Your observation is spot on, Brian. About four months ago I read an article by a pair of (or is it a brace?) linguists who had gone through a range of business, literary, and entertainment publications looking for grammar mistakes etc. They found that of these publications, literary magazines - including the mainstream magazine like Paris Review - contained the highest number of 'inaccuracies'. If I remember correctly, business publications were in second place.

I'll search around for the actual article. If I find it, I'll post it. If I don't, well, take my word for it.

Of course you want to start a series of flames, Brian!

Some "friend" you are! Seriously, though, the problem here goes deeper than style, and would not be fixed by a simple edit: who cares about minutiae explaining why a given poet is not better known in a particular city? Only the poet's "friends" would really give a hoot in the first place.

Good post, though. Prose should be as well written as poetry.

No, of course I don't want to start flames. If there were a thoughtful response to the questions I posed then that would not have to happen.

Jonathan's reverse play on the aphorism of Pound's -- who often referred to that "damn difficult art of good prose" (or something like that) -- is obviously useful.

The idea of clear prose is just one of those things that got left by the wayside after the charismatic stylistic hijinks of (say) Olson and (later) Bernstein seemed to make it imperative that a poet's prose had be very unusual in order to avoid the risk of being, what, prosaic?

Robert Smithson's prose stuck to the program and is among the best prose by an artist of the last century (I feel).

The idea that one uses prose to organize one's ideas, and that one organizes one's ideas to create readable, expressive prose -- that might actually be whittled down for the sake of clarity and style and not pumped up for the sake of academic honors or to project the image of hapless genius -- just two of many problems I see occuring in some writers -- is worth chewing over.

I'm actualy *not* a stickler for grammar or even for "clarity" in itself -- but it seems to me that the intention, in this particular example of critical writing, was to be clear -- and, yes, with clarity of expression comes the opportunity to finally discuss the art under the microscope.

While I agree in large part with Brian's point I would argue less for the need for clear prose than precise prose. If we start to use prose primarily to explain our ideas we ignore the stylistic and philosophical lesson of writers like Emerson and Bernstein—that every word matters and that how you write has a great deal to do with what you end up meaning. For all the digressions, ambiguities and fragments in their work, both Emerson and Bernstein use digression, ambiguity and fragment as part of their arguments. Both use every word, paragraph break and semicolon towards particular ends. Of course it is hard as hell to consistently bring that kind of attention and precision to prose, but I think it is necessary at least in extended critical writing—certainly anything that is going to be published—if we hope to be more than hacks.

I agree with what you're saying, Joel, but I hesitate to advocate for "digression" and "ambiguity" in the way Bernstein does in "Frame Lock," his essay on writing essays for academic contexts -- you probably know this one, it appears now in My Way.

It's one thing to set out to create a new idiom for the expression of "new" ideas that one feels would be best set in motion with an innovative and unusual prose style -- "Projective Verse" is a case in point -- and another to want to write something brief and poignant, or perhaps long and compelling, about a new work of literature that you believe needs a little shove in the world to get on its merry way toward appreciative readers.

A lot of the "poetics" writing that was coming out in the nineties struck me as problematic that way -- rarely did they ever deal with other works of literature, and they fetishized the "digressive" and the eccentric in a way that ceased to be interesting and were increasingly cryptic, even to those interested in the "community" of alternative poets.

This turn to classic "belle lettres" -- in this critical volume I mention, the Constant Critic site and Silliman's Blog -- strikes me as a very good thing in this light, which is why I hope a discussion of prose style in a fairly conventional sense might be productive. It leads naturally to a discussion of "content."

Bernstein himself has been moving toward a clearer prose style, despite protestations to the contrary. He still interrupts himself with corny jokes, but his actual prose *style* in several of the essay of his latest book is fairly straightforward.

You can't compare Bernstein to Emerson, either. That's just too much for me.

I take your point Brian about the difference between those types of prose projects; and I am likewise sympathetic with a style that seeks to move past a self-involved ambiguity that does little critical work and move instead towards a discussion of ideas. I certainly do not want to argue for digression and disruption for its own sake. It is just that I see digression and ambiguity as at times allowing for more rigorous thinking, which I believe is at least part of Bernstein's point in "Frame Lock." The test for me is what an essay-idea requires of its author in terms of form, style and argument, not what an author feels like imposing onto the page in question. I hate essays that go out of their way to be confusing for no apparent reason. Such writing strikes me as having all the tricks of experimental writing without the use (politically and ethically) and without the conviction that has sustained experimental writing for the past 100 years, and without those I have trouble seeing what the point of innovative writing would be.

