I assume the essay of Ron Silliman's you're referencing is Silliman's 1988 Socialist Review essay "Poetry and the Politics of the Subject," in which Silliman writes:

"Progressive poets who identify as members of groups that have been the subject of history—many white male heterosexuals, for example—are apt to challenge all that is supposedly "natural" about the formation of their own subjectivity. That their writing today is apt to call into question, if not actually explode, such conventions as narrative, persona and even reference can hardly be surprising. At the other end of this spectrum are poets who do not identify as members of groups that have been the subject of history, for they instead have been its objects…These writers and readers—women, people of color, sexual minorities, the entire spectrum of the "marginal"—have a manifest political need to have their stories told. That their writing should often appear much more conventional, with the notable difference as to whom is the subject of these conventions, illuminates the relationship between form and audience."

I've said more on this quote elsewhere ("Form and Identity in Language Poetry and Asian American Poetry," in Contemporary Literature, Fall 2000)--I agree with you that its implications are potentially restrictive and offensive, but it's also been provocative in my attempts to think about what the relationship of avant-garde writing has been to those bodies of work identified with women writers and writers of color over the past few decades--are these just totally different things, "apples and oranges" as somebody once said to me, or connected in some way?

I heard Harryette Mullen talking about this quote once. Her response: "I'm glad he said it." Mullen suggested that Silliman had put his finger on something that was widely held as an assumption out there though rarely spoken about.

Since you raise the question of Asian American poetry in relation to all this (something that concerns me too), I thought I'd point to an interview that Silliman did a few years ago with Gary Sullivan, in which Silliman says:

"It’s not particularly an accident, for example, that so many formally progressive Asian-American writers have emerged, including Sianne Ngai, Brian Kim Stefans, Linh Dinh, Prageeta Sharma, Tan Lin and Pamela Lu in addition to more established poets like Myung Mi Kim, John Yau, or Mei-Mei Berssennbrugge. The startling thing about Walter Lew’s rich and wonderful anthology, rightly called Premonitions, is not how many fine writers it contains, but rather how many more are out there for whom it could not find room.

My own sense is that younger African-American poets still find it much harder, not only to publish – although that too seems the case – but also to find audiences for a broader ranger of work. That is changing, but not nearly as quickly as one would like to see."

Finally, you ask whether there is even such a thing as Asian American poetry. I think the cat's out of the bag--there are anthologies, books, conferences devoted to the topic--it exists, for better or worse, as a concept that people use. We might want to take issue with the way it's used, but we're not going to strike it from the language.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the comments -- very happy to hear from you! This is all very interesting -- I'd love to know more about Harryette's perspective.

I've vowed to get off the topic for a few days at least, but here are a few intitial thoughts.

One is that I think there was a pretty rich multicult community in San Francisco centered around Ishmael Reed that included writers like Hagedorn and Bersenbrugge that were pushing for innovations in the forms of poetry that became occluded by the entry of the personalities we associate with Language poetry -- these energies were not dissipated, but I'm not sure they benefitted from the arrival of the types of approach to writing that the Language poets brought on with their rather dismissive and hardcore attitudes toward "idenity" and form. Watten evacuated any hint of the social "voice" -- the embodied voicing of particulars -- in his poetry, whereas I think Hagedorn, especially in her later novel Dogeaters, brought it to a sort of apogee.

There have also always been renegade Asian American writers who have brought unique perspectives to poetry that owe no debt to the "mainstream" (or "quietude") and New American divide: Sadakichi Hartman (a Japanese German aesthete who was Whitman's secretary for a time), Jose Garcia Villa (a kind of right-wing Filipino poet who nonetheless was very weird), Theresa Cha (who discovered Barthes etc. on her own and was an innovative anthologist and film maker), Ronald Tanaka (a sociologist who kind of went bonkers with his prose), and poets who were looking at radical traditions "back home" causing their own stir within the Asian American world, primarily Walter K. Lew himself.

