World Class Poetry Blog

On Aram Saroyan, Bill Knott,
And Ron Silliman
28 April 2008, the poet @ 10:10 pm

There’s something quite indiscernible about Bill Knott’s outrageous tirade against Ron Silliman’s selection for the William Carlos Williams award. But I agree with him. At least in part.

Third paragraph:

and I assume (I hope) that many of those same poets are now feeling insulted and outraged by the choice of this year’s winner,

Well, I didn’t enter the contest and I’m insulted, though not quite outraged. As judge, Silliman had every right to choose whomever he felt was the best poet or who wrote the best book of poems among those that were submitted. But I understand Knott’s outrage despite the awkwardness of his delivery.

Two paragraphs later:

As for you fools at the PSA, all I can say is, what the fuck did you expect when you appointed him to be the judge? You got just what you asked for, schmucks. The joke’s on you.

Well, good question. I mean, it’s Ron “Langpo” Silliman. Avant garde of avant garde. Or post avant. Or whatever the hell they are calling themselves these days.

I’ve said before that I’m not a big fan of the avant garde. I’ve never understood the point behind making something deliberately convoluted in order to prove its sublimity. To me, that’s like masturbating to prove your manhood. OK, I’ve got the picture. You can play with yourself. But the rest of us would rather not watch, please.

So, back to Silliman and his selection for the award. It turns out that he chose Aram “Complete Super-Duper-Hyper-Over-The-Edge-Beyond-The-Universe Minimalist” Saroyan. Except that even Saroyan has outgrown his annoying adolescent fascination with flatulence. Too bad Silliman hasn’t.

I’ve got no ill feelings toward Ron Silliman as it seems that Bill Knott has. Both men made it through the ’60s alive (though I don’t think anyone made it through undamaged). I was born in 1966 so I don’t remember those years and that may be for the best. But I have often felt like I’d have enjoyed being a part of that generation. I might have even enjoyed minimalism in its hey-day (I’d have definitely enjoyed Woodstock and watching Hendrix pick a guitar with his teeth), when folks of Knott’s and Silliman’s generation sat around stoned listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin on vinyl while banging the bongos, snapping their fingers, and navel gazing to John Gage’s 4-minutes-and-some-odd-seconds of silence while looking at Saroyan’s goofy looking m on an otherwise blank page. But we are not in the 1960s any more, and this isn’t Kansas, Toto.

I have been amused, during certain times in my life, to have met people who came through the 1960s and hearing them reminisce of the beautiful times they had. I thought most of them were full of shit. The old white guy born of wealthy parents schmoozing the assholes of Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk while worshiping the Beat God Allen Ginsberg as if he had risen from some tomb and pushed the sepulcher off a cliff (I don’t know, maybe he did). There was always something fake about these old men trying to sell us young’uns on the glory days of Vietnam protests and Peace, Love, and The White Album. A new era deserves a new aesthetic, don’t you think?

Well, you would think, except that Ron Silliman’s eloquent defense of Saroyan actually makes it almost believable that he should have won:

Reading Complete Minimal Poems, we are struck by just how sturdy these poems have proven to be and just how brightly Saroyan’s sense of humor shines through these pages. These poems are works of great optimism, and are as radical and strong in 2008 as the day they were written.

Yeah, right. It’s not like he’s Homer or Shelley (Percy or Mary, take your pick). I mean, he isn’t even dead yet. What will the world think of him 200 years from now? Will they even know who he is? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

But my beef isn’t with Saroyan. I don’t care that he comes from the upper class. I don’t care that Silliman makes so much money in marketing that he turns down offers to teach and perhaps his income level clouds his thinking on poetics (or maybe he just has preferences with which I don’t agree). I don’t care one bit about Bill Knott’s chip, or the shoulder upon which it balances. What I do care about is moving with the times. As Knott said, paraphrased, there had to have been other poets who had more recently published poetry worthy of notice that could have been the winner of the award. And it should not go unmentioned that had anyone else been the sole judge of the William Carlos Williams Award, that likely would have happened.

Howard Junker sums up my view of Silliman-Saroyan with perfect clarity:

IMHO, it was misguided to give an award for work done 40 years ago by someone who hasn’t been in the poetry mix for decades.

On Silliman’s blog, Junker commented thus:

sure, these poem deserve to be in print, but they are ancient. and saroyan is no longer a practicing poet.

i wish you would have chosen a book by a poet who is still in action.

