Monday, July 13, 2009

On judgment - for John

My new adviser just gutted a poem of mine and gave me some wonderful advice. On a practical level -- on the level of judgment -- he was totally correct about what the poem needed. But on a theoretical level, I am puzzling about this advice as a general stance.


He told me to review the poem and to merely look – as a formalist would – for the strongest language and excise the rest. In one sense, I totally agree: that was what this poem needed. In another sense, I am not sure I agree at all (nor actually that he does, given his respect for Eliot’s Four Quartets... but more on that later). In a way, I think it could be the strongest thing my poems ever do if I actually manage to keep that “weak” language and reuse it.


To reuse that language would be to do a pastiche.


John’s thesis at MIT was on pastiche. He presented a renovation of a movie palace in Brooklyn to a group of Dwell-magazine reading (latent) modernists on the review board: Eisenman, MyStudio, a few others. At first they tore him to pieces: his work exploited ornament, doing-up the movie palace in more curlicues and glitter than was in the original. But then the board loved him… because, I think, they realized they were uncertain of the origin and justification for their own predilection for simplicity. Why should we have white walls and white dresses, to use the words of Mark Jarzombeck? Of course, John’s building was also sustainable, malleable etc., and included a few other neat tricks; but for the most part, it called attention to the ground of contemporary taste. (Wow, John!)


I think in contemporary poetry we have a similar predilection for simplicity and consistency. We prefer language that does the same thing throughout, that deploys itself smoothly and with a bang at the finish. What if a poem went, dribble, Bang! Bang! Dribble dribble. Pop. And the end was so unsatisfying that you needed to start again? I think that might be interesting, and that very few people would like it.


Our preference for poems that – like my advisers's own – take one tone is a matter of taste. Of judgment.

Where do we get our sense of taste? Why is the one better than the many? Western metaphysics prefers one god, one good, and apparently Western poetry prefers one tone. We know that the subject dissolved, that god was gutted and replaced with the multiplicity of the world, but when we see art, we still want to know who made it, who’s speaking. Even when we read Joyce – with his multiplicity of styles undermining our search for “The narrator” – we read Joyce and we know who he is. We give exams to graduate students and ask them to identify authorial styles. We assume that a style commits a work to an author, and in poetry, I think we still identify a style with a tone.


Next summer, I think I might like to give a class on judgment. When we judge, we move from the singular toward the universal. For Kant, a determinative judgment – ‘all cows are bovines,’ or ‘this cow is black’ – collects the particular under the general ; an aesthetic judgment makes a judgment about the universal from the particular: ‘this chocolate is yummy’ or ‘this painting made of chocolate is beautiful.’ What is the beautiful? It is this painting I just encountered. What is a poem? It is this thing I just read. For Aristotle, we acquire phronesis from childhood; practical knowledge is acquired by practice. With Kant plus Aristotle – as in Arendt and Nussbaum – we find that aesthetic judgment is acquired gradually, from childhood, in history, by encountering many particulars: particulars so neatly crafted as to point the way toward the universal… without ever arriving.


In my course, I would begin with close readings of poems. I would say nothing general first; nothing about what poetry is. (The first words of the class would be “let’s read this poem.”) Rather, we would look at how one moves from a particular poem – and gradually, through encounters with many poems, in many circumstances – toward a general knowing of what poetry is. And, roughly, I found that to be this disruption of the logical “is/is not” with the metaphoric “like.” (Most recently, I saw this in the Carol Anne Duffy poem presented in a class...but again, more on that later...)


Indeed, more on all of this later!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

the inimitable George Oppen

I have been worrying over my lazy, unpolitical, unworldly existence as a poet... occasionally philosophy seems justifiable. But poetry? What do we do for anyone but ourselves? We had dinner with someone who works for the Gates foundation on microloans and savings in Africa who'd just returned from Ethiopia. She may not buy organic vegetables, but her very vocation improves the world. And I... write.

So, here are some wise words from M. Oppen:

"So with artists. How pleasurable
to imagine that, if only they gave
up their art, the children would be
healed, would live."

