apoplexy (sent to Poetics) - (fwd)

[Alan Sondheim]

I'm writing this email and sending it out to a number of lists because I think 
the issue of list governance is important; I now run three lists in 
collaboration for example.

The Poetics list has increasingly not only eroded community, but also created a 
canonic and rigid framework for what is and is not poetics - a framework that 
excludes not only my own experimental work, for example, but also Ishaq's 
politicized and rhetorical experimental/manifesto approach.

This is done without any voting on the part of the list members, without any 
discussion - it's the identical fiat used by Bush and company, presen- ting the 
appearance of good governance, damning constituencies behind the scenes.

And as with Bush and company, I don't see really any debate here - what the 
moderators did, they did from on high, without explanation, or with poor 
explanation. Unlike "my" lists which are responsive to community, the Poetics 
list is responsive primarily to the moderators.

This is ugly.

There _are_ lists that are open for discussion and presentation - again I 
mention wryting, also Imitationpoetics (whose title now appears the other way 
around) - for anyone truly experimenting with poetics and new media, there is 
the webartery list as well. What's depressing is that the Poetics list was once 
a community, once edgy, and now that's permanently gone.

It's been ordered so by the bureaucrats - for what could be more bureau- cratic 
than to increasingly turn a community towards announcements, and discussions, 
but beware of the _originary material_ of such discussions?

Meanwhile the list veers more and more towards memorials for Creeley, Ginsberg, 
god knows who else, as if a list on contemporary aesthetics should bemoan what, 
Judd's death? Warhol?

Times move on but this list ossifies - and this is a real and political danger, 
I believe; it reinforces notions of what is and is not acceptable, it 
promulgates the canonic - and this is nowhere so clear as in the censoring of 
Ishaq - for shame! - it reifies the academy (just look at the 'officiating' 
titles of some of the blog entries around here). I can't imagine Whitman, 
Rimbaud, Lautreamont, participating here; unfortunately I _can_ imagine the 
right-winged Eliot having a ball.

Along the same lines there are almost _no_ discussions of _contemporary_ 
poetics - for example computer aesthetics, the sorts of things Florian Cramer, 
Funkhauser, Sandy Baldwin, mez, Talan Memmott, Nick Montfort, Jim Rosenberg, 
etc. write about. Where is codework? Where is jodi? Where is a discuss of 
hackerz or warez? Where is Eugene Thacker, Kenji Siratori? Solipsis? Noemata? 
Meskens? l_oy? Where are presentations of this material? The world of 
poetry/poetics is changing - and the only sign I see here and in general is the 
continual claims of language poetry to have been there at the foundations of 
new media poetics.

Which just isn't true - if you look at the early work reflected say in the 
Software Catalog or my 1971 pieces or even some of early Acconci. But just as 
with Bush and associates, not only does this list mourn and mourn, but it also 
creates false histories, measured statements, etc.

This list, with its increased closures, in fact is increasingly doing culture a 
disservice - as if poetry/poetics/whatthefuck were something one can 
conveniently legislate, a world of gentleman and gentlewoman writers. And none 
of this would matter, except that this list already has, not only a large 
subscriber list, but the ability to weild a great deal of power, in terms of 
publications, grants, academic and other positions. It protects itself, just as 
the writers protect themselves, tuning me and others out, censoring any 
creative work qua creative work, because after all poetics turns on itself and 
elsewhere publication, and this is a list for the pure.

Where is Kent Johnson? From the Poetics viewpoint, perhaps all of us should 
throw ourselves out the collective window, as Zero Mostel did last night in a 
rerun of The Front on TCM. Because things sure aren't going to change around 
here, and language poetry, basking in academic spotlights, will petrify 
literary culture until it becomes another Pound/Eliot/ monument memorial in 
someone else's Inbox.

I recognize that I am probably way off-target here, but there are very few 
places like Poetics used to be, and its free-wheeling nature was a god- send. 
If one wants to post readings/publications/etc. there are a _lot_ of other ways 
to handle it - for example nettime announcements, which parallels and 
accompanies nettime, or the Franklin Furnace goings on list. But that won't do 
here - instead everyone has to be controlled, and as the letter to me showed - 
since it was sent back-channel - controlled from behind the scenes. The same 
goes for Ishaq (who I respect but obviously don't like - he's been far too 
nasty to me personally) - who, as much as any of us, has been contributing to 
what constitutes writing/wryting at the beginning of the 21st century. And his 
is a voice that _needs_ to be heard, dealing with _contemporary_ issues, rather 
than whether Ginsberg is misogynist or not for gods sake. Or at least to be 
heard _as much as the latter._

I'm sending this out everywhere, since I'm not sure the moderators will let it 
through. Or else they will, in a show of kindly and superior liberality. But at 
least it will be elsewhere on the Net.

And I do apologize if I've misread anything, btw. This is not a flame but a 
complaynte in a country at war both inside and out.

- Alan


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