In an interview from 1982, RS says that: "The community that I'm a part of and interested in is an audience with very distinct social characteristics: overeducated, underemployed people in major urban areas." Without pressing too many red buttons here, I'd have to think that this community was primarily "white" (a term I rarely use since I myself am half German). He later says: "My politics and my aesthetics are essentially different faces of the same argument. When I was editing The Tenderloin Times I would not use articles with the same textual characteristics as Ketjak or Tjanting, because they would not reach the audience I was trying to address. My poetic forms are addressed to very specific people who are more easily addressed in those forms."

What does this mean? It sounds somewhat elitist to me -- I thought avant-garde poetry was supposed to trouble every audience. To suggest that Asian American poets are coming around to questioning the subject position seems, likewise, that Asian Americans were learning how to address this audience -- or is this bad logic?

Having worked on that anthology, by the way, I can say that there were not that many poets "for whom we could not find room" -- this is another instance of list making countered by a list of those not included as some sort of pluralist gesture. The big bruise on the anthology is that Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge herself wasn't in it -- I don't know why! Jose Garcia Villa was also not in it but I think because he had been more or less forgotten.

Well, I guess my point is that I feel uneasy with the idea that the health of a particular tendency is being judged by how many minority writers are partaking in it -- I know the political left and avant-garde poetry in the US have become synonymous (“progressive” means “left” to me above), but that’s blind to history. If the Language tendency started as a club, then perhaps it should just remain a club and we should look elsewhere to see where minority writers are troubling the form during those years -- there is a unique history there. This isn't to say that I didn't graviate toward Language poetry and the traditions associated with it (or that I wasn’t overeducated and underemployed, priviliged in a way that many non-minority writers are), just that I didn't feel that I had to cut myself off with the rather messy education I gave myself prior to getting to New York in learning how to write poetry, and my regret, also, that I only have so much time to circulate in "communities," and the one I happened to come up in -- by choice! -- did not have a whole lot of converse with more ethnically diverse communities.

Well, I have to go... I'd like to address your line about African American culture, but it'll have to wait. Thanks again.

I've found this bit from a Mullen interview with Daniel Kane, http://www.writenet.org/poetschat/poetschat_h_mullen.html:

"Ron Silliman did us all a favor when he articulated what I consider a productive tension between content and form, between identity and innovation in contemporary poetry. As much as I claim Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Melvin Tolson, Bob Kaufman, Margaret Walker, and the poets of the Black Arts movement as literary ancestors, I also credit Silliman and other Language-oriented poets as important influences on my work, from the paratactic prose poetry of Trimmings and S*PeRM**K*T to my desire, in Muse & Drudge, to write a poem that encourages collaborative reading across cultural boundaries. (I take the term "collaborative reading" or "connective reading" from critical writing by Elisabeth Frost and Juliana Spahr.) I might add that my connection to the Language Poets of the Bay Area was through Nathaniel Mackey and Gloria Watkins, just as my link to poetry of the New York School, Umbra, and Black Arts movement was through Lorenzo Thomas."

Brian’s comments about Silliman’s blog indicate to me how Brian is super attentive to the outer limits of a sociological code that Silliman has (among others associated with LP) imported into poetry. Without question, the outer constitutive limits of the code, which point to structural faults and such in the very code itself, are in constant need of adjustment and revision, not defense.

What could, and I think should, be defended, though, but not as in any way integral to either an aesthetics of reading or to the making of poetry, is the sociological code itself in poetry. I think it’s a great achievement and a productive, healthy one for the life of multiple poetries.

But if you admit that such a code is worth defending, then contesting the value-neutral word of any statement (since no word is truly neutral) should go hand-in-hand with defending a kind of principle of objectivity that any proposed value neutrality needs to be founded on.

So what interests me is how we get from adjustments and revisions at the level of an aesthetics of reading, to adjustments and revisions of the sociological code in poetry. Or at least, this I think is a serious challenge.

I sometimes think Silliman’s comments are read as proposing an aesthetics of reading (which anyone might love or hate), rather than as proposing inevitably self-limiting value-neutral statements. Another way to read Silliman is as arguing, ultimately, for a kind of principle of objectivity, a principle that is, of course, in constant need of adjustment and revision by everyone including Silliman himself (since no word can be value-neutral, after all!).

