Some useless rain falls overnight. It sounds unfamiliar, the way you remember it, sounds beautiful.
In the feed this morning, cats. Selfies, shining like a fiery beacon, live stream of the Mission police station shutdown, the science of why stepping on legos makes you want to die, FUCK credit reportz, the woman who fell in love with a tree, a baby’s guide to sleep-training your parents, lotta feminista, Los Tigres del Norte are making gay norteno history, here comes the whole foods-ification of marijuana, more snow, fellowships, fire, new poems in new journals, new poems in old journals, new books, penpals and John Keene’s post on Thinking Its Presence: The Racial Imaginary Conference, UMT, Missoula.
I just wanna throw my voice over there, I wanna send you.
In the feed last week, in the wake of the disaster of Kenneth Goldsmith’s reading of Michael Brown’s autopsy report with a photo of Michael Brown projected behind him, at a conference based on the idea of interruption at which Goldsmith insisted on not being interrupted while he read the autopsy report he’d edited so as to end his reading with comments on Brown’s “unremarkable” genitalia,
in the wake of that particular, familiar north american avant-garde disaster, and in the wake of the quiet aftermath at the conference of not interrupting, of not making it stop, in the wake of the interruption that did come afterwards with people calling Goldsmith out on twitter and in essays and blog posts and status updates,
some arguments started showing up fairly quickly, arguments about how talking about this disaster just fed into the Goldsmith machine, the internet fame, the way Goldsmith initially re-posted critique of his personal avant-garde disaster hashtag “lovingthehate” until he stopped doing that,
and some arguments started showing up saying that “white supremacy” was the wrong or even irresponsible term to use for this familiar sort of north american avant-garde disaster,
some arguments that Goldsmith’s reading was important because it provoked conversation, made people think, kept Brown’s murder by police at the front of people’s minds, even though the reading was a mess and a failure, this too is what art is about, making mistakes, so the arguments went, on and on,
that talking about this disaster or continuing to call it out was to somehow obscure the conference in Montana happening the same time as Goldsmith’s reading,
some arguments that lamented the amount of time spent on Goldsmith instead, and wouldn’t it be better if poets focused on what was good and right in the world of poetry, what they loved or even just liked, wouldn’t it be better if poets focused on what felt useful and productive, ok so nobody said productive but that’s how those arguments felt somehow, like, keep producing, move forward, get past it, stop calling out the particular, familiar north American avant-garde disaster.
But what if it feels important to keep calling it out, what if what you love is that people won’t stop keeping it at the top of the feed.
When the rain first started falling last night I was trying to write this another way, it went like this:
It’s never been more clear never been more clarified that at the level of the anthology, of the institution, the ones with money and interest in building or maintaining schools or movements or strains of U.S. literatures, unless the framework has been or is explicitly culturally nationalist or emerging from social movements or anti-racist or feminist or queer or anti-capitalist, it’s always been a white supremacist capitalist patriarchal venture.
It’s a fucked up relief to say so after years of bumbling around in my dumb white female body talking about it with others, with great nuance! and complication! counting things or getting dressed and undressed in the middle of a conference paper, a befuddled jab somehow at this problem I think now, the whole tangled thing.
Just bashing one’s head against it, the thing that reared you.
I was trying to hold race and gender together there, when I started writing this last night. Even though I know that at the level of the anthology, the institution, the reading series, the magazine, that unless the feminist framework has been or is explicitly anti-racist it’s also often been a white supremacist venture.
And other knots in the tangle of domination.
But I also notice I was having a hard time just saying it, writing through the unfamiliar rain.
John Keene describes the “emotional discomfort, sometimes expressed in body language, as caution, or hesitation, or carefulness, in speaking and acting” of some white people at the conference in Missoula.
John Keene names with far greater clarity what I was trying to when he writes that the conference in Missoula “directly grappled, in discussions that took place both inside and outside the various classrooms and auditoriums, with the discourses and ideology of whiteness as normativity, and the systems and structures that have made it so, institutionalized racism, and, in particular, the unnameable thing in our society, the ideology of white supremacy.”
