things a discussion of the relationship between poems and commodities, as well as a discussion of procedural elements in contemporary writing. Cabri and Farr are both excellent poets and theorists, and while the interview may not be raising particularly new subjects, their discussion of some well-known problems in poetics is very informative, with many references to useful other texts. The interview is followed by a set of new and worthwhile poems from Cabri.

–Roman Korec’s poem “Ode To a Plastic Shopping Bag” is an entertaining novelty number which in a light fashion explores the problem of the commodity fetish and the detritus of its plastic side effects. I wonder if this piece might be best performed.

–Some color paintings by Damian Moppett, and an interview of Moppett by Sharla Sava. I was intrigued to discover Moppett’s work, and the interview taught me a lot about the visual arts in Vancouver.

Sina Queryas’ poem “The Endless Path of the New.” A poem in four parts with wide historical reference and a bold use of line with inventive rhythmic variation.

Andrea Actis’ poem “choose your toast & publish post” may be my favorite piece in this issue. The poem weaves several simultaneous and reoccurring strands: pop culture, politics, feminism, the life of post-post-post young women. Consistently funny, lively, insightful.

M.W. Miller, “A Far West Commentary on the Diamond Sutra.” A rollicking new adventure in the life of the Excluded Middle. What is it about writing that takes literary or theoretical concepts and turns them into characters that I find so pleasurable? Or is it just that Miller does that here in a funny and thoughtful way.

And now, back to grading all those final projects.

Anticipation is Sweet: the MLA Pre-Season

I won’t be at MLA this year, and I won’t feel sorry to miss it either. Of course being in the Bay Area over the holiday season can be nice, and I’ll be sorry not to see a number of friends, colleagues and acquaintances, but there will be other occasions for that. As for the rest of MLA? I’ll be happy to be far away from it.

For those who are going, particularly those looking for jobs, the MLA Pre-Season is now officially underway. I date the official Pre-Season not from the moment of beginning to send out letters in late September (that’s still just warm-ups) but from the time when phone calls for interviews actually start, at which point people can legitimately begin waiting for phone calls about interviews, although they have likely been waiting for some time already. There is also much sending of last minute dossiers and writing samples, followed by actually getting phone calls and setting up interview times... well, maybe. And there’s also hearing news about other people getting interviews or not getting interviews. The MLA Pre-Season Information Mill is fantastic for encouraging those special feelings of low self-worth, financial desperation and competitive rage.

If little in the world of literature is quite as annoying as actually being at MLA, the MLA Pre-Season comes close. Ah, the anticipation before the event itself is sweet, like the aroma of hemlock before one takes that heady first sip.

In my experience, MLA job interview phone calls can start right after Thanksgiving and can continue right on up to the week before Christmas, which this year will be Friday December 19. Maybe once I had a call in the weekend of Christmas itself, a last minute, harried call from a school whose interview process was quickly heading out of control. Those phone calls are fun. Being phoned by people who don’t sound like they know what they’re doing is a very important MLA Pre-Season experience.

Sooner or later, many people have a MLA Pre-Season Horror Story, or at least a Great Tale of Confusion and Annoyance. Like, for instance, a search committee making calls not just to you and your official references, but to random other people as well, picked for reasons that are unclear and before you’ve even been interviewed.

On one occasion, sitting in my office between classes, I received a phone call from a professor at a university I’ve now forgotten. Thinking this was a set-up call for an interview, I talked to her for awhile. She really liked my job letter, she said, and was interested in discussing my teaching with me. We had a nice chat. But no, she wasn’t calling to set up an interview, nor did the school she worked for ever call me after that. What was she doing, I’ve often wondered since. MLA Pre-Season underground Subvert The Search Committee activities? Or was she just bored and looking for people to talk to?

Sooner or later though—I mean sometimes, for some people—one actually does get a few interviews set up. Some years I had none, some years three, five, one, eight, an average of about 2.7 interviews a year over a ten-year period. And then, the interview arranged, it’s homework scramble time. What school is this? Who works there? What kind of program do they have? Where on the map is it located? How much does it cost to live there? What do people there do for fun on a Saturday night? Then the taking of notes, the printing out of sample syllabi, the listing of names of writers and books to mention and not mention.