Yeah, you know, the fact that these poems were probably written and published long before many of the entrants to the contest were born might have been a clue that Saroyan’s book should have been placed aside along with Silliman’s own (he recused himself from winning when he noticed his own book was submitted for the contest). But who am I to judge? The PSA didn’t invite me to cast a vote.

This whole brouhaha is a testament to the prejudices and preferences of judges. If you submit to contests, it is always a good idea to find out who the judge is going to be before you enter and to submit poems, or books, or what-have-you, that appeal to that judge’s preferences. If I knew that Silliman was going to be the judge of a contest that I was thinking of entering, I wouldn’t send a submission because any judge that would chose Aram Saroyan, who hasn’t written a poem in ages, as the winner of a contest is not going to fall in love with my poetry. He may like it. He may praise it. He may even say sweet things about it as Silliman does the beautiful losers. But he wouldn’t pick me as the winner.

It all boils down to preferences. Judges tend to pick winners who are most like themselves. If for any reason because it’s human nature. It’s called affinity. You feel a certain sense of love for those whose aesthetic is most like your own. The problem is when those preferences become prejudices. And you can tell the difference between a prejudice and a preference. A preference is when you say beautiful things about other people’s children but you save your acts of love for your own. A prejudice is when you have nothing nice to say about the neighbor’s kids because they are different. I might not want Silliman to be a judge of a contest that I had entered, but I wouldn’t trust Knott as one. His prejudice comes in loud and clear.

I have written about these matters before with regard to my own philosophy of poetics. Preferences are nearly impossible to shed, but prejudices aren’t. One must make a conscious decision to shed them, but one can do it. I believe that there is something to learn from everyone. Even Aram Saroyan. To be sure, minimalism can teach us brevity. But too much brevity is excessive and this is the difficulty that I have with extreme minimalism. I mean, the next logical step is to serve up a blank page and call it a poem. I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet. If it had, people like Silliman wouldn’t argue; they’d simply heap up an unhealthy level of praise and justify the blank page through some convoluted form of aesthetic rationalization. And it would likely win an NEA grant, much to the chagrin of the convalescing Jesse Helms.

Visual poetry can teach us things too. But what we should not learn is to imitate it too much. We don’t want a bunch of mini-Saroyans running around putting single letters on a page and calling it poetry. Or placing back-to-back r’s on a page and oogling it like a bouncing baby boy. There comes a time when intelligent people must say, “OK, that’s enough. We’ve heard the sound of your Mustang’s overly loud muffler long enough. Turn the key off, young man, and go to bed.” Then we can have a glass of wine and enjoy the next advancement for 15 minutes while someone else prepares for fame.

A note to the PSA: Next year, instead of just picking one person to be the judge of the William Carlos Williams Award, if you are so tempted, just go ahead and cut out the middleman and give the award to which ever entrant most resembles the preferences of your judge. Don’t waste our time with anticipation. It’s disrespectful.

4 Comments a “On Aram Saroyan, Bill Knott,
And Ron Silliman”

1. Jim Murdoch — April 29, 2008 @ 7:14 am
   

   I have to say I skimmed over Silliman’s posts about this award. Most of the names mean nothing to me. I am well and truly out of the loop. But his choice did surprise me. If I can put it in musical terms, I wouldn’t be too upset if Brian Wilson’s ‘Smile’ won x or y award despite it’s age. From all accounts it was a decent enough album. BUT if ‘The Best of the Beach Boys Vol x-teen’ got the award I think I might have something to say. Sure, Saroyan’s work is worthy of some lifetime achievement award or something but that’s about it.

2. Rachel Fox — April 30, 2008 @ 4:16 am
   

   As so much of poetry is now removed from readers and audiences it is inevitable that it lives only in this world of prizes given by one poet to another, of magazines where poets are edited by…more poets. I don’t really know either of the poets you mention re this particular prize but I wonder…does anyone in the US even know about it (unless they’re a poet or wannabe poet)? The poetry world (especially the more academic side) is like some horrible big extended family with all the factions and feuds you would expect in such a scenario. Don’t you think?
   Rachel Fox
   Scotland (but I’m English…England’s a horrible big extended family too)

3. the poet — April 30, 2008 @ 1:50 pm
   

   Rachel, good points. I think a lot of publishers follow the Williams Carlos Williams Award, more so than poets. Yes, the poetry world is like one big extended family - of black sheeps.

4. Matush Alepf — May 14, 2008 @ 12:26 am
   

   read the book.
   than blog.
   ok?

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