- from "Some San Francisco Poems"

Friday, April 03, 2009

art instincts... against my instinct but intrigued

Denis Dutton's Art Instinct has been getting a lot of attention and recently in the New York Time Book Review I am terrified that this book on "Darwinian aesthetics" shares too much with the horrific Neo-social Darwinism in recent issue of the Economist that I whined about here. But I'm also intrigued... this is just intersection of the sorts of issues that interest me: art, biology, evolution. How can we talk about Nature and not lose sight of human-sized meaning for us? I've been thinking a lot about why evolution and speciation rarely comes up in phenomenology. It seems it's time to start talking about it with the number of Cambridge, MA evolutionary biologists making the New York times magazine. But does phenomenology have anything to say? I think it does -- what exactly I'm working out in that dissertation thing-y -- but it doesn't seem to be saying much yet. But how to begin a conversation in the dominant language ? "Instinct" is in the title of this book and not in, at least my, phenomenological vocabulary. Again, I come back to the problem of translation between two cultures...

Monday, March 30, 2009

space tools: scripts for architectural historians of the future

Last night, I joined J and another computational designer for dinner with some heads of the architectural software firm Rhino. (Yes, I was there just for the free food) J and his friend have been showing some Oregonian architects what's up with scripting in 3d and this was a dinner to celebrate their success. Now, personally I'm fascinated with how designers "think" in the digital design atmosphere. (I've written a little about it in an article that will be out next year) CAD is so Cartesian: the circuit of hand and eye is disrupted not just by a pencil but a bunch of algorithms, a pregiven geometry and a certain order in which designers can create form, volume, lighting and texture. (an order quite backwards to which they might work in the 'real' world: volume and texture come at the end for example)

So I've been mulling all this over and thinking that Rhino which uses a different geometry and nerbs modelling system is a good alternative to allow a little variety in the methods for making the built world. ... lest everything look like a textureless CAD fly-through. The CEO s of Rhino are pretty proud of their product... but surprisingly to me, they didn't seem to think much about the long-term implications for (and restrictions on!) design and the built world. They felt they were creating a neutral tool that just let architects do better what they'd always wanted to do. In no sense did they feel the tools prescribed design ... even when J pointed out that it was a little bit odd and awkward to think about volume after form.

I imagine art historians of the future looking back at the last 10 years of architectural design and excavating not tools, but scripts and codes. They'll be trying to figure out which version of Rhino or Grasshopper a designer might have access to in 2007 or 2013 in order to invent as they did. They'll be thinking about how space became something we understood in relation to the fly-through tool.

But it was a great lesson to me that Rhino developers didn't need to think about any of that to make the built-world altering tool they've created. Nor do they want to think about it in order to sell more or refine it. And they certainly aren't reading anything coming out of architectural theory ... yet again (pace my post yesterday), there seems to be a one-way sort of conversation between theory and practice, humanities and technology.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

stuck between two cultures

I enjoyed this essay on C.P Snow's two cultures because I'm feeling quite caught between those two cultures right now. Well, no, more precisely I'm definitely from one culture -- the literary, humanities one -- and desperately trying to understand how to talk about the other culture. I just spent the afternoon reading up on 1950s developmental theory. This followed a week or so of trying to understand some evolutionary theory from the same time period. That actually wasn't the hard part... these articles tend to be quite readable, flush with quotes from Shakespeare and allusion to Goethe and plain language expressions of the experiments the scientists had attempted on developing cells.

The hard part was trying to figure out how these views of half a century ago compare to current views. This entails me tracking down basic developmental biology terminology that any kid with a B.A. in biology would understand. I found these newer essays much more impenetrable. Dense with abbreviations for particular genes and chemistry, they required much more work to translate into the language of my culture.

This process also put into relief some of the unique grammar of my culture. What people who might read what I write (let's assume these people might exist!) would want to know is what are the implications of these? what do these microscopic events mean for a person at a macroscopic scale? I have to formulate my sentences in terms of why and for whom. The claims should be at a person-sized scale.

And what in the world would it mean to translate those claims back into the other culture? Could there possibly be a developmental biologist out there interested in that project? Or, by definition, is this a one-way conversation? This latter possibility worries me even more than how little I know about genetics... or perhaps those are two sides of the same coin.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

no, writing isn't all that fun...

