Wednesday, February 19, 2003

“Free association in poetry facilitates connection with others.” So says Nick Piombino. Do Poindexter & Ashcroft know about this?

Dear Ron,

Mrs. Freud, it is said, objected to Sigmund's practice of psychoanalysis and considered it a form of "pornography." A more contemporary form of repugnance – by, say an "innovative" poetry writer – to a psychoanalytic approach finds objections perhaps more to its confessional aspects or focus on the self. In a discussion I had about psychoanalysis with a poet recently she said "Who wouldn't enjoy going to someone just to hear yourself talking about yourself?" The interest on the part of poets in psychoanalysis and related careers appears to be growing. Kimberly Lyons, Joel Lewis and Kim Rosenfield are psychotherapists and John Godfrey is a nurse. There are many others. More than one poet has asked me about the suitability of social work and psychotherapy as careers for a poet and my quick answer is that I feel that it is a very good combination. These professions, like teaching, get you out there working with other people employing language and ideas in a direct fashion which I find helpful in addressing some of the emotional pitfalls of being a poet. But, unlike teaching, you actually have less time to think and worry about whether anyone reads or understands what you are writing or anybody else is writing.

What excited me about the poetry centered around such poets as Clark Coolidge, Bernadette Mayer, Ted Berrigan, Frank Kuenstler, Joseph Ceravolo, John Ashbery, John Cage, Alice Notley, David Shapiro, Hannah Weiner, Armand Schwerner, Vito Acconci, and Jackson Mac Low, all of whom I read avidly in the 60's, I found also and more in the circle of poets including you publishing in Barrett Watten's This magazine back in the 70's and a little bit later in the 70's L=A=N=G=U=G=E here. This had everything to do not so much with completely getting away from the personal or confessional in writing but from getting away from doing it in a boring, corny or unproductive way. The central technique Freud advocated in experimenting with the unconscious had to do with free association. Confessional writing per se is not free association but is autobiography which is not at all the same thing. Barrett Watten discusses this in a way that incorporates the associational process itself which may be challenging to some readers but is the most valuable way to discuss this issue, in his book Total Syntax (Southern Illinois, 1985). The typical academic gloss on L=A=N=G=U=G=E writing puts the spotlight on its contribution to social and political philosophy which is apropos, but there is another side that has to do with its origins in German romantic poetics like Novalis and Schlegel, Russian Formalism, psychoanalysis, Dada and surrealism all of which Watten addresses in Total Syntax and elsewhere. In the debate between Andre Breton and Freud, Freud was wrong and probably knew it. Freud was a control freak when it came to his world wide movement, as leaders often are, until they learn it is not that easy or perhaps even possible. Like Breton and others he had his secret committees, etc.

American writing and American politics have been running away from European influences since the ink was drying on the Declaration of Independence. It's this very fleeing that brings on the later relentless obsession we saw, for example, in the 70's and 80's with the work of Derrida and his cohorts. The more academics embrace a philosophical approach the more American poets in the field feel the need to define themselves in contrast to it. Nobody wants to leave school and talk about the same things they did in classes, with the exception of nerdy types who are so immersed in texts they don't feel any need or desire to escape them. This does not characterize your average American poet who is plagued by rock dreams. The first reading I ever gave was with Patti Smith, but I was told when I went to the center for translation in Marseilles not long ago that all she did when she got there was "talk about Rimbaud, Rimbaud, Rimbaud." Not at all to disparage Patti whose contribution to the growing anti-war movement makes her one clear possible replacement for the role the late Allen Ginsberg formerly played. But listening to Ann Lauterbach speaking on WNYC today with Sam Hamill and Andre Gregory it is very clear that Ann L has a lot of strong ideas to contribute in this discussion as well.

The so-called "language" poets had the curious quality of actually being interested in writing about language. Where confessional poets put the focus on being understood or understanding themselves, L=A poets wanted the culture to be understood or to understand itself. But they weren't adverse, in places, to any one technique or set of techniques in achieving that goal. L=A writers often employed and still employ defamliarization techniques. This term, from Russian Formalism, encompasses covertly the idea of getting away from over-focusing on family. When I was judging a couple of poetry awards a few years ago I read hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts. It got to a point when I would intone aloud, "mother, sister, father, brother" and toss the manuscript into the reject box. Americans – specifically psychotherapists, for that matter – are obsessed with talking about family to the point of nausea. This contributes indirectly to some of the destructive forms of xenophobia we are witnessing throughout our country today. Language poets get vilified for resisting this. L=A poets and L=A writing may have been unconsciously bringing poetry closer to music, the universal language of art. The issue is not only about proactively associating with language to become free, but with proactively associating with all kinds of other people to become free, even people who don't happen to live in the USA! Working together closely on so many issues, as well as encouraging each other not only by agreeing with each other but by energetically disagreeing with each other these innovative poets helped move the poetry community towards a new paradigm for poetic group formation, as opposed to poetic style. The core group is still working together closely almost 30 years later. Is there a precedent for this in American poetics culture? This has upset countless writers and has energized countless writers as well.

Free association encourages conscious and unconscious collaboration. L=A poets work as if they were each making music comparable to the sounds of an individual instrument in an orchestra instead of trying to be the whole orchestra. This may be why some readers find it hard to understand how to track the voicing in L=A poetry. The reader has to imagine and supply some of the associations and therefore some of the undertones and overtones. These are often only suggested by consciously or unconsciously associating related texts (which are often the only effective way to interpret complex films, a similar process far more familiar to most people). Free association can be "played" alone but very comfortably can be practiced in overt or covert fashion with any number of other writers. This is one of the reasons why so many American writers employ these techniques so comfortably now, and why the numbers keep growing. As in psychoanalysis, free association in poetry facilitates connection with others by emphasizing shared communicational dynamics including avowing the limitations of language, the surfacing of which might be curtailed, paradoxically, by over-focusing on the specific personal details of one's daily or past life. In the work of other L=A poets what is emphasized is the universal quality of such everyday details, as in much of your own work, Ron. The very term free association has the latent meaning of associating freely with other people. One of the primary goals of psychoanalysis is to enable the analysand to understand the unconscious pull towards interpreting current experience from the point of view of the powerfully deterministic transferential dynamics latent in their early family experiences. This is why one has to work so hard to surface and remember these experiences in psychoanalysis – so these memories will not be so latent in everything we think, say, feel and do. Freud said that "neurotics suffer from reminiscences." So does inept poetry!

International group formation, philosophy, experimenting with language – sounds too French for me – thinks your average American poet or reader. But maybe this is about to change – as an outgrowth of many factors, including desk top publishing, the internet – and a world wide antiwar movement emerging at lightning speed.

With affection,

Nick