Nor would I be too fast to agree that Bernstein's essays are becoming more clear; I read them as becoming more subtle. What he used to do with narrative breaks he now does with a dash. What he used to do with a line break he now does with a comma. Where others see more clarity I see more craft and rhetorical twisting. Too often we read clarity and disruption on the most obvious and basic level, as primarily a matter of referential ambiguity, but sentences, poems and novels can be radically disruptive, even on the level of grammar, while not getting in your face about it like some traffic cop at an intersection. Take Conrad's The Secrete Agent for example.

As far as comparing Bernstein to Emerson, I have a hard time understanding how Bernstein could be read as anything other than Emersonian. Without even relying on Bernstein's various discussions of Emerson, or his link to Emerson through Cavell, I would point to "Artifice of Absorption" and most of My Way—"The Revenge of the Poet Critic…" and "Reznikoff's Nearness" especially—as Emersonian in style as well as argument. You might think I would need ignore a good deal of what Bernstein actually writes to arrive at such a statement, but I would point to the way his works change tone and subject, their jokes and their circling, word play and grammar, as very much like Emerson's own famous circular style. I tend to see both writer's styles as a deliberate way of talking about language, in particular, as a way of addressing the manner in which language makes meaning because it is messy. I realize there are those who would say I am projecting back onto Emerson through my own allegiances, but I don't think such a reading is either generous or actuate enough in terms of what Emerson accomplishes with his prose.

It does seem odd that folks used to having stare-downs with words can be so sloppy. Twice my own work was mangled by whatever jeff was putting things together:letters turned upside down (m's to w's)and an its changed to it's.

I think the problem is that poets tend to put on too many hats. Everyone thinks they have to be a poet/publisher/editor/critic/designer. While there are some who can and should be doing this, others should recognize that they'd best serve the art of poetry by concentrating on writing. Certain nameless folks that I've known burn too much time & energy on 'business' aspects.

If you're going to play the publisher/poet--do it clean--the products' integrity shouldn't be marred by serious grammatical error and typos...

On the criticism tip, some poets are just incapable of writing even relatively objective criticism. They just can't do it. They either drool or cruelly school or pull the wool..Okay, I'll stop. That's why I, for one, wouldn't push informational prose.

And while I'm feeling somewhat like Andy Rooney I just would like to say that blurbs are really irritating me lately. Are people tripping on acid or what? We can't really have thousands and thousands of works that are all that astoundingly brilliant (and, of course, deeply observant of the 'everyday world'.)My favourite is the blurb on the back of an aimee bender book that says, "it makes us grateful for the very existence of language."

A

Alyssa, I'm dying to know what Jeff you're talking about in your first sentence -- did he really turn m's upside down?

As for blurbs, yes, they get pretty awful sometimes. I'm sure I'll be considered a punch-drunk a-hole for saying this, but one of the worst things is when someone who isn't particularly funny feels compelled -- who knows why -- to try to turn some perfectly earnest and unhumorous experimental poet into the best thing since Will & Grace! Blurbs seem to behave according to their own trends regardless of the book at hand.

Not that I watch Will & Grace, just the first thing that popped into my head. Makes sense though, as there is a quasi-"progressive" agenda to the show... and it used to be pretty funny.

I wouldn't know who changed my moon to woon. (Jeff isn't a proper name, it's slang for an unknown individual who did something annoying.)
I suppose at the time I was a little over concerned, as it looked like I was being unnecessarily 'cute', and it was my first time being published. Around the same time I also had my name lost by Fence. They had to put a lookout for me in one of their issues.
The errors are funny now, of course I'm not really mad at anyone. (Oh and don't lie, I know that you spend all your weekends watching will & grace reruns with alan licht.)

Wow, this is like so... logocentric, man.

Fine words from the mentee of the author of "Rejection of Closure"!

"Perhapsy" ... I remember reading, I'm not sure where, maybe in a textbook, that women, well, you know, sometimes, I don't know... they tend to *qualify* their utterances... not that I really know anything about it.. but couldn't it be... possibly... at the risk of sounding like an essentialist... that Mr. Arras, might -- I mean, just *might*... have a problem with the [giggles embarrasedly]... *feminization of prose*? I mean, I don't know. Maybe.

