Reading some poems lately, I've been struck by how many come off as either "performative" or "authentic."
A little context.
The authentic in poetry was a thing in the 1970s and 80s. A good poem was authentic. Its voice was sincere and believable. Its subject was worthy of art. Its language and form were honest. The poet was real and her work was innovative. All other poetry was merely performative, for show. It could be competent, polished, but it imitated the Moderns or the Ancients, and therefore was primarily for show.
Performance borrows themes, works over old territory, trades in received ideas (and feelings).
Kenneth Patchen's love poems were declared to be authentic. Rod McKuen's were not; they were mere show pieces of feeling and thought. The implication was that authentic poetry was deeply felt and deeply thought; it came "from the heart." Performative poetry was shallow, it was all bauble and ornament. Allen Ginsberg's poems were authentic. John Ashbery's were bauble and ornament.
Which is to say, in the 1970s and 80s, if you were a young writer of poems you chose sides. You were either honing your authentic art (preferably in an MFA Writing Program, preferably at the Iowa Writers Workshop or UC Berkeley), or you dabbled. Or worse, you didn't choose. You were either up to the task or you weren't.
I, or my writing, was in this latter category: not up to the task of depth of feeling and thought. And that's why I dropped out of my graduate MFA program. It, the dropping out, was a form of self-silencing. The other kids (and we were all kids, no matter how sincere and committed we were) read more poems and more widely in the genre than I, and so came to the program with a deeper knowledge of the art, what they wanted to become as poets. They knew how to talk about poetry, the writing process, where poems come from, what makes a good poem. And what makes a poor poem. I felt reminded every week in seminar what makes a poor poem, and what a poseur looks like, the kinds of poems he writes.
Of course, the idea of "the authentic" eventually became tainted itself by the idea of "mere performance." Authentic writing poured out of the academies and poetry became an industry of professionalized authenticity. Conversely, it became a truism that all writing is performative, that in fact all art is performative, for show. The poems of John Ashbery celebrated aspects of performance that once had been branded "mere": surface, playfulness, difficulty, materiality, shock. In the end, there was little difference, effectively or affectively, between "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" and "A Supermarket in California." Roland Barthes cemented the performative in Theory. Susan Sontag situated it in Culture.
In recent years, we've begun the swing back to authenticity. We call it wokeness today. We call it lived experience. And we call it staying in your lane. Authentic poetry explores authentic subjects that you are personally credentialed in, especially politically fraught subjects, like colonialism, privilege, power relations. Authentic poetry chooses sides, commits to a politics before a philosophy. It flies its flag.
To write merely to perform--to make art for art's sake--again feels hollow, superficial, beside the point. Performance is production without content, and content is the cash of poetry once more.
I feel a new silence coming on. It might be a silencing (as in, cancellation), but I think it will be more or less self-imposed. Perhaps the pandemic has had some impact in this regard, reorienting us to what is real and what is just for show.
And I should ask myself exactly who is "us." Who should say something, and who be silent for now? Who's allowed to speak, who's not. And, finally, if there's to be silence, what does it sound like? Small groups of writers (like Wednesdays@One) who gather to worship among themselves? Tillie Olsen, who wrote a famously provocative essay on silence, thinking primarily of the silence of so many women, might have something to say about the art today, were she here to witness "us."
I think I'll go find that essay and reread it.
No comments:
Post a Comment