The New Things

In his newest essay in the Boston Review Stephen Burt describes what he sees as a new enclave in American poetry. I like his attempt to carve out a third way, and I really like a lot of the poets he groups together under these common features:

The new poetry, the new thing, seeks, as Williams did, well-made, attentive, unornamented things. It is equally at home (as he was) in portraits and still lifes, in epigram and quoted speech; and it is at home (as he was not) in articulating sometimes harsh judgments, and in casting backward looks. The new poets pursue compression, compact description, humility, restricted diction, and—despite their frequent skepticism—fidelity to a material and social world. They follow Williams’s “demand,” as the critic Douglas Mao put it, “both that poetry be faithful to the thing represented and that it be a thing in itself.”

However, I don't think any of these features are all that "new," and what I really object to is this ridiculous outmoded turn to objective representation. I'm not sure it's fair to unite the poets he reviews (or any poets) under this banner of fidelity "to the thing in itself." First, all poets as artists necessarily treat the poem as a thing--this stance is implied in any craft, so it should be a foregone conclusion. But then what's the deal with this turn toward naive mimesis*? I distrust the notions of "thingness," documentary accuracy and objectivity in poetry and in language in general. Faith in the representational function of language seems to entirely overlook the rift between language and the so-called objects in the world (our knowledge of which is highly problematic to begin with--i.e. how can we know the thing itself?--or are we all reverting to naive empiricism?). A sentence is not a moving picture. A noun is not a thing. Syntax does not convey the sense of being there. A verb does not perform a historical action. Language is a system overlaid on reality. Yes, it influences perception. Yes, it can provide reference points to the objective world--but as a poet and as a frequently confounded human, I for one find the "objective" world an utter mystery. This yellow wall in front of me: how its shade of yellow depends on the lamp I turn on or the time of day. How I can't look at it if I'm slightly nauseous. I can't impose a system as arbitrary as language over my experience with the wall and expect it to accurately communicate its existence in any phenomenological way. And the expectation that poetry should do such a thing is completely absurd. The existence of apparently "accurate" imagery in a poem does not make the poem any more faithful to material or social reality than surrealist juxtaposition. Imagery and accuracy are rhetorical & tonal devices just like sarcasm, irony, metaphor, etc. They just mask themselves in the invisible cloak of immediacy.

This rant has nothing to do with the poets themselves. I admire much of Armentrout's work. I absolutely love Graham Foust's books. Woodward, Massey and Johnston are all excellent poets. The thing in itself just strikes a nerve in me in myself.

*By the way, this simplification of WCW as the poet of things in themselves drives me crazy. Sure, he had a dictum about imagery (which is probably more in line with the workshop craft cliché "show don't tell"), but let's not let a slogan stand for an entire body of work that is is so diverse in tone and manner. "To Elsie" anyone? "Kora in Hell"? Even Patterson is more complicated than things in themselves...