A non-critique of Kenneth Goldsmith's uncreativity

I noticed at the weekend that Ron Silliman had finally managed to capture this blog in his massive Poetry Blogroll - something I've been patiently waiting to happen for over 8 months (I never informed him of the existence of my blog as I was interested to see how quickly information seeps through the blogosphere - to date I believe this blog is listed in less than 10 other blogrolls, and may have been mentioned or cited in fewer than 20).

Anyways, being well raised by my mother I wrote Ron a quick thank you email, mentioning how much I appreciated his easy-to-read introductions and views on avant/post-avant poetry. He responded with a you're welcome, I think email the next day - which I wasn't expecting: he must get reams of email from strangers and nutters.

So where does Kenny Goldsmith come into this? Well, this is exactly the sort of thing I was thanking Ron for in my email. Before I read his post on Kenny Goldsmith's uncreative writing project I'd heard of neither: uncreative writing - as a project, a statement, a function of art - had never knocked on my front door or bothered my evenings with a phone call.

To quote Ron directly: "One of the major social functions of art is to reveal the world to us, its inhabitants. At this, Goldsmith is certainly an unqualified success" and "Goldsmith is not only revealing to us the world as it is, but by doing so in the most extreme ways possible, reveals the presumptions that lie behind our art categories as well". Yet Ron is critical of the endeavour: "It’s because his projects, by design, never stand on their own, that his commentators invariably turn back to the cult of Kenny". You do need to read the whole of Ron's post to appreciate these quotes in context.

Now my initial reaction on meeting the concept of Kenny Goldsmith and uncreativity was to, well, laugh. I like it when people undertake meaningless activities which can only have meaning for themselves. I don't know why Mr Goldsmith feels it's important to type out - word by word - a single issue of the New York Times from front page to back in a specific manner. It's not important for me to understand his motives to get pleasure from thinking about his activity.

(Though he does say: "But in capitalism, labor equals value. So certainly my project must have value, for if my time is worth an hourly wage, then I might be paid handsomely for this work. But the truth is that I've subverted this equation by OCR'ing as much of the newspaper as I can. And it works pretty well since The New York Times is typeset by computer; hence the OCR program doesn't have too much trouble recognizing the body text. However, when it comes to the fine print, particularly in the ads, I've got to input the text by hand." - which makes me wonder about the self-honesty of his endeavour).

Even so, I see the actions of someone spending the best part of 3 months retyping the entire content of a single newspaper as entirely equivalent to that of someone spending months building a model of a ship from matchsticks, or someone spending 24 hours watching sequential episodes of Desparate Housewives, or someone who toils for months on end to produce a lawn that nobody else can walk on, or someone who writes poetry and refuses to have it published by someone else ...

Aha! A connection. And just as most posts to this blog eventually gravitate to the extremely important subject of Rik Roots, so does this one.

I can appreciate the concept of Kenneth Goldsmith's uncreativity because I can see echoes of his project (as I choose to interpret it, eg a preference for private rather than public creativity) in my own work. The poetry I write, I write primarily for the pleasure I get from writing it, rewriting it, formatting and displaying it. Deleting it as and when I see fit. It is my endeavour, and the pleasure that others may gain from my work is, to me, incidental. The only pleasure I get from other's pleasure (or ire) in my poetry is the public face they put on that pleasure - as measured in the comments I get on the poems, the mentions I get in other people's blog posts. I can imagine that Kenny Goldsmith gets similar pleasures from people's attention to his work - though that's mere conjecture on my part, and I've no plans to email him and ask such a question.

A final thought: I get more comments on my conlanging activities than I do on my poetry. Sometimes I find myself thinking this is probably a reflection on my abilities as a poet. But most of the time I find myself thinking that it's a reflection of people's views on the Art of Contemporary Poetry. This is, I think, a good thought to keep safe as I continue my endless patroll of blogs and bulletin boards keeping tabs on my namecheck tally.

A very dog-rough draft

... but it does make for a round dozen poems to work on:

Love Poem #12

We started in our cluttered hall
with a cuddle and a kiss
and soon enough we found ourselves
naked to the waist.

We buffed our skins with baby oil
and tweaked each other's nips
then got right down to monkey stuff
playing with our bits.

You said: "let's try a different game:
I'll fuck you on a tray
as we slide down our entrance stairs
abandoning our shame".

"Or how about some hooks and ropes",
I countered with élan:
"we can leap about like gibbons do,
perform our shag mid-air".

"We could", you said, "go commando
and dress up squaddie style
I'll chase you across the roofs
before you suck me dry".

We stopped in thought, our neurons fixed
on pleasures not yet caught -
and then you kissed me, hugged me tight:
"we'll have some tea to start".

Mad ideas

Every now and then I get mad ideas. For instance, I enjoy browsing the poetry newsgroups (yes, I am that sick) but one day I thought it would be a really good idea if someone just made a list of posts containing original poetry every week, with links to the relevant posts on google, and posted that to the group. Thus was born the Long Ladle Review, which lasted a good 3 months before the wheels fell off that horse.

