¡Bemsha SWING!

21 jul 2005

What I'm trying to say is that I need the poetic speaker's voice to be self-aware. If I'm going to write something like "Many times I have pleaded with Apollo for respite from my troubles," it's going to have an ironic edge to it. I don't think anyone can manage that kind of thing "straight." Of course, there are about hundred tonalities of irony available for the task. Mock-heroic, campy, faux-naif, detached, paranoid, deadpan dry, over-eager, "teen-age sarcastic," Proustian-aristocratic, proletarian, mock-sincere. (Well, that's 11 just off the top of my head.) Since irony arises from a clash of opposing perspectives, any two perspectives can enter into productive tension.

8 comentarios:

Anthony Robinson dijo...: Most such ironies bore me though. New Sincerity in da house!; 2:49 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: The New Sincerity is ironic too. It has a very "staged" quaity to it. Not that there's anything wrong with that.; 3:45 p. m.
Jordan dijo...: So, one drop of ironic blood and the whole poem is...

you see where I'm going with this.; 3:53 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: ___

I don't quite follow you, hypcrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère. Without this one drop the poem lacks that quality of self-awareness that the New Sincerity has in abundance.; 4:02 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: I'ts like a homeopathic medicine or an immunization. You need just a little in order to protect yourself against the greater onslaught of "irony," or against Nick Piombino's automatic irony generator.; 4:18 p. m.
Anthony Robinson dijo...: I think we need someone to tag and taxonomize the various types of irony so we know what we're talking about.

Though the New Sincerity seems "staged" it both is and isn't sincere. I mean, it is a "joke" movement that is more than a "ha ha" joke. Its intent is pure. We believe what we jokingly proclaim. So I guess that's irony, but it's against the wink-wink irony that we see in so many "post-avant" poems.; 4:24 p. m.
Laurel dijo...: Wait a minute!

I don't think you're talking about the poetry. I think you're talking about the audience.

More on this at my site...; 4:45 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: I think I've drawn blood. My favorite poet, Frank O'Hara is sentimental and self-aware at the same time. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Take the poem "Hate is only one of many responses." It's straightforward and sincere, not ironic at all, yet there's still that subtle characterization of the speaker, that oh-so-slight distancing effect that makes us able to take the poem as a poem. One thing is the surprise that one COULD speak that directly in a poem. That sets up an ironic play at the level of genre.; 6:21 p. m.

Publicar un comentario

Suscribirse a: Enviar comentarios (Atom)

Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

21 jul 2005

8 comentarios:

Archive

Seguidores