Another Dip

Dipping again into Charles Bernstein’s intriguing book Poetics, I was delighted to read his resistance to ideology. Following the cultural shock of the Second World War, poetry composition and criticism fell under the sway of Postmodernism, as well as other literary schools of thought such as Black Mountain, and even later, Steam Punk.

Bernstein wrote:

Poetics don’t explain; they redress and address.

Poetics are not supplementary but rather complementary (in the sense of giving compliments and in the sense of being additional, spilling over).

They are not directed to the unspecified world at large but rather intervene in specific contexts and are addressed to specific audiences or communities of readers.

Poetics is the continuation of poetry by other means.

**********

Yet, without the expectation of correctness or the assurances of closure, what ground do we have for going on, for taking positions, for speaking with assurance or conviction? What recourse is there from the inhibition of only being able to speak when you are sure about the appropriateness and propriety of what you are going to say?

Optimism is my Emersonian answer… a willingness to try, to speak up for, to propose, to make claims; enthusiasm versus the cautiousness and passivity of never advancing what is not already known; judgment versus instrumental analysis; reason not ratio.

_______________

1. Charles Bernstein, Poetics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 160.