The Cambridge School and Kestonian Cool
Was in a local university town for a long weekend, visiting a friend, and heard about a lecture/reading two-day series being put on by the English Dept. I saw flyers around the campus (it’s quite a pretty campus… but what’s with the bed sheets everywhere? Kids these days.) and decided to attend. The poets featured were part of the “Cambridge School,” including Keston Sutherland (spitting image of a grown-up Harry Potter), Andrea Brady (American, actually), and Peter Manson (Scot.) The lectures were given by Andrea, Keston, and Sam Ladkin (critic… not sure if he’s a poet as well. Probably.)
The reading was great, although sometimes I feel a little lost by the avant-garde poets. I feel that I don’t know how to begin to describe/explicate post-modernist (post-L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, post-avant-garde?) poetry; it’s not really something you can explicate by describing meter, rhyme, or form but instead maybe syntax, word choice, etc., and everyone sort of intuitively understands, nodding along like pigeons. No one ever asking the question on the back of (surely) all our tongues, “But what does it mean?” (don’t pretend you don’t want to ask it too. You do.) Sort of how it was acceptable to have a lunchbox in high school but now, post-college, no one ever sees you eat. But I digress.
But I suppose it is related to my reaction to the poetry (esp. that of Keston and Andrea’s.) A few lines stuck out, and I had picked up a current copy of The Chicago Review (in which they are both featured) and looked over two of the poems that they read. Andrea’s “Saw Fit” and Keston’s “Hot White Andy.” I must say that hearing them read aloud made the poems come alive much more for me, though they were still a bit oblique. Andrea’s was clearly related to the Lynndie England scandal, and hearing her read the line break and caesuras made the text open up for me. (How sexy.) Keston’s “Hot White Andy” was a dynamic text which included a play and a story, with such memorable lines as, “I disappear, but the nights/stick” and “I accumulate you” repeated like a refrain.
Both texts felt chock-full of extremely of-the-minute inter-textual/pop culture references that I’m not entirely sure I caught (esp. Keston’s piece), though I did still enjoy what I caught. I have been thinking about this lately, though: can poetry ever be read in a vacuum? Esp. concerning avant-garde poetry, but not excluding heavily inter-textual texts, work in translation (referencing cultural norms with which we are not familiar), etc., can a text stand alone, as a text—sans context?
I was able to enjoy the reading, though I felt like I was missing key chunks of the point. But is there a point in avant-garde, post- L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry? And have I completely missed it?
link for The Chicago Review: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/
2 comments:
I have also had the pleasure of hearing Andrea Brady read that particular piece, and must agree that it comes so much more alive at a reading. I'd read the poem before, but nothing compares with hearing a poet read their own work, with the proper pauses, voice inflection, etc.
Drea
I was at part one of the series--the lecture, which was over two hours. I was so impressed by the level of discourse of this group and fascinated by the presentations and conversations. Let me add to your post by commenting on some of that. There's plenty I could mention, but to not fill your comments with my own musings, I'll just touch on one point that was particularly interesting to me.
Keston talked some about his idea of the poet being "stupid". By using this attention-grabbing word, he means that the poet, when writing a poem, does not approach politics or the world pragmatically. Instead, he or she approaches it from a passionate and idealist frame--one that is "stupid". Perhaps it is the poet's role to keep the dreams and big hopes alive, and to not settle for what seems practical and possible. The poet holds the torch for the impossible.
To me, this raises questions of the purpose of poetry in the world and the job of the poet. Also, it begs the question at its foundation of what a poet is, or what makes someone essentially a poet (if that exists). Keston discussed that perhaps we can move beyond a nominalist view of what a poet is and see that there is a certain form, something absolute and essential that makes one a poet. I'm not much of one for nominalism myself, and I like the idea that a poet is something specific and embodies a certain form or aspect. I'm just not sure what that is. Perhaps the form of the poet is "stupidity"! I think I would be satisfied with that.
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