Then there was my idea about poetry magazine submissions. I had this stupid idea one day (it was on a longhaul flight to Australia, which probably explains a lot) that poetry magazines are doing themselves no service by requiring people to jump through so many hoops to get poems accepted for publication. I thought it would be better for everyone involved if it could all be done online, with the poets submitting their work via a website into a database, which could then be accessed, considered and judged by editors, subeditors, slushpile miners, etc, which would in turn allow the poet to check up on the progress of their submissions.

That idea got coded up and everything, but luckily I came to my senses before any lasting harm was done. Instead, I decided that there were too many lists of poetry magazines that didn't really collect all the information a person needed. That an online compendium of information on poetry journals would be, well, useful. This mad idea resulted in Clot [edit: now removed], which hasn't been updated for a couple of years but continues to be visited regularly. So obviously a good idea which led to mad amounts of work for one idiot.

I learnt from that idea, so that when I had the idea to do something similar to Clot - but this time for individual poetry websites and blogs - I coded it so that maintaining the information on the database remained the entire responsibility of the person submitting the information; the only check I needed to do was making sure the link worked. The Periscope [edit: now removed] has been running for a few months now, and recently saw its 25th entry on the database. I'm not planning to dismantle this site for many years yet so it can only grow. Maybe one day it will become the first place to visit for people wanting to search for poetry outside the establishment of journals, publishers, etc - proving that mad ideas are perfectly capable of mutating into even madder ideas.

But why is it always me that acts on these mad ideas? Lots of people have mad ideas about getting poetry to the masses, but very few people actually do anything about it. Many prefer to copy an idea, changing it in little ways. For example, the people who came up with the idea of the free-to-view online poetry journal must have been jumping out of trolleys and falling out of trees from an early age, and yet the idea is stunning, superb. And it works! I reckon most people access their finished, polished modern poetry through such venues. But there's so many of them nowadays: the idea is so good that everyone wants to do it. Everyone with a smidge of coding ability and a talent for design can come up with a winning online poetry journal.

And how do these journals differ? Most seem to have the same format - closely modelled on print journals with poems, some book reviews, an occasional thought piece on what poetry is currently dying of, perhaps some interesting artwork. A few (a very few) may dabble with more complex coding to present a more interactive experience - sound files, for instance, or animation. But nothing much else really. Almost all of them declaim that they only publish the best poetry, yet are there really that many "best" poems being written every day of the year? Almost none of them pay copyright fees on the poems they publish. And almost all of them refuse to publish previously published material - this is a seriously severe one-shot game.

Anyways, I had this mad idea. What if - I warn you, this is a bit on the mad side of mad - what if someone paid poets a fee for hosting their very best poems on the web. Say, pay $100 for exclusive electronic - and print - copyright to host the poem on the website for one year, with options to renew the contract (say for a lesser fee - $50 a year) thereafter. Of course, the mad person paying the money would have the right to claim a share of royalties for any use of the poem beyond the website during the contract period - for instance a cut of the royalties accruing from any anthology sales during that time. Or maybe the right to negotiate a cut of any payments offered for using the poem in promotional or advertising work. I mean, getting one couplet featured in a Nike ad would surely rake in enough money to cover the running costs of the rest of the operation for years!

Somehow I don't think I'll be taking this idea forward myself. Unless I win the lottery, in which case watch this space.

But I think we need some more people willing to risk pursuing mad ideas. Because the current online poetry scene is stagnating. Online journal: been there. Online workshop: done that. Online listing services: wrote the code.

And where you find stagnation, you find leeches. Leeches like hardcopy and online poetry journals who can't be bothered to pay poets for the right to feature their poems between the journal's covers (or pixels). What sort of market is this? What sort of shite economy have poets managed to get themselves into?

"It's the Art that counts".

"It's the exposure that matters".

"It's the kudos and honour of having my work selected".

"How dare you taint poetry with the scum of commerce!"

I think sheep manage to herd themselves into the slaughterhouse because they think there's safety in numbers, that breaking away from the controlling bleat is dangerous, fearful, demeaning, heretical.

I also think that some of the best poetry being written today - not mine - is being flushed into the sewers for nothing more than a publication credit. Wasted.

I think poets need to turn around and say: "pay me for my work. Pay me cash for my words".

I think it's time people turned this whole farce into a sellers game.

Now there's a raging mad idea!

This ones a little more ...

... overtly Brokeback (just in case people were forgetting where I'm coming from):

Love Poem #11

It's strange how our fingers weave
so neatly when we cross the road,
or traipse through shops for carrots,
newspapers, cartons of milk. Sometimes

I'll fold my palm around your knuckles
to keep them warm when we flag down
the bus, or stamp up the hill to town
- once when we skipped there. Sometimes

you knuckle my hand away, remind me
that decisions are shared in this space,
that both must agree to risk the spits
that water the men who hold hands.