"Feminization of prose" sounds like another one of those non-starter interpretations pulled out of a grab-bag of progressive critiques -- next it's going to be a class issue, then a race issue, an issue of those at the margins vs. those at the center (or subaltern vs. the West), an issue of one's relationship to the popular culture vs. "classical" culture, an issue of anal retentiveness and asexuality vs. the liberated libido, etc. Try them all on for size.

My point is hardly that qualifications and reservations are bad for prose, hardly, my point is that these qualifications don't make any sense. This seems to be very difficult for you (or your hubby) to deal with.

And when one uses a phrase like "the feminization of prose" one posits some version of prose that existed before women wrote that was entirely determined by the language of men -- if you can do that, great, but those stone tablets have turned to dust ages ago -- and then would have to chart exactly how this version of prose was "feminized" -- really chronically chart it, as if it were something one could see, like the Pacific Coast or gangrene -- which I doubt anyone's done.

You have yet to trip up my major scheme to Korean-Americanize prose, dear (quoth the Madame).

Actually, I don't have a problem with your having gone all school-marmy on the stylistic gaffes in Chris' text, except that without those gaffes and twists and turns and digressions and topsi-turviness it wouldn't be Chris, it would just be more of the same boring logical crystal clear prose that gets cranked out of classrooms (yes, including mine) every day. Introduction body conclusion bing bang boom.

Errors and confusions may not satisfy Strunk and White, but they do, I'm sorry, lend character. Or express it where it doesn't need to be borrowed. Think of Bill Bissett for example.

I fully agree that "the feminization of prose" -- what did you say? -- "sounds like another one of those ... interpretations pulled out of a grab-bag of progressive critiques," but I don't agree that it's "non-starter" because, in fact, there *is* a great deal of empirical (like you like it!) sociolinguistic documentation of women's speech patterns that indicate a far higher level of perhapsiness than men's. And actually, the way a person engages in her language is, duh, a class issue, and a race issue, all the way down the lines of the non-starter grab bag you so articulately quilted above. But surely you know this. And at the risk of sounding like a hackneyed How2 academic, I believe (tentatively) in CHERISHING the TENTATIVENESS of thinking and in the linguistic manifestations of that fucked-up stammery tentativeness. Even ENTHRONING it (on an extremely soft chair covered with fabric phalloi).

Which leads me to this question: *why* is it, indeed, that "we" "need" to write "clear, critical prose?" What are the desired outcomes of such prose?

Wait, don't answer too quickly (this is what Krishnamurti always says).

A desired outcome of clear critical prose is to convince someone of something. Right?

Another is to acquire actual or cultural capital.

I suppose there are plenty of genuine uses for the expository mode among poets -- I mean, I'm using it right now, although not very well, and it doesn't feel particularly good, as it seems to come from a place of embattlement. But what *is* this constant urge to clarify? Is that really what "we" "need" to "do"? And why?

Oh and by the way I think those stone tablets still exist. I feel them sitting on my head every day. And I really really fucking want to smash them.

Oh and BTW Gary and I are not married.

I didn't know "hubby" meant husband -- thought it was lingo for lover or boyfriend.

Anyway, we've been through this before, Nada. Here're are my points:

1. I don't know if you've seen this book, but it also is missing periods at the ends of sentences, has lots of spelling errors, etc.

My point again (it's there, look) about the paragraph was regarding editing, not so much "clarity" though I think someone asking the question I posed about the two groups of "editors" in that paragraph would have helped Chris out in making his point.

2. Clear prose is not synonymous with impersonal or bland prose. Nietzsche and Flaubert write clear prose but there's tons of personality in there (not to mention irrationality), and you don't have to know them personally to "get it."

Of course it's not "echt Chris" if it doesn't have some of the rambles of his emails and conversation, but why not hold out the chance of a "different" Chris in the book -- isn't that why he did it?

3. According to your logic about error and confusion, people who tie their shoes and button their shirts have less character than people who don't, regardless of what they're wearing.

I think that working past "error and confusion" can lead to other thoughts, which themselves might be confused but are just a ton more interesting for being "from the beyond" -- not from that part of brain that we use to buy Metrocards but the part of our brain that glides about twenty feet off the ground.

