Filreis 88 - Procedurality - 4/13/95

Below you'll find a longish counterargument against the value of the proceduralist poems we read for today--and against the kind of poetry that Marjorie Perloff praises highly in her book, Radical Artifice. Read it and decide upon the degree to which you agree or disagree with the statement. Obviously there will be parts of it that you agree with more or less. But try to discern, on the whole, how you react-- agree or disagree.

If you on the whole agree, sit on the door side of the room.
If you on the whole disagree, sit on the window side of the room.
If you want to register shades of agreement-disagreement, sit on the
edges of the door/window sides or in the middle.
Now here's the statement.

    Cage's "Writing through Howl" was almost wholly created by "chance
    operations," by rigid rules of creation-construction that pretty
    much eliminate individual creativity (individual choice having
    been removed by the procedural rules, which Cage and other
    proceduralist poets like Jackson Mac Low follow strictly).  
    
    I don't particularly admire the way in which procedurality--poems
    made by chance operations of rule-based (non)choices (such as
    computer-generated choices of letters or words)--eliminates the
    role of individuality, individual creativity and/or inspiration
    and/or self-expression and/or free (or even somewhat free) choice.
    
    I also to some degree find the results to be nonsense.  Oh, yes, I
    know they make a kind of sense--nonsense as sense about the
    problems of "sense," meta-stuff.  But finally I prefer consciously
    chosen sense.  
    
    To take the example of "Howl" and "Writing through Howl."  On the
    whole, I think what "Howl" is doing is making challenging or
    radical sense and that what Cage is doing is making challenging or
    radical nonsense, I think when all is said and done I prefer
    challenging or radical sense.
    

See a brief informal description of the 1995 Cage "exhibit".


POETRY HOME | ENGLISH 88 READING LIST | POETRY NEWS | FILREIS HOME


Document URL: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/cage-position.html
Last modified: Wednesday, 18-Jul-2007 16:24:47 EDT