"new thing"
Here's Stan Apps and a good comment-discussion about Steve Burt's "New Thing" article.
As I've stated before, I actually think Steve's article is a very perceptive article in identifying not a school or a movement (and certainly not the only trend in poetry), but rather a piece of very important rhetoric that seems to have always been with American poetry and culture.
(And the culture and poetry of other cultures as well; I have in the past drawn parallels to the "New Simplicity" movement in Sweden, though, notably, this was an extremely Marxist movement coming out of a political critique of the French new novel. And it was against this lame institution of Swedish literature that Aase Berg, Ann Jaderlund and others in "the abject 1990s" reacted with gothic-grotesque poetry as the welfare state was crumbling. And with it my childhood.)
Key here the discussion of ornamentation and, as Mark writes, the prevalence of American problem with ornamentation - often resulting in a problem with art itself. As I noted on Seth's blog, this is also where the urge for "sincerity" comes from.
I've been bad about blogging. I've been doing a lot of translations jobs for Swedish artists and exhibitions. And when I do that I tend to take breaks by reading other people's blogs while not having the mind space necessary to write my own entries.
As I've stated before, I actually think Steve's article is a very perceptive article in identifying not a school or a movement (and certainly not the only trend in poetry), but rather a piece of very important rhetoric that seems to have always been with American poetry and culture.
(And the culture and poetry of other cultures as well; I have in the past drawn parallels to the "New Simplicity" movement in Sweden, though, notably, this was an extremely Marxist movement coming out of a political critique of the French new novel. And it was against this lame institution of Swedish literature that Aase Berg, Ann Jaderlund and others in "the abject 1990s" reacted with gothic-grotesque poetry as the welfare state was crumbling. And with it my childhood.)
Key here the discussion of ornamentation and, as Mark writes, the prevalence of American problem with ornamentation - often resulting in a problem with art itself. As I noted on Seth's blog, this is also where the urge for "sincerity" comes from.
I've been bad about blogging. I've been doing a lot of translations jobs for Swedish artists and exhibitions. And when I do that I tend to take breaks by reading other people's blogs while not having the mind space necessary to write my own entries.
posted by Johannes at 11:02 AM
2 Comments:
I've got some thoughts on this here:
http://ignoretheventriloquists.blogspot.com/2009/06/steven-burts-new-thing-some-notes-in.html
I hadn't thought about Steve's essay that way--as a sort of symptom. That makes it better, sort of a Roland Barthes way of reading it--his essay as a dramatization of the culture's needs and hang-ups.
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