One can do the homework and be prepared, at least in some ways, but speculating is pointless. Why were they calling, really? How high up am I on that pre-season list that may or may not exist? Am I the token experimental poet (note: insert your own token status here) candidate, the interview-a writer-like-this-so we-can-say-we-did candidate? Does it actually matter if I make a good impression or do they already know who they want? If I appear like I know what I’m doing, will I look insufficiently malleable, insufficiently prepared to be told what to do by current faculty members? No matter how much speculating you do, you’ll never have answers to any of these questions.

Of course, the fact that speculating is pointless hardly makes it less inevitable. Guessing is a direct function of Job Search Committee Secrecy, that moment in the Job Committee and in the department when everybody agrees that nobody outside the department can be told what’s going on until the official moment for telling. The candidate probably knows that every department is different, that departments are political, that people disagree and sometimes deeply don’t like each other, that some of them certainly have Axes-to-Grind or Agendas-to-Pursue. But what the specific fabric is of those long term festering problems is something the candidate is likely never to know, not before the interview, not during, and not after. Unless the candidate gets hired of course, in which case those problems will come to the door soon enough.

No, the best thing the candidate can do in the MLA Pre-Season is take the necessary official steps, study up, and try not to worry about it too constantly. Or if not worrying too constantly proves impossible, take up some bad habit that can lead to temporary stress relief: bickering with friends and loved ones, criticizing other people pleasurably and needlessly, issuing Pompous Moral Judgments about the nature of the profession, the country, or the world, all of it perhaps over one too many drinks, or many too many, amid peals of overly frenetic laughter that suggest that nothing you’re saying is really funny. Or try to channel it more healthily if you can: run more often, do more Yoga, drink more smoothies, finally get that psychotherapy you’ve been putting off for years.

I haven’t looked much at the job listings in Creative Writing this year, but given the financial state of the country at the moment, I can’t imagine it’s all that great a year to be out on the San Francisco pavement, hat in hand, carrying a placard reading “Will Teach Poem Writing for Food.” The Cal State system, one of the more consistent sources of Creative Writing positions in recent years, including my own, is having a financial crisis and isn’t hiring, and many other state systems are probably in a similar condition. I wonder, when it gets right down to it, how many advertised jobs will ultimately have their funding withdrawn. And it’s hard to know anything about the relation between this year and years to come. The good news is students always want more Creative Writing classes. The bad news may be that class sizes in Creative Writing are small, which takes away in some cases from the cash cow it might otherwise be.

To those of you currently on the market, my best wishes go with you, just like people wished me well, repeatedly, during my ten years of MLA Pre-Season. Of course, if wishes were horses... and so forth and so on. Remember, part of the point of wishing you well is that I can’t be of much actual help.

And remember too that if nothing pans out this MLA season, there is always the MLA Post-Season, the late coming spring jobs and etc. Don’t think about the Post-Season too much though, because then you may realize that the MLA Season, all told, really runs September to May, and you may at that point start telling yourself things like MLA = Life. It could be a Borges story: “The world is nothing more than an infinite MLA.” No, don’t think like that. It’s not true and it can’t help. I know from experience.

Coming Soon to a Location Near You: Pompous Moral Judgment

Following is the talk I gave at the LA-Lit Clouds Conference last weekend.

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There may be no more common move in the history of public discourse than the pompous moral judgment. I can’t identify the first time it was used, or detail the historical ebb and flow of its popularity as a language game, but the world we live in is unthinkable without it. Baudelaire, for instance, identified it in the early 1860s as the unifying link between French bourgeois literature and its socialist opposition: “Moralize! Moralize!”

I also can’t identify my first own uses of the game. Generally speaking it’s less essential to children than to adults. Children are more blatant about their desire for power over others. They want it and see no need to hide the fact. Later, when they become ashamed of the naked desire for power, which is to say when they become old enough to be subject to moral judgments and learn to submit to them, they play the game of pompous moral judgment with youthful fierceness, subjecting adults and especially each other to a series of often quite vicious judgments. The judgmental naivete of those approaching adulthood can be remarkable for its fervor and absoluteness. As their ability to make judgments becomes more refined, they might be said to have learned to speak like adults, although many adults remain overwhelmed by the urge to judge.

