If you were around in the late 1970s then you’ll probably remember the progressive rock group Alan Parsons Project. “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” was an imaginative take on the works of Edgar Allan Poe and still sells considerably well. You’ll love the video of the same title featuring the title track.

Other poetry videos included in the Poe collection include:

• The Raven (of course)
• Ulalume
• Annabel Lee

These are all amateur productions, but I consider them done well enough to share. I particularly like the high school production of “Annabel Lee”. But I’d encourage you to check them all out for yourself. You can do that by visiting the World Class Poetry video library, courtesy of YouTube.

Interestingly, Silliman started his blog on August 29, 2002. The first mention of the School of Quietude was on September 2, 2002, but only as a label, or a tag, and not within the blog post itself. This makes me think that maybe he went back later and added that label to that post after having written other posts about the SofQ.

Silliman has been criticized for his delineations between the School of Quietude and Post-Avant poets. Criticisms have largely centered around these distinctions being too simplistic and that the pejorative only describes poetry as it existed some time ago (in the past). These are words Silliman himself articulated in his September 2, 2007 post, characterizations that he says his critics are correct on. So he has adopted another path, which he calls the “third way.” I’m not sure what that is.

Essentially, Silliman’s descriptions are divided by the level of experimentation that exists in one’s poetry. It is obvious that the SofQ poets are descendant of Henry David Thoreau. Everyone else, Walt Whitman. But that’s a rather odd distinction seeing as how Thoreau was a contemporary of Edgar Allan Poe, from whom Silliman borrows his quietude phrase. Brian Campbell succinctly states my thoughts on that with these words:

Yet if we look at Poe in comparison with Whitman (the real post-avant prototype), he definitely comes across as British-accented, narrow, conservative, even like — curse the thought — a Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes. I think by Silliman’s definition, Poe would be a hard-core SoQ’er. He definitely doesn’t seem very post-avant to me.

It seems to me that the SofQ and Post Avant poetics breakdown is an arbitrary political (not poetic) distinction. It fits in conveniently with Silliman’s collectivist thinking as he can lump anyone with an individualist politic or poetic into the SofQ category. That would be me, a libertarian politically and an individualist in every way, characteristics which would put me in the same category as Walt Whitman, the consummate individualist poet who self-published his own work. Admittedly, I have no use for Thoreau (and he deserves the moniker “quietist” as much as anyone), but Poe was my very first literary influence and to this day still is an idol of mine.

So who would fit into the School of Quietude today? I suppose virtually anyone who is an establishment-type poet, a darling of the NEA, an MFA grad with a small press badge of honor, or anyone who isn’t taking great risks with language and form. That’s almost everyone who writes poetry, but it isn’t the Language Poets, which would include Silliman and his friends, and it isn’t anyone who belongs to any of the other obscure schools of poetry that won’t get noticed by the first type of poet who is centered on the connectedness of the academy.

But what about the modern heirs of Poe? Well, there aren’t any really. At least, not in poetry. They’re all writing detective mysteries and science fiction novels. But not poetry.

Poetics is less about distinctions that divide and more about nuances that define. I see these distinctions as somewhat helpful, but only if they can be drawn upon to make definitions as to what is important and what is not. Is nature poetry, for instance, bad? Well, some of it is actually. But some of it is quite good. How do we know which is which? We can know, but we will never get to the bottom of it if we splinter poets off into groups – OK, you guys over there, no, no, further to the right; now you langpos, to the left; everyone else, in the middle. Sorry, that’s an un-nuanced way of leading us to the dance floor.

What would be helpful is a discussion on method. Not just some rigid set of rules such that you might find among the New Formalists. And not some vague generalizations that you might find in an experimental journal. But I mean a real discussion on method, technique, poetic renditions.

Discussions of poetics quite often descend into nothing but bland diatribes against someone else’s poetic philosophy or amusement for the sake of amusement. But a true discussion of poetics would help everyone get a better grasp of what is possible, permissible, and praiseworthy. Disagreement is good, but vague distinctions that serve no purpose other than to categorize those we don’t like isn’t helpful. And whatever emerges from the armpit of the fire can take the helm into the 21st century. If it be quietitude¹ then let the silence reign.

1 Quiet + Attitude, not quietude.

I’m always a little anxious about dealing with technology. I’m not the most technical-minded person in the world. I can figure it out if given the time, but I have to really sit and think on it. We played around with getting the S-Video to play from my PC to The Emporium’s TV screen, which the owner had set up for our presentation. That didn’t work so we went with the projector and screen as a backup. In both cases, we had trouble getting it to work. Even with a local TV station’s camera crew present, we couldn’t get the hardware to participate. I’m not sure if we were supposed to change certain settings on the display of my laptop before trying to run the video or if we were supposed to have additional hardware that we didn’t have. Had all the cables, VGA to VGA, power cords, and S-Video cord, but no dice.

I was going to play a couple of videos off of YouTube. One, below, is a video someone put together based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem titled “Ulalume” and the other, also below, is a video presentation based on “The Fall Of The House Of Usher” using Alan Parson Project’s composition as the score. Instead of using the video, because of the time crunch, I just talked about Edgar Allan Poe’s life, the death of his parents and his first wife, his estrangement from his father, his debts, and of course his mysterious death. Then I gave a dramatic reading of a few of his poems, “The Conqueror Worm”, “Dreamland”, and “The Raven.”

It went well, I’d have to say. My dramatic readings are getting better. I used to be so shy speaking in front of a group. Now I just get up and let it go. One audience member, a 13-year-old girl, was really into it, as was my five-year-old grandson, Dylan. They were both spellbound as I got into the mood of “The Raven”. Eyes fixed, sitting on the edge of their seats, those two. At least I know I can hold the interest of young people. At any rate, I had fun and I’m looking forward to August when I give a similar presentation on Edgar Allan Poe for the bookstore’s science fiction day.

And now, the videos:

They already had their event planned before the book store owner knew about me and my interest in Poe. So the schedule was already laid out and I wasn’t on it. But he had a cancellation last week with one of his performers and asked me to step in. So I’ve been preparing my presentation.

It won’t be as good as I’d hoped. Nothing is going the way I had planned. I don’t have the right equipment for streaming video from my PC and one week was too short notice to get what I needed so I’ve made a note to get the proper equipment before August. The book store owner’s projector is in the shop and mine is being recalcitrant so we’ve hit a snag there too. I may end up nixing my idea of streaming a YouTube video from my PC to a big screen or TV. If the audience is small enough then I may just run it from my laptop. That will be an on-the-spot decision.

To top it off, I can’t find my book of collected works of Edgar Allan Poe, a nice leather bound edition that I’ve had for years. It is no doubt packed up in a box somewhere and I went through all the boxes in my closet to look for it last night to no avail. It is likely in a box in a corner in my basement and I am just not up to digging through all that mess tonight. Oh well!

That means I’m going to have to give a short presentation tomorrow and keep it very simple. I’ll likely print poems from the Internet and read from that then talk a little bit about Eddy’s sad life. Short but sweet. Wish me luck.