"These are pieces (and a few others) that, I feel, move with an intentionally dopey emotional stageyness — as if they too much played on “being spoken” by an “emotive person” — as if I was afraid of writing out of non-ironic feeling. Out of what Aaron McCollough is starting to call a “new sincerity.”
And hey! I like Aaron McCollough, much to the chagrin of some of my newly sincere pals. But is Gabe correct in asserting that Aaron McCollough is "starting" to talk about a "new sincerity" sometime in July of 2007? Maybe this is just a very egregious typo. I mean, "Anthony" and "Aaron" begin with the same letter.
3 comments:
Tony, I'm never very up on what's happening. That part of the conversation took place in I think 2005 -- it wasn't published til July 2007.
I thought it was Aaron M. But if it was Tony R, and I got all that wrong, I apologize. It's all so confusing: SoQ, PA, Flaff, New Sincerity.
"The names of the schools or groups which have proliferated in recent painting (pop art, minimal art, process art, land art, body art, conceptive art, arte pauvre, op art, kinetic art, etc.) are pseudo-concepts, practical classifying tools which create resemblances and differences by naming them: they are produced in the struggle for recognition by the artists themselves or their accredited critics and function as emblems which distinguish galleries, groups and artists and therefore the products they make or sell." PB, TFoCP, p 106
The idea of writing from a non-ironic emotional reserve, applied to contemporary poetry, and specifically to the work of "younger poets" who are comfortable in both "traditional" and "post-modern" modes, who have read their langpo, and the "naming" of this idea as "the new sincerity" first occurred publicly on this bog in June of 2005. Joseph Massey wrote an outrageous "manifesto" on July 4, 2005 which brought quite a bit of attention to what was never really a movement to begin with, but merely an idea.
It was lauded by some and roundly criticized by others.
"What are you doing to make poetry _better_?" asked one pundit.
"Nothing. What are you doing to make poetry better?"
Let's make fun of Tony Tost!
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