machinations in times of war: on WCW
I was most interested this week in WCW's introduction to The Wedge. He begins with, "The war is the first and only thing in the world today." Perhaps still true, though I would say simply "war" rather than "the war" because there are far more than one. We've heard numerous comments in class that in some sense everything we've read this semester is war poetry. Well, yes. And here, it's 1944. No exception.
But Williams continues, "The arts generally are not...a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field." I'm not sure if I agree or disagree. In some sense, I agree that its the way war poets fight the war efforts (especially in contemporary poetry where most poets do not politically support current war efforts), but in some sense, especially anti-Hitlerian movements/efforts in Europe, in 1944, was it really enough? Hell, Oppen said that poetry was useless at this time, and joined the military instead. I recently saw a film about post-war South Korea of the early sixties (translated as Aimless Bullet, 1961) where a character who was a poet said he would ony write 10 poems, that the current state of his world did not deserve more than 10 decent poems. Oppen seems to have shared this sentiment for some time. Williams, however, the opposite. I am torn in that I understand both sentiments.
On the next page Williams makes "two bald statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words."
The first statement is perhaps fairly easy to agree upon. Any sentimentality in a machine is something a person may ascribe to it, pictures taken with a camera, loaded onto a hard drive, the car you adore and give a name to and then it's crashed, the phone where you receive messages from loved ones--but the actual machine, the plastic, metal, fiberglass, etc. of its contruction are simply inanimate and lack feeling.
So with this, Williams equates words with plastic, metal, etc. in the making of a poem/car. The poem takes you places, but as the reader you are the one that prescribes upon the poem a certain meaning, the poem does not tell you how sentimental it is (or is not). It is a thing, a machine, that the reader must interpret. In this sense, it is nearly like the Objectivists. Poem as object, as thing, as product, outside of author, outside of feeling, outside of sentiment. (where these things are replaced by the reader). This is so precisely modern & industrial a concept, where on the first day of class we made lists of what influenced modern poetry and here is direct evidence. The poem as a machine.
But Williams continues, "The arts generally are not...a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field." I'm not sure if I agree or disagree. In some sense, I agree that its the way war poets fight the war efforts (especially in contemporary poetry where most poets do not politically support current war efforts), but in some sense, especially anti-Hitlerian movements/efforts in Europe, in 1944, was it really enough? Hell, Oppen said that poetry was useless at this time, and joined the military instead. I recently saw a film about post-war South Korea of the early sixties (translated as Aimless Bullet, 1961) where a character who was a poet said he would ony write 10 poems, that the current state of his world did not deserve more than 10 decent poems. Oppen seems to have shared this sentiment for some time. Williams, however, the opposite. I am torn in that I understand both sentiments.
On the next page Williams makes "two bald statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words."
The first statement is perhaps fairly easy to agree upon. Any sentimentality in a machine is something a person may ascribe to it, pictures taken with a camera, loaded onto a hard drive, the car you adore and give a name to and then it's crashed, the phone where you receive messages from loved ones--but the actual machine, the plastic, metal, fiberglass, etc. of its contruction are simply inanimate and lack feeling.
So with this, Williams equates words with plastic, metal, etc. in the making of a poem/car. The poem takes you places, but as the reader you are the one that prescribes upon the poem a certain meaning, the poem does not tell you how sentimental it is (or is not). It is a thing, a machine, that the reader must interpret. In this sense, it is nearly like the Objectivists. Poem as object, as thing, as product, outside of author, outside of feeling, outside of sentiment. (where these things are replaced by the reader). This is so precisely modern & industrial a concept, where on the first day of class we made lists of what influenced modern poetry and here is direct evidence. The poem as a machine.
posted by Sean & Jennifer at 13:51
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