Big, big apologies to Ken Warren and others that this is, for now, just a first draft, quick notes response, but I do want to post some of my early, infinitely appreciative response to his outstanding scholarship and analysis in his most recent essay on Olson's and the Black Mountain poets' poetry and on the Clarke/Glover "Soul" project. I'll word this better later, but for now, these quick notes I made while at work last weekend:
Fascinating essay, research, and analysis by Ken Warren in the most recent HOUSE ORGAN (March 2011). Endlessly enlightening proposition of a dialectic (interpretation) between "Innis" pomers' (Lang Po main theoretical honchos, particular Charles B., Steve M., and Ron S., and what Ken calls, thus, "Introjective" verse) orientation to writing (poetry/poming/poems/hybrids) and "Outies" pomers' (Olsonian Projective Verse) orientation to writing (poetry/poming/poems/hybrids). The one focused on ****** (sorry, I don't have Ken's essay right in front of me) and the other (Olsonian, "projective verse") focused on "intuition."
I (may, in small part,) disagree that one (Lang Po and/or "Introjective Verse") is essentially "Left Brain" and the other (Olsonian, and/or "Projective Verse") is "Right Brain." That's "a False Split," however "useful" it might be for making some of his other points. BOTH orientations, after all, require using language/words, so both are by definition largely ALWAYS left brain, for the most part. Also, BOTH are (probably equally) necessarily right brain. I do NOT believe that any writing can be reduced to preponderence of activity occuring in either lobe. I could, and will, argue (again) some day, that some/much female, gay, transgender writing has, throughout human genetics/history, derived from GREATER masses of neurons connecting left and right hemispheres and that that greater density and accummulation of connections accounts for "females" having greater range/subtleties/quality of "emotional" experience, but I believe that ALL poets, at least essentially, have greater masses of those neurons -- it's one of the reasons they become poets, or artists, to begin with. Plus, I simply do not believe that the whole left brain / right brain thing is nearly as simple and thus "intuition" is, I believe, probably a combination of the two lobes' general ("specialized") qualities. Plus, two, in fact, I would argue that the Lang Po practitioners have actualized, and endeavor to actualize, far greater range of "non-linear" writing forms and experience, and thus that they are frequently MORE, not LESS, right-brained than their Olsonian pregenitors. But this is getting off track and missing much of the thrust and solid-gold of Ken's ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC essay. This fellow is creating a most astute and rock-solid scholarship and Literary criticism.
I disagree also with (Lang Po) claims that one eschews (or precludes by it's very orientation) "Subjective" or "personal." Whether one constructs writing from other texts or from "original," self-invented words and other textual particulars, ALL writing is still, at the proverbial end of the public day, a SELECTION of what is put on the page -- UNLESS the writing is presented (made public and then circulated) anonymously. None of the Lang Po practitioners, to my knowledge, have fully or genuinely operated anonymously even when they have worked collaboratively. It's still, thus, always a referentially fixed name, even if via Group identification, that presents such texts and thus it's subjective by definition. Unless using a pseudonym that comes from "a source" that cannot be physically located (i.e., tagged with an actual person and existing in real time in real place), NO texts can purely constitute complete break from the so-called "subjective," personal. They can only play on received assumptions and habituated responses to textuality and context that readers, who ultimately determine the meaning and experience, bring to the experience of processing what is on the page. Let's get real1
But these are just the rough "early," first impression thoughts/thots of a nit-picking guy fascinated with Ken Warren's essay in the latest HOUSE ORGAN and chomping at the bit to give it serious time and attention here at a later date. He's produces truly remarkable essays and criticism in that mag, HOUSE ORGAN.
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