The goal of the pompous moral judgment is obvious enough then: power. Yet its remarkable attractiveness doesn’t come solely from exercising or fantasizing about power. Instead it comes also from the feelings of satisfaction and security that result from believing very deeply that one has the right to use this power, that one uses this power over others (or would if one had it) in order to make the world better. The pompous moral judgment suggests that if we control others, we do so only in the name of the good, both theirs and ours.

Surely most of us have felt the power of pompous moral judgment at some time or other, even if only in minor ways. For instance, the sheer pleasure of judging people, often but not always those who are not present, is a common feature of almost all social occasions.

I say “pompous moral judgment” as opposed to “moral judgment” because of the element of self-satisfaction. It’s possible to judge other people without feeling better about oneself, but that’s a very rare behavior nowhere as common as pompous moral judgment. And the role of the concept of truth is of course crucial here. The vast majority of pompous moral judgments are untrue. Stereotypes, generalizations, cultural biases, and willful obfuscation of the details are common. Still, some pompous moral judgments are more accurate. These judgments are only pompous to the extent that they make the self-satisfaction or power of the speaker their main goal. The pompous moral judgment doesn’t wish to make positive change so much as it wishes to be identified as the voice of such change.

Without tracing the history of the development of pompous moral judgment, I can still clarify several of its key features.

The conservative version of the pompous moral judgment almost always involves the casting out and destroying of evil. All values and persons who seem opposed to the values and interests of the conservative individual or group get cast in the role of evil and are subject to whatever penalties are deemed proper for the evil they are accused of causing. As a social category, “evil” might be defined as any thought, behavior, person, culture or nation (to use just some likely examples) who deserves punishment. One of the pleasures of the conservative pompous moral judgment is the conviction that one has the right to decide and impose what form this punishment will take.

Unfortunately though, especially for those of us who would like to feel that empathy and sympathy can be connected to significant action, the pompous moral judgment is also a common feature of leftist rhetoric. The usual form taken by the pompous leftist judgment looks something like “I pass this judgment on you because your behavior causes suffering to others,” or even more stridently, “I pass this judgment on you because your behavior doesn’t actively alleviate the suffering of others.” Or, in short, “I pass this judgment on you because you are not doing enough to stop other people from suffering.”

It is not the fact of the suffering of others that makes this rhetorical move a pompous moral judgment. I’m hardly denying that others are suffering. Maybe even we ourselves are suffering, although the fear of pompous moral judgment may make us hesitant to say so, because one main element of the leftist pompous moral judgment is that it is always being made in the name of someone who is more vulnerable, and suffering more, than you—and such a person always does exist. What makes this leftist form a pompous moral judgment is not the fact of real suffering but precisely the degree of self-satisfaction one takes in being able to accuse others of failing others who are suffering.

The fabric of a great deal of public political discourse is often little more than the endless clashing, by day and night, of pompous moral judgments. The right judges others as evil as a way of insisting on their right (and acting on it) to power over them, while the left, acting always in counter-judgment, asserts that the right is, at best, callous, and at worst evil. Because the implication of evil remains possible even in leftist discourse, the conservative and radical modes sometimes become confused, and the leftist form of pompous moral judgment can bleed into the rightist one. In fact the difference between them is often less about content than positioning. The conservative pompous judgment is the voice of power; the radical the voice of resistance to power. And this is true even when the voice of power is conventionally considered leftist, such as when, under authoritarian communist states, it seems radical to insist on the right of the individual to economic or aesthetic self-determination.

Not doubt much that is politically worthwhile does get done by leftist activism, but it is not the pompous moral judgment itself that gets anything done. The pompous moral judgment is never more than a cover story for activities which may be beneficial or harmful. At best, the pompous moral judgment becomes an enabling rhetoric for worthwhile change. At worst, it simply brings another pompous moralist into power.

