What's Goin' On

Listening to Marvin Gaye today, which seems appropriate, given recent flim-flam and floof (to use Julie Dill's word) in the WORLD. World. Word.

Speaking of Ms. Dill, an interesting post over at Vowel Movements today regarding Kent Johnson and Abu Ghraib. I personally like KJ's "Goodnight, Baghdad" poem better, but I am not offended by the new one. Kent Johnson is a provocateur AND a shameless self-promoter, and I see nothing wrong with either. I try to publish my poems too. Part of Geoffrey Gatza's project over at VOX is to present poetry w/visuals. We've all seen the photos--ignoring them won't make the problem go away.

Poetry is/can/must be concerned with violence. Avant-garde poetry even more. I use the term because of its martial connotations. Many practitioners of po-mo/experimental/innovative/post-avant seem to use these terms to distance themselves from the historical avant-garde, from a stance that proposes, a la Marinetti, that war is the only hygiene of the world. The rhetoric of avant-garde poetry has always been a rhetoric of violence, though, a rhetoric of opposition--all romantic poetry, in fact, stems from revolutionary ideas, and everyone knows we can't have a revolution without coffins. This needn't mean that the avant-garde artist be engaged in actual violence, but it's part of his or her job to confront it, to expose it, to question it, and to, yes, use it.

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"History is a lie made up by those in love." Michael G. Johnson, Reclinerland.

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Also speaking of J. Dill, I'm currently at the top of her blog roll. Which means she frequents my blog most frequently. Yay. I still hate baseball.