4. According to your logic (or should I say "thinking" if that freaks you out) if teenagers use the word "like" a lot -- studies have shown this to be the case -- then it would be natural for them to punctuate their prose with this word in an effort to remain true to one's speech patterns.

I do believe that women and men have demonstrably different speech patterns and manners of thinking, I just don't think we know enough about this to write of a "feminization of prose." I don't think there's an "Americanization of the French language" either -- whatever comes comes.

5. There is nothing that an artist does that does not in some way contribute to his or her "cultural capital" -- even negatively, which itself is a game.

This insinuation that I'm interested in clear prose is because of some idea about cultural capital is bizarre -- if that were the case, then I should just shut up and not encourage others to write "clear prose" because they might take my capital.

According to your thinking, one writes confused and digressive prose to avoid the specter of cultural capital -- boy, what a weird idea, I think it's easier to avoid capital by not writing at all.

The desired outcome of clear prose, to me, is to inspire. Prose that you can trust, and that you know wasn't just zinged off as some knee-jerk reaction to something that seems threatening -- the idea that life could have principles and people didn't just think of themselves as the center of the world -- I think is pretty nice.

You obviously believe the world is one of conformity; I probably do too, but I think the way out isn't acquiring superficial modes of differentiation -- I'll write sloppy and weird because everyone's so neat -- but to get deeper and under "their" skin, rather than retreat into one's own.

As for the "why" I made it a point to say that it appears there is some need for a "general" understanding of what poets of "our" various traditions are doing, so you don't have a bunch of flame wars like what's happening with Joan Houlihan.

I was just suggesting that this might be a time to think of other ways of writing -- I think we take it too much on faith that being loose in prose is somehow truer to a romantic or radical spirit.

Anyway, I'm out of this conversation. Thanks for weighing in, though.

And Joel, if you get this, thanks also -- I think your points about "precision" are valuable and thread through this silently in many ways.

Brian,

Not to beat a dead horse (that cliche always freaked me out), but i've been thinking a lot about these issues lately, especially in regards to Bernstein--check out the blog for more (derailedcommodity.blogspot...), but very briefly:

1) So the cited paragraph was definitely an example of prose that is unclear in an unintersting way, however, as the debate extended into whether or not one ought to hold up clarity as a value for critical prose, things started to get hairy:
"I hope a discussion of prose style in a fairly conventional sense might be productive. It leads naturally to a discussion of 'content.'"
When it comes to discussions of poetics in the 90s that you mentioned, I think i see the most neglect of content, and yes, a sort of fetishization of those obtuse values of materiality and disjunctiveness, in the writing of some of the most clear (non disjunctive, formally "transparent") contemporary scholars--i suppose i won't name names. On the other hand, I've read very experimental readings--Coolidge's book on Kerouac comes to mind as the prime example--that are focused on content in a compeling way, and seem refreshingly free of the (now) cliched metadiscourse about a given text foregrounding materiality blah blah blah.

2) This might go without saying, but isn't an objective notion of clarity just a little bit dangerous? Silliman's Blog, or Constant Critic, is "clear" to an incredibly limited audience (to which i belong). Not to sound too much like Burke, but isn't, at least in some sense, a clear text just a text that conforms, in some way, to one's preconceived ideas and expectations? Take this clarity thing far enough and you'll be giving the American public that (in)famous "fair and balanced" reporting.

3)I agree that there is a need for readings that inspire, readings that bring poets to the audience that is waiting for them, but to me this is only so much advertising. I think there is another role for prose to expand thought in a way that can only be achieved if one is willing to flirt with the eccentric, muddled, disjunctive, and absurd.

One would have to ask: doesn't the joke of the comedian only comform to one's preconceived idea of what "humor" is? Yes and no, of course -- we know going into, say, an Adam Sandler film, a little of what we're going to get, but you laugh anyway, and usually what you are laughing at is something that blows your mind a bit.

I know I'm no comedian -- I used to watch Will & Grace! -- but you know that these people usually practice quite a bit. The lovable, hapless schlubs who just seem funny for standing there are few and far between.

Of course, I have nothing against alternative writing practices -- my whole last book was full of them (one of the essays was in Scottish), and I don't have anything against the word "perhaps" either -- I use it all the time -- but the fact that Nada took me up on this is symptomatic of what happens on blogs.

