Quiz from B*msha Swing:

1. What is your sense of the poetic tradition? How far back does your particular historical sense range? What defines your tradition? Nationality, language, aesthetic posture? What aspect of your poetic idiolect or tradition most distinguishes you from your closest poetic collaborators? I take all poetry from every tradition as my heritage. I see similar tendencies in Modernism & the court poetries i have studied, & i try to synthesize them; however, ultimately i follow my own whimsy. In order to give a name for my Do-It-Yourself poetics, i have co-opted the term "Umbrism". If there is something that distinguishes me from other poets writing online at this time, it might be my inclusiveness, that doesn't reject apparently mutually contradictory modes of writing; & of course my bizarre fixation on the practices of the poets of Classical Antiquity, who would not at all approve of what i do with them.

2. How would you define contemporary poetic practice? (Say, the typical poem that would be published alongside one of your in a magazine where you are published.) How does this practice relate to the tradition defined above? Does poetry of the "past" (however you define the past for these purposes) occupy a different corner of your mind? So many people writing nowadays seem to think history started with five years ago, or twenty. In my book it's the myopic sameness of whatever "stream" you pick up on, that makes non-poets find contemporary poetry boring. (I know this is unfair.) Having said this, i must admit there are adventurous writers hiding out everywhere i look--just not the ones receiving attention & acclaim, by & large.

3. Whom, among poets you most admire, do you understand least? What is hindering a greater understanding of this poet? It's hard to think of someone in this category, since my admiration tends to proceed out of my understanding. But i admit Egil Skallagrimsson's writing comes from a mindset that's hard for me to imagine.

4. Are we over-invested in poetic "hero worship"? Is it necessary to have a poetic "pantheon"? How does the poetic pantheon relate to the notion of an academic "canon"? Are they mirror opposites, rivals? YES. I would rather that each poet choose her own ancestors. It's better still to be able to switch your worship when a god fails you (that was always the advantage of polytheism). Naturally, what constitutes The Canon will continue to evolve. I would like to think of the concept as heuristic rather than prescriptive. In other words, asking "do we still get something out of this writer today?" for famous as well as obscure authors, makes us examine our assumptions about poetic value.

5. Is "total absorption in poetry" benign? How about "poetry as a way of life"? I think it's silly. How can you write anything good if you're not insatiably curious about the world? And i don't agree with those who feel that they approach every experience in their life as potential poetic input. If you don't know that there's lots of things you'll never be able to put into words, you haven't been paying attention.

6. Do you see poetry as a part of a larger "literature," or is poetry itself the more capacious category? Poetry defines itself as certain practices of language, even though these change. But if i had to file it under another super-heading, i would make poetry a part of Magic, rather than a part of Literature. Literature, like exercise, is Good for You. Magic is a secretive vice.

7. Are humor, irony, and wit (in whatever combination) a sine qua non? Or conversely, is humor a defense mechanism that more often than not protects us from what we really want to say? It would be more useful to think of meaning as a continuum, rather than a binary disjunction of saying/not saying what you mean. It's true that some decent writing has come out of utter simplemindedness, but it greatly tends not to. As for constant joking--yes, that's a concealment, & everybody knows it. So how is it a concealment? It's a texture.

8. Is the poem the thing, or the larger poetic project? "Projects" is a kind of superstition. But not, perhaps, a fruitless one.

9. What is the single most significant thing anyone has ever said about poetry? So far no one has hardly said anything. I find much more interesting analogies in what has been said about the other arts, & even science & games. But saying stupid things about poetry is a time-honored genre. So why shouldn't i play it, too?

10. Which of these questions asks you to define yourself along lines of division not of your own making, in the most irksome way? How close do these questions come to the way in which you habitually think about poetry? What other question would you add to this list? Overall, this has not been an aggravating questionnaire, or i wouldn't have posted it on my blog. It does scant the whole question of Personal Mythologies, though. I think this, more than technique or clannishness, divides us. And it might even be a good thing.



"As trends move out of focus, consumers are not discarding them as new trends move in. Rather, they are keeping bits, discarding others and redefining them on their own terms." (via Dr M*nlo)