Apparently Colm Toibin made a snarky comment about how he didn't take pleasure writing. The KR blog puts this in context I suppose I have to agree somewhat with Tobin... only he gets paid for his 'suffering.' So it can't be all that bad. But let me clarify... it's not that I "hate" writing. No, hardly. But it's certainly not "fun" (like, say, playing shuffleboard or going iceskating). At the least, the pleasure of writing isn't in the process but in the afterglow. A friend said that I "write like I sweat." On the surface, that's a pretty good metaphor; it implies that in order to write, I have to work myself up, work out, get through something and along the way, some writing will be sweated out. But that metaphor only gets to the initial moment of productivity, forgetting that once you've "sweated out" some images, ideas and phrases, you have to work them into actual art.

Even so, in terms of when it offers pleasure, I could say that writing a bit like going for a very long run, at least for me. (Now, I want to say first of all that the following is a completely over-used and abused metaphor... but I use it again, not under the impression that it's novel, but because it, like many cliches, has a bit of truth) The actual picking up my feet and putting them down, the getting in shape to go more than a mile or two... none of that is fun (at least for me). Likewise, actually suffering through revisions and worrying over word choice, that's not fun either. Most of the time it's nerve wracking! But the endorphins after the run and the endorphins after finishing a poem do feel pretty good. The place where this metaphor breaks down -- if it hasn't already -- is that it's not quite clear when one "finishes" a poem nor when or if the endorphins are certain. I enjoy running in and of itself; I don't need to win a race to feel good about running. (In fact, I kind of abhor races!) But with writing... I do kind of want the secondary satisfaction of publication. I do get a certain pleasure out of just finishing a poem: wow, it's there! look how pretty it is when I change the font to garamond! But often there's a secondary moment when that pleasure is taken away from me. I go back to the "finished" poem and find it's not at all complete. Or, that it's "complete" but awful. Or, that it's complete and half-way decent but no one will ever read it. It would be like believing you'd finished a 6 mile run -- and feeling as tired as if you had -- and then discovering that you'd only gone a 1.5 miles. Or finishing a race but forgetting a chip and finding that your score doesn't count.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

need more quarks

It's spring break and I am absolutely craving a nice pseudo sciencey, popular physics book. Any suggestions? I want something with long discussions about black holes, strings, and flavored quarks. I don't even want science fiction! Or... well, I want popular science that is not consciously fictitious; I certainly will never be able to distinguish it from a good yarn.

But why do I want this? Well, experientially, it's just very calming to read about all these Very Big Things and Very Small Things. John and I went for a nice desert hike last weekend in a Very Big canyon; I had been haunted by some problems all week, but in comparison to the desert, they were Quite Propotional. That was comforting. After looking at the Very Big difference between the mountains in the snowy pass and the valley desert, I felt my little moods swings were Quite Negligible.

It's important that these Very Big and Very Small things also be True things. (Even if I can't tell) This is key to their calming quality. I live with plenty of fictions, makings, imaginings... but these all remind me of the human sphere. Precisely what is required is a perspective on the human sphere and all its made things and tools for making.

My inner nerd has always been calmed by a good star-gazing trip. But from our overcast Pacific Northwestern vantage point, there are few stars to be seen. So I require a virtual tour of some constellations or their contents. I do prefer the macroscopic to the microscopic, I must say; so any suggestions for my reading list might take that into acccount. Any thoughts?

Friday, March 13, 2009

Tony Gilroy and the Birth of Tragedy

I just enjoyed this classically New Yorker, long-winded-but-pleasant story about the screen writer of Bourne Identity, Tony Gilroy.Gilroy sounds like a brilliant and thoughtful writer. He's not just clever but quite up on what's needed by his era. A bit like Euripides, actually. But let me back that up....

First some clarifications: In the article, the author claims that Gilroy virtually invented or at least first truly exploited "the reversal" as a plot device. They write "The core of “Duplicity”[Gilroy's latest film] is the screenwriting trope known as the reversal. Gilroy told me, “A reversal is just anything that’s a surprise. It’s a way of keeping the audience interested.” Well, I hate to break it to the article author or to Gilroy, but "the reversal" goes way back. Aristotle claimed it was one of the essential components of tragedy (along with a hero, a downfall, recognition and scenes of suffering). Many stories, not just Greek tragedies, have reversals: the audience thinks the character and her plot are heading in one direction, but oops! all is not as it seems. But in the end, the audience experiences some relief at watching the character suffer through these twists and turns.