My point was easier to understand than you realize because I'm not nearly the advocate anyone perceives. The quote from my original post was the following:

"But experimenting, of course, is good, and I only put out these little thoughts with the hope of provoking some discussion about the possibilities of clear critical prose in this time when there is little general understanding of the methods poets are employing in poems and when we lack a central venue where one can find consistently (if not "constantly") responsible criticism. I also wonder if the small press world really finds its limits when it comes to the publishing of prose -- i.e. perhaps the small press world can't handle this next step in constructing an "alternative" to the "mainstream" (or the universities)."

If you notice, this paragraph is full of "I hope' and "I wonder" and "possibilities" -- qualitative, speculative -- and the field was restricted to the idea of a central place where the layperson can find it.

I was only suggesting that there seems to be a need at this point in time for a type of prose writing that as not been advocated for a while in "experimental" communities. I know "clear" prose can be as boring as anything -- I like the idea of "precision" better even though, in some ways, it seems to be saying a whole lot less. I.e. if the writer has nothing to say, how can the reader ever know how "precise" the writing is?

My note about the content is rephrased better in my earlier comment: if you do spend time on perfecting a "style" -- one of precisions (which to me is a type of clarity) you might chance on some new "content" that had not thought available to your work.

Anyway, cheers...

Nada--you're all for "stammery tentativeness" in theory. *Got it*. Yet your objectifying "acts" (up there) proscribe conformity.
Evaluating speech patterns/cultural references received during sporadic encounters(particularly in email, which, even when aspiring to be erudite will often jangle with colloquial impermanence/junk)as a means to judge whether someone is "like" you (i.e knows things, man) or not is not always going to be accurate.
It might just be an occasion for jeering, and that's all.
Let's assume that others besides ourselves are capable of operating on several different levels of discourse (including friendly, relaxed, gossipy)and that those others may also be the (field) recordings of themselves.
It was a curiosity to me that there weren't many women actively participating here. Are they all named Nada?

My arguments, as always, eminently puncturable. You are correct that I am an eternally jerking emotional knee. I often say things as a instant-reactive counter to extreme positions, although I might not entirely mean them. I try -- though not hard enough -- not to get involved in these things for that reason, and I'm going to restrain myself from responding one by one to each of your counter arguments, although I'm sure I could find plenty of loopholes in them out of which to slip.

A question: do you think your intention in writing the original post on _Spin Cycle_, was really to *inspire*?

It looks to me a little more like a move, conscious or not, to "take out a contender." It looks to me like a power move. Chris' book preceded yours, and whether or not it is well-edited -- I agree that it isn't -- it is undeniably a feat of intellectual energy. You don't even give the book that much credit, nor do you give any even slightly appreciative strokes to the content, but instead condescendingly refer to it as a mere vanity publication. Not everyone has the luxury of thinking "properly" as you do, Brian, who are so readily accepted by the elders with whose ideologies you more or less harmonize. And while I think it is great that you pay people to edit your work (and I know you are not wealthy), I know for a fact that Chris was absolutely in no position to do so.

The fact is that we could all use better editing. I remember getting a piece from you once that to me was filled with unexemplified abstractions. I put a lot of energy into editing that piece, and you decided not to incorporate any of my suggestions. Of course, that's your prerogative. Far be it from me to drag you down to earth if that's not where you want to be.

It's your Poundian move to be corrective that doesn't sit well with me, I guess. It's lofty, impersonal, and nasty. I don't think I was so much being proscriptive of conformity but as reacting against your proscriptiveness.

It reminded me a little of when I published one issue of a magazine, "Aya", in Tokyo, which included a couple of poems by Cid Corman. He sent me back a letter listing 17 "errors" he had found in the issue. Most of them were in my poem, it turns out, and they were deliberate re-spellings or twists in syntax. It doesn't matter how helpful his intentions were, it was an obnoxious thing to do.

And really, as a chronic corrector myself, I should talk. What can I do? I'm a fucking English teacher, and I have to do battle with my love for students' errors in order to correct them every day. That's why I preserve and ELEVATE them in verse, I guess.