As might be clear then, one of the ironies of the leftist version of pompous moral judgment is that saying “Your behavior does nothing to alleviate the suffering of others” also does nothing to alleviate the suffering of others.

While the history of the avant garde is at least as fraught with pompous moral judgments as the cultures from which it comes, one key element in that history has been a rejection of the tone of pompous moral judgment, a tone often described as “serious” or “mature,” since pompous moral judgment usually claims that seriousness and maturity belong to itself alone.

It is not, for instance, a lack of pompous moral judgment that makes Duchamp’s urinal almost the essential avant garde gesture. The implication that all art is no more art than an urinal if one calls the urinal art certainly contains within it the violent glee of pompous moral judgement: “I could just as well piss on everything you call art.” What is different about this gesture (and here I’m also noting the maleness of the gesture; it’s a urinal we’re talking about) is the openness of the glee, the childish flippancy of the judgment, and the way the flippancy is linked to a crucial insight. It acknowledges the game element of pompous moral judgment and that art too is a game.

In Umberto Eco’s novel Name of the Rose, it turns out that what pompous moral judgment, and the power it supports, fears most of all is laughter.

Laughter, flippancy, childishness, the gleeful acknowledgment that the game is a game: a critique of pompous moral judgment that doesn’t deny the real consequences of judgment but denies the seriousness of that judgment. It is laughter that insists that the real consequences in question are not the consequences of seriousness but of folly.

There’s danger in laughter too, of course. Laughter can all too easily forget the realness of consequences. The acknowledgment that the game is a game could easily lead someone to keep on playing while being less concerned with the consequences, simply because it is “only a game.” Such a person could easily attempt to return to the child’s naked desire for control with the ruthlessness of an adult. “Power is only a game we play”: a phrase worthy of the mythological Caligula. Who but a desperately pompous adult could play the game with that level of willfully childish viciousness?

As anyone can see, especially those more willing to laugh, my critique of pompous moral judgment contains a new layer of pompous moral judgment in its pleasurable feelings of superiority (which I hope you are currently sharing, along with a bit of discomfort) to the rhetorical game of pompous moral judgment. Even the phrase “Saying that ‘Your behavior does nothing to alleviate the suffering of others’ does nothing to alleviate the suffering of others” does not alleviate the suffering of others. Yet with any luck, I’m playing the game of pompous moral judgment here with a difference. In knowing that the game of pompous moral judgment is indeed a game, and laughing at its foolishness, I’m trying to suggest that it might be worthwhile, sometimes, to play so many other possible things.

LA-Lit Clouds Conference: Where I'll Be This Weekend

If you're anywhere near Los Angeles, come out and join us for what should be a series of entertaining and insightful events. If you're going to be somewhere else, I hope that'll be interesting too.

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from the conference website:

LA-Lit: Clouds

form-body-surface-material-method-growth-sound-mass-condensation
atmospheric-nebulae-clarity-reveals-recreation-currents-groundless-texture
connectivity-dense-manifest-rhythm-decenter-collaborate-surprise-confer-disperse

LA-Lit: Clouds :: November 21+22, 2008
at Betalevel and Center for the Arts Eagle Rock

Come celebrate LA-Lit’s three year anniversary on Friday November 21 at Betalevel and on Saturday November 22 at Center for the Arts Eagle Rock. For over three years, LA-Lit has developed a new space for the literary culture of Los Angeles to develop and exhibit itself. Reflecting the shifting nature of Los Angeles, LA-Lit has conducted well over thirty interviews with poets and writers who have lived in LA all their lives as well as writers who have visited LA for only a few days. Please join us for LA-Lit: Clouds :: a two day conference in Los Angeles connecting the decentered literary culture of LA in an effort to investigate its current manifestations and to develop a sense of LA’s inherent literary spontaneity.