I have a tough time understanding why anyone would want to turn Silliman/LP into the very essence of the mainstream - in every sense of the word mainstream (class, race, gender, etc). I can only understand this move as part of an aesthetics of reading. But as such it is not yet an adjustment and revision of the sociological code as practiced in poetry.

To repeat, in this, a crucial point above, the sociological code in poetry, pro or con, has little to do, I think, in any direct sense, with making poetry. It’s presence in poetry is more a response to the situation in which poetry finds itself in the broader culture. Poets sometimes need to wear these other hats.

I think Brian is pointing in both directions, towards an aesthetics of reading, and towards improvements and adjustments on the sociological code in poetry.

These comments about Silliman’s blog indicate to me how Brian is super attentive to the outer limits of a sociological code that Silliman has (among others associated with LP) imported into poetry. Without question, the outer constitutive limits of the code, which point to structural faults and such in the very code itself, are in constant need of adjustment and revision, not defense.

What could, and I think should, be defended, though, but not as in any way integral to either an aesthetics of reading or to the direct making of poetry, is the sociological code itself in poetry. I think it’s a great achievement and a productive, healthy one for the life of multiple poetries.

I one admits that such a code is worth defending, then contesting the value-neutral word of any statement (since no word is truly neutral) goes hand-in-hand with defending a kind of principle of objectivity that any proposed value neutrality needs to be founded on.

So what interests me is how we get from adjustments and revisions at the level of an aesthetics of reading, to adjustments and revisions of the sociological code in poetry. Or at least, this I think is a serious challenge.

I sometimes think Silliman’s comments are read as proposing an aesthetics of reading (which you might love, or hate), rather than as proposing inevitably self-limiting value-neutral statements. But another way to read Silliman is as arguing, ultimately, for a kind of principle of objectivity, a principle that is, of course, in constant need of adjustment and revision by everyone including Silliman himself (since no word can be value-neutral, after all!).

So, I have a difficult time understanding why anyone would want to turn Silliman/LP into the very essence of the mainstream in every sense of the word mainstream (class, race, gender, etc). I can only understand this move as part of an aesthetics of reading. It is not yet an adjustment and revision of the sociological code as practiced in poetry.

To repeat, in this, a crucial point above, the sociological code in poetry, pro or con, perhaps has little to do, I think, in any direct sense, with making poetry. It’s presence in poetry is a response to the situation in which poetry finds itself in the broader culture. Poets sometimes feel compelled to wear these other hats.

I think Brian is pointing in both directions, towards an aesthetics of reading, and towards improvements and adjustments on the sociological code in poetry.

Louis, could you clarify what you mean by "the sociological code" that has been imported into poetry? Do you mean racial/class/political divisions from the "real world" that have been mapped onto poetry? I think you're saying something interesting here, but I want to be sure I'm understanding it right.

Tim, I do mean a/the logic of the social. So - this might sound quibbleish, obvious-duh, but - I wouldn't say these "divisions" have been "mapped onto" poetry, as doesn't this suggest they otherwise aren't there (recognized, or not) and that the code is wielded predominantly by critic (the mapper) over poem (which to me would be an enormous relinquishing, on the poet's part)?

What perplexes me, as I try to understand all this, is that: certain comments invoke the sociological code. Great. Interesting. But, I notice that the code is being invoked in a purely figural way. Well... Great! Interesting! After all, this is about poetry. BUT, at the same time, I notice how the rhetorical thrust of the comments tend to suggest otherwise: that these are not figures, that this invocation is not an aesthetics of reading the sociological code (which, to be emphatic about this, would be perfectly great), that these are literal assertions engaged with changing the code.

I waiver between addressing this complication either in plainish terms and appearing too the perplexed literalist who is about to make a big pronouncement ("Bad faith!"), or else laughing it off as teenagerly (Poundophilia?) and not giving any more time to it than was spent by Brian himself in writing, by his own admission.