I like the term "precise," actually, and I do aim for a kind of precision when I write prose about poetry, or blurbs, or introductions, etc. I am not therefore, in actual practice, advocating "superficial modes of differentiation." My prose is, to my mind anyway, neither confused nor too terribly digressive. Come to think of it, it isn't hesitant or stammery, either. So maybe I'm full of shit. Or maybe I'm projecting the qualities I find desirable in verse onto the category of acceptable qualities for prose. I'm sure that is what I was doing in Chris' case. Maybe I think of Chris' prose as a kind of verse-prose whose muddleheadedness I see as a pleasing syptom akin to a child's sloppy handwriting when her thoughts move much more quickly than her hand. (And by the way, this is definitely informed by my being close to Chris.) It's as if I can see a metaworld in his writing that doesn't quite keep up with what he is able to articulate. I realize that sounds a little patronizing, but I don't mean it that way. I like "man's [sic] reach exceeding his [sic] grasp" -- especially in the realm of ideas.

Aaaaggh... I'm being sucked into the vortex of rhetoric... hellllllp meeeeeeeeee!

Allyssa, women tend not to get involved in these things because they have other or better things to do. I know I do, but rhetoric is seductive. Actually, rhetoric is Lucifer. One example of its devilishness is that it can be hard to understand. I don't think I understood what you were saying in your last post here, actually.

Speaking of Lucifer, you know I love all of you, even when you get my goat. Right?

Nada

Nada... I like reading criticism -- I've always enjoyed seeing how people think. It's fun. I like thinking about poetry and literature. That's fun too. The idea that someone else in the community took it seriously -- there aren't that many -- was exciting and interesting to me.

I did lots of web searches and asked tons of people if they had even read Chris's book -- I didn't even know it was out -- and I could find nothing out about it. And this among his "friends" and those who purportedly like his work.

Why would a huge book written by a poet who so many people appreciate as an artist not make even a small impression on the "community"? Why, in the midst of all that eyewash about "the school of quietude" and the "post avant-garde," was there no mention of this book which seemed to make some gestures of addressing this very breach? (Why do we always have to reinvent the wheel every time this stupid cultural issue comes up?)

And why, in your defense of this book -- and I should point I hardly attacked the book at all, just two sentences, it was not phrased as a review of "Stroffolino" but was a blog post about editing and grammer, for the sake of asking questions about the "community" and how one can do work in it -- have you not been able to say what it is about?

A feat of "intellectual energy" -- is that all it takes to be a writer?

Anyway, by your standards, my response here should be filled with tons of vile thoughts I am having about you that are related to your life and how petty or devious your motives are and not what you are writing in this comments section.

If you really think that I am trying to "take out a contender" -- I guess that's why I created a .pdf file out of all of Steve Evans' criticism and posted it on my site, or why I always refer to Drew Milne as the best writer on poetry right now and send people to Jacket to read him, or why I've tried to get all sorts of poets down from Toronto and elsewhere who I think blow me away intellectually -- you are truly the self-centered, inept monster that you celebrate being. I think 200 more people know about this book now than before I posted about it.

The only thing I've learned in my interactions with you (and Gary) so far is how low you think I am -- very nice. Next time, be more honest in public.

One more tiny thing. Sorry. Yeah, I have read Chris' book. I actually blurbed it! can't find the blurb right now or I'd post it here.

considering, and etc… I'll keep this short and be done.

Brian, your point about working towards a prose you can trust, even a responsible prose, and the possibility that "life could have principles and people didn't just think of themselves as the center of the world," while usefully speaking to the need for evaluation and helpful discussion in prose, also points I think to a lack of conviction in contemporary innovative poetry circles. I certainly do not want to put words in your moth, but your point makes me think that in a cultural moment where conviction seems to go hand in hand with violence and conservative politics, poets with leftist leanings at times seem to think their best option is to be devoid of belief, and consequently strip their work of an identifiable position and craft. I know you have heard me say something similar before, so I apologize for any redundancy, but however crazy it might sound I do think the messy prose we are talking about is tied to a philosophical and political crises of agency and identity, a distrust of all things that wish to stand for something. Now this might be a real stretch, but I wonder if such a distrust of conviction also contributes to the persistent flaming in context like this; no matter how simple a point my be, the fact that someone believes it at all seems enough to go on the attack.

Regardless, part of Brian's point, I think, in his questioning of the "faith that being loose in prose is somehow truer to a romantic or radical spirit" is a hope that poetry and prose can be something more than a relative, personal decisions as to how we are going to spend our afternoons. Even more hopefully, I think such a challenge depends on the desire for a poetry that can be part of our response to the violent, calculated politics, even aesthetics, of the Right, a response that provides ideas and styles that articulate identifiable alternatives and do not simply tear things down. Because of this hope I do not think the question as to what kind of prose we need to be writing can be addressed in terms of style only.