LA-Lit: Clouds :: Schedule
Friday November 21:
8:00pm-11:00pm:
Perform and Celebrate at Betalevel
Stan Apps, Teresa Carmody, Amarnath Ravva, Lisa Samuels, Christine Wertheim

Saturday November 22:
Confer at Center for the Arts Eagle Rock
12:00pm-1:30pm
form-body-surface-material-method-growth-sound-mass
condensation-structure-elements-foreground-background
Panelists: Stan Apps, Guy Bennett, Christine Wertheim, Ara Shirinyan

2:00pm-3:30pm
atmospheric-nebulae-clarity-reveals-recreation-currents
groundless-textured-visible-droplets-interstellar-crystalline
Panelists: Will Alexander, Teresa Carmody, Amarnath Ravva, Mark Wallace

4:30pm-6:00pm
Perform at Center for the Arts Eagle Rock
Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Will Alexander, Guy Bennett, K. Lorraine Graham, Sawako Nakayasu, Ara Shirinyan, Mark Wallace

Betalevel – in the alley behind 963 N. Hill St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Center for the Arts Eagle Rock – 2225 Colorado Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90041

Poet, Rate Thyself: Respect, Prestige, Finances

Stan Apps asked the following question on his blog the other day:

"A reputation economy--no $$$, only R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Is it a utopia? (And if it is a utopia for some, does that automatically make it a dystopia for others?"

And here was my answer:

"I think many poets are familiar with a respect economy, which of course shades very quickly into a prestige/reputation economy, and is therefore also related to a financial economy. Although none of these three economies is the same, they're pretty closely linked.

I think poets should rate themselves on a scale of one to ten how they think they stand in these economies.

I'm giving myself:

Respect 7
Prestige/Reputation 5
Financial 4

Of course, it's easiest to rate oneself on the financial economy, second easiest to rate prestige/reputation, and hardest to rate respect.

Which suggests therefore that a pure respect economy, which doesn't exist of course, could nonetheless not be a utopia for one simple reason: any time something important depends on what other people think of you (which is, of course, most of the time), there's no end to trouble."

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So, poet or whatever you are or do, here's your chance to rate yourself on the scales of respect, prestige, and finances.

And of course it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on these (slightly tongue in cheek but not entirely) ideas.

Rap Poetry II

Turns out you can take a class:

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2003/3/03.03.07.x.html

Rap Poetry

Is there any such thing? And if there is, is anybody doing it well?

Clearly this is a subject on which I’m very much not an authority.

Just to clarify what I’m looking for, I’m not asking about rap musicians whose lyrics might be called poetry or could be said to be poetic. Nor am I looking for sophisticated rap artists and theorists like DJ Spooky, whose work partakes of many of the same ideas that motivate contemporary experimental literature. Nor am I looking for contemporary experimental poets, like for instance the fantastic Julie Patton, whose art is clearly informed by hip hop culture. And I’m not simply looking for spoken word poetry either, or other African diaspora poetries like dub poetry, about which I know a fair amount.

No, I mean rap poetry: poetry made up of the same rhyming, word play, inflections and slang that comprise rap lyrics, and doing it in a way that works as poetry.

Although I’m nothing like an expert on rap music, I’m hardly completely ignorant of it. My taste runs more towards classic first generation rap like Public Enemy than it does later manifestations, although that maybe as much because I lack information as for any other reason. But in any case I know enough about rap music to hold a conversation about the subject.

Why am I asking about this? Every year, I have at least one student, and occasionally more than one, who comes to an interest in poetry through rap. Oddly enough perhaps, although it’s not really that surprising given the broad success of rap, the student is often, although not always, a white male.

When I have students of this kind, I’m never entirely sure how I should be trying to help them. Of course, I can work with them on rhythm and other sound effects in poetry as well as I need to. But what I don’t know is how to point them to writers and performers who are doing rap rhythms well simply as poetry, writers and performers who might be used as models or influences. And lacking those reference points, while I want to encourage students to go farther on whatever path they’re taking, I don’t entirely know what going farther might mean. Of course I already suggest that they consider broadening their palate of working sound effects and can show them many examples along those lines, whether it be Edwin Torres, Tracie Morris, Linton Kwesi Johnon or many others. But rap poets as such? I got nothing.

Which is why any names and ideas that you have would be really helpful.