Gilroy is know for increasingly complicated reversals. He feels that modern audience have become so savvy to possible plot twists -- making use of DVDs to replay and unravel them -- that it's harder to satisfy them. The authors suggest that the trend of Gilroy's method of making dramas more and more complex will continue. But is that the only solution? What about Euripides solution?

In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche noted that while the reversal method of effecting catharsis could work, sometimes plots were so complicated that the audiences wasn't getting the payoff . So Euripides introduced a figure who gave a prologue and told the audience ahead of time what would happen. That way, the audience could lose themselves in the pleasure of catharsis without needing to expend all that energy "figuring it out." Nietzsche found this decision of Euripides quite sly but also quite savvy in itself. (Notice that Nietzsche himself claims this is all philologically unjustified... so if there are any errors in this history, blame Nietzsche who doesn't mind anyway)

I suggest that film is moving in the direction of Euripides's plays. There's a limit to the complexity audiences can or are willing to take on. But, there seems to be no end to our pleasure in catharsis. So, rather than make plots more complicated, we have formulaic stories in which we enjoy for the effect and possibly for the novelty in aesthesis of the presentation of the standard plot (take Forgetting Sarah Marshall, as e.g.) Gilroy himself seems away of this with his basic rules about “Bring it in within two hours” and “Don’t bore the audience.” But perhaps the solution to "not boring the audience" is not to make things more, but rather less complex plot-wise.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

david foster wallace and "something so simple, really..."

Now, I don't really like to do a lot of reflecting on what I think Literature Ought To Be or how I think one should write. One should write. That's it. But I was really struck by a few things in a recent New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace. I don't even particularly like Wallace's work per se; honestly, I've always found Infinite Jest to angsty, male and empty to get through. It's something my male friends read and cite in the same breath as the Big Lebowski. I know that's unfair to both the authors and enjoys of all those concerned, and it only reflects my personal hang-ups. But in this article, I did like what Wallace says about writing and what his writing seemed to be in his life as it appeared through the article.

After leaving a drug rehab half-way house, Wallace changed his tune and his reading interests. He found that the sorts of things that AA taught -- take it one day at time, for e.g.-- actually meant something to him, something that a lot of contemporary literature with its tricks and games didn't: "As he later told Salon, "The idea that something so simple and, really, so aesthetically uninteresting -- which for me meant you pass over it for the interesting, complex stuff -- can actually be nourishing in a way that arch, meta, ironic, pomo stuff can't, that seems to me to be important."

Again, treading lightly into the territory of what writing ought to do or be in genearl or for me, I'll dare to make some claims. In terms of visual art, I am *tired* of post-modern pastiche with its cheeky, snarky self-reflective struggle. This is something John and I have talked about countless times. Where's beauty? Why not just make something beautiful, for people to judge as such, and leave it at that? Why be cruel?

But I usually leave those grumpy claims for visual art and haven't extended them to poetry. It's easier to make definitive judgments about an art you don't practice. But in a way... I think I am starting to feel the same for poetry. I like to read beautiful poetry. I like lyrics, I like one-offs that stand on one, two, maybe three pages at most. I like them to ring and to be recitable. I like Bishop, not Lowell. I've never had the attention span to read or enjoy the epic; I tried to struggle through Lowell's The Dolphin and a few other later books as I read his biography and collected letters with Bishop. But little he wrote -- except maybe the poem for Bishop -- touches me the way her work does. Take her "Armadillo" for instance. This sayes more to me of Lowell's mania that ten of his sonnets that I have to string together to find a story.

I realize that the connection to Wallace may seem thin. What could Infinite Jest or any of his other works, finished or not, have to do with Elizabeth Bishop's poetry? Perhaps nothing in the larger scope of literary criticism. But for me, they are connected in what they mean for my intention as an artist and for my right to predilections as a reader. In a sense, I'm the intellectual's intellectual, the ideal product of an extremely liberal arts education. You'd think I'd be eating up the most post-modern, reflective of literatures, say -- I don't know -- Calvino and Ashbury. But with all my reflective tools, with all my purported knowledge of what art can do, I still just want to enjoy beautiful things that risk cliche before they risk being uninventive. There is something to the AA statement, "take it one day at a time." It works, I remember it. There's something to using a rhyme. It sounds good.

Well, that's all for now. We'll see if this leads to any good or at least pleasing work on my part.