Just a couple more ...

...love poems. Sorry. I expect most people have already abandoned any pretence of visiting or reading this website. The stench of poorly executed love poetry must be nauseating. Well tough! This is becoming an obsessional thing with me: I am going to write a good love poem even if I have to pretend I'm an infinite number of monkeys. Life is, indeed, a bitch.

Love Poem #9

Look how quiet the room is: the cats
are playing their games up the curtains
and over my table, knocking plates
and cups across the carpet; the radio
advertises insurance and cars, vacuums
to suck the dried rice from the floor.

I sit and watch the fish, each shadow
a life behind the green scum collected
on the glass. Current no longer skips
the water into waves; I sip my coffee,
wipe the cold libation from my chin.

When the phone rings you switch me on:
orchestrate a tango of muscles behind lips
and tongue; redeem my personality from hock
and get me to stretch its seams as we chat
on the phone about nothing much at all.


Love Poem #10

It was a dopamine rush at first sight.
You stood there in tight jeans and boots,
a phenylethylamine scowl menacing the room
to dance to your demands. I worshipped
you there and then in chemicals of lust
and took you down without a thought
for consequences: the future was fucked
in any case and licking pheremones
from your shoulder pots was good.

I didn't ask for the oxytocin to leak
from my skull, to infest my vesicles
with a desire to cuddle your body tight.
Nor did I beg my nerves to flood my cells
with vasopressin, blocking all my plans
to seek new flesh to scrape. But I'll thank
the gods of chemistry for endorphins - sweet,
taut molecules that keep me close to you.

Not quite ekphrastic

... though definitely inspired by an exhibition I went to a number of years ago. This one is nowhere near finished, but I have a feeling it has legs and could possibly be the one that ends up becoming my fully developed Love Poem:

Love Poem #8

She was skipping over the rope, her body
a basket and her face an embrace of garbage.
We laughed like the monkey laughed, his snout
two model lorries axle to axle, though his laugh
was silent while ours staccatoed across
the boxed up exhibition space, disturbing
frowncast students and mumbly afficianados.
"Why can't these idiots see how funny he was?"
you wondered. But then Picasso sold his bits
and pieces so idiots could mount them
in ice bright halls while he mounted whores
in Paris. I'd have mounted you there and then
but the gallery staff had our number and our hour
in the company of genius was almost done.

An idea of a poem

... that's not there yet. Definitely needs more work. I'm going to post it up here to preserve the spark ...

Love Poem #7

Such a stupid hat:
not you at all, falling
across your eyes, a brim
full of dust mites
to choke our kiss.
Some form of orange
without feathers
- felt, maybe,
or shoddy cloth.

So many garments
rolled tight to fit
in this cupboard.

We've stopped dressing up
for each other:
our entertainments
are surer; ingrained
within our bones
but not yet
sclerotic.

Is this rose cliche?

The trouble with love poems is that everyone's done them already. I mean, how much more cliche can a poem about love be when it includes a rose as its central motif?

So I know it's cliche, but still I want to write a love poem with a rose in it. It's like a test for poets, innit.

Love Poem #6

You bought a rose to mark our anniversary:
stout, black thorns erupting through the stalk
in whorls of defiance; two sawtoothed leaves
nestling a tight bud - sheets of peach and cream
rolled within their shrinking, green folder.
The rose was fresh - greenfly still syphoned
sap from the flower's veins - but we both knew
as you handed me the gift that soon the petals
would bronze and rot, the scent in its well
would run dry. I will not give you a rose
in return, but rather the bush - a root
of love extending deep into our manure.

I'm practicing

... for NaPoWriMo, the torture also known as April, where the inflicted have to write a poem a day throughout the whole month.

Oh, and in case people were wondering, I'm not planning on turning these poems into a series. In fact I'll be happy if just one or two of these drafts transmute into good poems. Anyways, I've given this one the snappy - but provisional - title of ...

Love Poem #5

"Tonight, instead of meeting you
inside that smoky bar I'll greet
you at my door, you have the address?
And then in place of shouting words
of lust above the thumpy noise
we'll sit and chat as I prepare
a meal for us, with wine - you do
eat meat? I have some chicken flesh
still fresh from lunch a few days back.
I thought I'd marinade them through
in brosia juice - it tastes like piss
when fresh and needs to cook for hours
to mellow down. No need to dress
up posh for me - just bring yourself
and that dirty smile of yours."

Royalties

I've just received my very first royalty payment from lulu.com - US$25. So can I just say a very quick thank you to those people who went out and bought the book. You'll all be happy to hear that (hopefully) I'll have gathered together enough material for a sequel by 2016.

In the meantime, don't forget you can order the Rik Calendar 2007 right now via lulu.com - the perfect present for people you have to buy a Christmas present for even though you don't want to buy them a present: bosses; secretaries; former in-laws; constituents; congregations; etc, etc, etc.