But because I imagine this night sound crazy in such context let me say more practically that perhaps what I am looking for is less "clarity" (a word that strangely seems to distract and confuse people) than a prose with an identifiable idea, one that is significant and gets attended to with thoughtfulness and detail. When I say I want precise writing I mean I care for writing that takes seriously the way ideas and grammar are tied together and believes that these things matter. I want to read something that feels crafted and careful, both in ideas and execution, and I do think readers can hear this in prose as well as poetry. The measure of such writing I think is both in the intellectual and physical response it requires (not simply the difficulty in figuring out what it is actually saying), as well the pleasure it affords.

I guess that was not as short as I'd hoped. Sorry.

I should also mention, Nada, that when Chris talked to me about publishing his book of criticism several years ago I encouraged him to do it, especially since I've only read scattered things of his in the Poetry Project Newsletter.

It only because we had that conversation that I knew that the book could have been in existence since I hadn't heard about it anywhere else.

And as I haven't written a book of criticism so I'm not sure how his could have "preceded" mine -- your efforts to write mean, depressing things about me and just lower everything to your level makes you lost sense of reality.

If you happen to stumble over a book of literary criticism by me, send it my way so I can correct it.

I think Joel's observations about are about as close to what I feel on this. I do think that working through an unsorted melange of ideas, progressive or otherwise, gives something over to the enemy -- working on Circulars had made me take a long look at how people express themselves and quesiton whether it can be done better.

So this is where everyone has been for the past couple of days!  The original post is like, hidden now or something, so I had to hunt for it.

First of all, Brian, sorry to hear you’re calling it quits with the blog. It's been consistently substantive and exciting.

Second, you and Nada knock it off before I come over there and conk your heads together!  Now hold hands and make up! Sheesh.

Third, regarding Spin Cycle, I think it’s a terrific book whose stylistic laxity (yes, it is atrociously edited, and Chris does tend toward unwieldy grammatical structures) is a small price to pay for the quality of the thought it contains.  I like the off-the-cuff, breathless syntax of it precisely because it's like having an extended e-mail or phone conversation with Chris.  Brian, you said that one aim of critical writing in this case could be to locate that “other Chris” who can be contained in fluidly transparent, consistent prose: but I say what’s wrong with the Chris we’ve got?  I would go so far as to say that one of the main strengths of Chris’ poetry (which I concur with Gary in considering among the most significant and impressive of our generation) is the same over-reaching grammatical unshavenness that makes his prose writing seem messy at times.  If correcting this “vice” in his prose meant sacrificing it in his poetry, I would say STOP, leave it alone before you ruin everything!  Thas jes what I think.

Here am being more like a dog responding to tones and whistles than following the trajectory of fallabout theory clusters.
I suppose that would be reactionary, if it were human at all.
Someone said it very simply--the problem--it's being afraid to stand by an idea and build it up in earnest.
It could be possible that it takes a certain kind of poet to be able to do this and resist moving all ways at once. A lot of kids do this, and I'm one--so nada forgive me for judging your post so harshly. Most of my annoyance comes from the bang and ting of regurgitated ethics without ethics. Because if there's no belief anywhere, how can there really be criticism?... The "low" believe is another jeopardy. Or they aren't conscious... Can't be any force or movement until a new ethics is in place--of course it's tricky business.
Creeping about, I detected an unmistakeable undertone of gossip to the more homely aspects (grammar, names, etc.)Both the questionable question and the questionable response is okay if it becomes a(somewhat awkward and expected)moving picture of the larger problem (which is, in my mind at least, whether sociology and inner-sphere grievance should be aetheticized further into poetry as criticism--or whether there isn't a way to channel and dump that most dangerous of prose into it's own game[and what are the rules? and is really an issue of its contaminating poetry--or a necessary progression that it be inside?])
Sometimes it's better to completely enact a position to better understand the positions of others. Which can perhaps also be said for critical writing--it's not that it is clearly "communicating" in the accepted sense, it's that it doesn't resort to patching citations and obscure references together in a sort of snarky hipster intellectual tone--but rather speak from itself (however it may speak) and say.
Later dudes.

God had some serious quality-control problems.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

All sentences that seem true should be questioned.