Setting this complication aside - as an aesthetics of reading, it's fantastic stuff!

Peacitude, like the great blogman says.

I'd be interested to read what you might have to write on this.

I just wanted to pick up on Brian Stefans' list of terms and strategies that appear in Silliman's blog, and mention briefly something I thought of when I read this particular phrase: "the continued relevance of a battle against the British (except Raworth, of course)."

In the November 6, 2002 entry, RS claims that non-American poetry has no aural resonance for him: "the prosody of so much non-Yank Anglophone verse strikes me as jumbled, prosaic, 'a dozen diverse dullnesses'?.

RS sometimes uses nation as one fence post for the fence that contains the poetry RS might want to resonate with his aesthetics of reading/"self-limiting value-neutral statements" (quoted from Tim Yu's post). It strikes me that matrices of terminology like RS uses not only contribute to an aesthetics of reading but also create a way to decide what to read when confronted with the masses of new work that appear in blog, e-journal, book, and other forms. Marking "lines in the sand," besides contributing to an aesthetics of reading, also has a (value neutral?) utilitarian function as a time-saver, a way to pre-map the territory of what one might want to and have time to read.

Jonathon Wilcke,
Silliman as providing a "utilitarian function as a time-saver" would be an *absolutely terrible* way and reason to read him. No such "function" would ever be value-neutral - just project word histories, "utilitarian" (Bentham), "time-saver" (Franklin), "function" (Parsons). (By the way, the phrase "self-limiting value-neutral statements" is mine, not Timothy Yu's.)

Hi Louis Cabri. Thanks for responding to my post.

I suppose one danger of cyber-discussions is that there is so much room for interpretation, one can never be sure that others participating in the discussion understand the position of a contributor. That mouse *click* that lets a participant post comments instantly might be also the sound of the trap door slamming down on comments and replies that are too brief. Clarity often takes more time and space than that little white box into I can type a potential net posting might tempt me to believe. So thank you for adding some word-histories to a few terms that I should indeed pull out of my own vocabulary before I (ab)use them thoughtlessly again. Apologies for mistakenly crediting Tim Yu for your "self-limiting value-neutral statements." It's a damn good phrase, and I wish I'd written it myself.

I won't disagree that, yes, reading "Silliman as providing a 'utilitarian function as a time-saver'" IS an absolutely terrible way to read him. I can see why you say that. I'll defend myself by saying that sets of terms might in effect (maybe not always on purpose) act as a demarcation for what among the vastness of poetry one might want to read. When choosing one of two books written by poets with whom I am unfamiliar, I might, say, refuse to read (or overlook) a book that bears the marks of the "School of Quietude" in favor of something by Jena Osman. I intended my misplaced and misused 'value neutral' in the above post to mean that time-saving is one possible side-effect of applying a network of terms to one's daily reading and critical practice, like RS does. Using a set of terms as a time-saver is unintentional, thus value-neutral. This idea is still stupid, perhaps, but that's what I tried to say earlier.

The reason I mention "time-saving" in relation to RS is that RS has an earlier post in which he makes a remark to the tune of "there is so much new work coming out it's hard to know what to read in the time there is to read it." I've got one foot in a sack of critical inadequacy since I've not been able to find the passage and put it down here properly. I've been searching his blog for the past couple of days, and can't find it. The world of poetry that many poetry blogs open into is thankfully vast, which means there's a lot to read, and thanks to the internet, the vastness is accessible. The world of poetry is so vast, however, it's necessary to select what one can read in the time there is to read it. Reading around without any line of thought that brings together texts in a coherent way is fun but not too productive in terms of learning important connections (historical and otherwise) between useful texts. A by-product of sets of terminology that inform how and what one reads may just be "time-saving. "

Having said that, I think what I said in my previous post, though poorly stated, was not invalid. I don't think that anything in Silliman's blog necessarily supports the idea; he may take issue with it, but he might not entirely disagree.

