cosmopoetica.

The Difference between Bruce Andrews and Hip Hop:

I am aware of the yawning abyss separating a popular musical style with roots in R&B and the language poetry of a certain political science professor, which addresses a completely different audience using completely different means. One is blasted out of car windows at high volumes, the other, usually not. There is absolutely no connection or relation between the two, aside from the fact that they both are forms of poetic art with some social valence and are contemporaneous. It's like comparing late Beckett to Disco music. Then why did I come up with such a crazy comparison? Why have a few other people, independently of me and of one another, also come up with this comparison? Am I lazy, insane, simply ill-informed? It's called a METAPHOR. You know, a poetic trope that allows us to compare to things that are not necessarily related to each other directly, because of some real or PERCEIVED similarity? It's outrageous and hip-erbolic, designed to provoke a reaction. If this particular metaphor has no suggestive power, so be it. I see at least two or three things that justify the comparison, along with about twentyfive that make me want to say I'm dead wrong.

If I were phorced to teach Bruce Andrews in the classroom, I would start by telling the students it was like Hip Hop. Some of them would object and I would make an argument to try to convince them that I was right. It would lead to an interesting discussion, even if I were proven wrong by the end of the class period.