Fellow poets/poetesses of the intarwebs ––
I'm sorry I missed you all on Wednesday afternoon –– though at least the virtual (preferable) me can surf alongside you through these series of tubes. My girlfriend's father passed away early Wednesday morning (precipitating my absence) –– and weirdly enough it's in this climate I find myself preparing some poems from Ariel for my undergrad students for Monday. I've been following (as maybe some of you have) the discussion of Plath's "necropastoral" that's been taking place across the poetry blogonets the past few weeks. Below are the more significant posts on the subject, which I find extremely interesting, especially when applied, as Corey suggests, to some of the recent mutations of the avant-pastoral like Goldsmith's The Weather.
Joyelle McSweeney, Citizens of the Necropastoral: Lady Lazarus and Kubla Kahn
Danielle Pafunda, Annotated Mash-Up Plath, Jones, Necropastoral, WOUND WOUND WOUND
Johannes Goransson, Media Bleeds Through Apertures: Necropastoral, Pornography and Insectoid Psychosis
Joyelle McSweeney, 13 Necropastorals
Monica Mody, Necropastorals and Counterfeit Hindus
Joshua Corey, Joyelle McSweeney's Necropastoral
(I've also uploaded a PDF of Joshua Corey's dissertation, The American Avant-Pastoral: Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, Ronald Johnson, to my server if you want to read more on the subject.)
–– Ryan
"...there is a distinct skepticism about excitement. I think this has to do with an insistent valorization of self-reliance and agency and free will and such. There’s the anxiety that if you’re swept up in something, it must be bad, you lose your “free will,” you become, in Joyelle’s terminology, 'possessed.'"
ReplyDeleteI think Johannes' post on the necropastoral, and this passage in particular, ties in nicely with Fanny Howe's embracing of "weakness (and) fluidity", but also offers an interesting counterpoint to her "concealment and solitude," in its inclusion of masochism. It seems to me that Excitment would be a point passed by repeatedly as one circles around in the wilderness, but it's true, there's something frightening about it: an unhinged sharpness that seems at odds with dream-like wanderings. It's letting the mystery climb all over you and turn you inside out instead of feeling "safe enough to lie down in" it.
With masochism, decoration and objecthood, Johannes has hit upon the kind of letting go I am most resistant to, but I have to admit it is a protective (aka defensive, which I didn't want to say. How did that word become so negative?) and curated resistance. I don't wish to abandon it, but maybe I have to for a little while. Can I let go without letting it all go?