For me, the short of it is that what you're writing about here, Jonathon, is an aesthetics of reading -- one that specifically considers its gaps, lapses and willful oversights as somehow "value-neutral." I wanted to distinguish what RS does from exactly this sort of presumptuous aesthetic narrowing (I'd still argue that RS isn't doing that) -- and from this angle, then, I'd agree with Ben Friedlander's earlier 90s take on lineage in this respect (he's argued it in various places, eg, PhillyTalks 6 at http://www.slought.net), and also with the gist of Brian's take on this point.

"I might, say, refuse to read (or overlook) a book that bears the marks of the 'School of Quietude'" -- and, were you to do that, then you would produce a contradiction that becomes too-easily exemplary of any number of rhetorical situations (imagine how this contradiction is overlooked in the same way, treated as a lapse, or as a gap, in other contexts -- cultural, religious, political). For how do you know if the book bears these marks, if you haven't read it?

Is this a writer who wants to be a student who wants a syllabus: "Reading around without any line of thought that brings together texts in a coherent way is fun but not too productive in terms of learning important connections (historical and otherwise) between useful texts." If so, and if SoQ/anti-SoQ is the line of thought in question here, as it seems to be, then its texts have to be read -- alongside RS's, JO's and others. Sure, interpretation of any sort gives an appearance of saving time; that's exactly an internal rhetorical limit one has to be vigilant about and acknowledge (nonce-words) as best one can, even counter, with a time delaying or wasting pedagogy if it allows one to read the poetry (and who knows what "reading" means here).

I liked participating in the RL / RS readings on the UBPoetics listserv. A few people remarked how they couldn't believe UBPoetics was discussing RL. But why not? Presumably the discussion will be of a different kind than Coles Notes, than Vendler's intro to poetry, etc? I thought the oversights, the gaps, the lapses, as much as the sightings, the infills, the continuities, significant, and far from neutral.

For a superb selection of books on Australian politics, history, and military history, check out the RareHistoryBooks.Com web page at http://www.rarehistorybooks.com/AUSTHIST.HTM.
You'll also find a superb archive of articles on the New World Order [which is impacting and changing Australia increasingly] from the 'New World Order Intelligence Update', at http://www.rarehistorybooks.com/NWOCONSP.HTM. They are also mirrored at http://www.survivalistskills.com/NWODICT.HTM and at http://www.torontochristianbooks.com/NWOGOV.HTM. Well worth reading!

There's also a superb page on the Australian and British SAS Regiments at http://www.survivalistskills.com/sas.htm.

Book of John, ch. 8, v. 26:

For how do you know if the wanker bears these marks, if you haven't wanked?

Commentary:

Even if you somehow manage to pull off with grace and flair, you will make a Biblical scholar.

Application:

www.tp.spt.fi/~cleth/projects/aphexface/aphex.gif

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

Interesting site, is all true ?

For this program, it was a bit of overkill. It's a lot of overkill, actually. There's usually no need to store integers in the Heap, unless you're making a whole lot of them. But even in this simpler form, it gives us a little bit more flexibility than we had before, in that we can create and destroy variables as we need, without having to worry about the Stack. It also demonstrates a new variable type, the pointer, which you will use extensively throughout your programming. And it is a pattern that is ubiquitous in Cocoa, so it is a pattern you will need to understand, even though Cocoa makes it much more transparent than it is here.

Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.

These secret identities serve a variety of purposes, and they help us to understand how variables work. In this lesson, we'll be writing a little less code than we've done in previous articles, but we'll be taking a detailed look at how variables live and work.

When the machine compiles your code, however, it does a little bit of translation. At run time, the computer sees nothing but 1s and 0s, which is all the computer ever sees: a continuous string of binary numbers that it can interpret in various ways.

Since the Heap has no definite rules as to where it will create space for you, there must be some way of figuring out where your new space is. And the answer is, simply enough, addressing. When you create new space in the heap to hold your data, you get back an address that tells you where your new space is, so your bits can move in. This address is called a Pointer, and it's really just a hexadecimal number that points to a location in the heap. Since it's really just a number, it can be stored quite nicely into a variable.