JT names with far greater clarity what I was trying to when she posts in the feed: OHHH & IF YOUR "POETRY" IS NOT ACTIVELY WORKING TO DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY, IT IS PROBABLY SUPPORTING IT.
The unnameable thing.
In the unfamiliar rain that sounds like you remember it, that sounds beautiful, it’s important to pause there and listen. Something’s getting clarified. There is a lot to learn. Or stay with. Come alongside.
It’s because the work of so many.
Because Cathy Park Hong and Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde.
Because the Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo.
Because Amy King and Why Are People so Invested in Kenneth Goldsmith or is Colonialist Poetry Easy.
Because Heriberto Yepez and El escándalo del sujeto-concepto: Kenneth Goldsmith.
Because Timothy Yu and Engagement, Race, and Public Poetry in America.
Because Morgan Parker’s White People Love Me: Dispatches from the Token.
Because Aaron Apps’ The (Dis)embodied Voice: A Response to Kenneth Goldsmith.
-STEPHANIE YOUNG
Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland. Her most recent book is URSULA or UNIVERSITY. Other poetry includes Picture Palace and Telling the Future Off. With Juliana Spahr, she edited A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a- machine-gun Feminism. She edited the anthology Bay Poetics, and is managing editor of Deep Oakland (www.deepoakland.org).
Some useless rain falls overnight. It sounds unfamiliar, the way you remember it, sounds beautiful.
In the feed this morning, cats. Selfies, shining like a fiery beacon, live stream of the Mission police station shutdown, the science of why stepping on legos makes you want to die, FUCK credit reportz, the woman who fell in love with a tree, a baby’s guide to sleep-training your parents, lotta feminista, Los Tigres del Norte are making gay norteno history, here comes the whole foods-ification of marijuana, more snow, fellowships, fire, new poems in new journals, new poems in old journals, new books, penpals and John Keene’s post on Thinking Its Presence: The Racial Imaginary Conference, UMT, Missoula.
I just wanna throw my voice over there, I wanna send you.
In the feed last week, in the wake of the disaster of Kenneth Goldsmith’s reading of Michael Brown’s autopsy report with a photo of Michael Brown projected behind him, at a conference based on the idea of interruption at which Goldsmith insisted on not being interrupted while he read the autopsy report he’d edited so as to end his reading with comments on Brown’s “unremarkable” genitalia,
in the wake of that particular, familiar north american avant-garde disaster, and in the wake of the quiet aftermath at the conference of not interrupting, of not making it stop, in the wake of the interruption that did come afterwards with people calling Goldsmith out on twitter and in essays and blog posts and status updates,
some arguments started showing up fairly quickly, arguments about how talking about this disaster just fed into the Goldsmith machine, the internet fame, the way Goldsmith initially re-posted critique of his personal avant-garde disaster hashtag “lovingthehate” until he stopped doing that,
and some arguments started showing up saying that “white supremacy” was the wrong or even irresponsible term to use for this familiar sort of north american avant-garde disaster,
some arguments that Goldsmith’s reading was important because it provoked conversation, made people think, kept Brown’s murder by police at the front of people’s minds, even though the reading was a mess and a failure, this too is what art is about, making mistakes, so the arguments went, on and on,
that talking about this disaster or continuing to call it out was to somehow obscure the conference in Montana happening the same time as Goldsmith’s reading,
some arguments that lamented the amount of time spent on Goldsmith instead, and wouldn’t it be better if poets focused on what was good and right in the world of poetry, what they loved or even just liked, wouldn’t it be better if poets focused on what felt useful and productive, ok so nobody said productive but that’s how those arguments felt somehow, like, keep producing, move forward, get past it, stop calling out the particular, familiar north American avant-garde disaster.
But what if it feels important to keep calling it out, what if what you love is that people won’t stop keeping it at the top of the feed.
When the rain first started falling last night I was trying to write this another way, it went like this:
It’s never been more clear never been more clarified that at the level of the anthology, of the institution, the ones with money and interest in building or maintaining schools or movements or strains of U.S. literatures, unless the framework has been or is explicitly culturally nationalist or emerging from social movements or anti-racist or feminist or queer or anti-capitalist, it’s always been a white supremacist capitalist patriarchal venture.
It’s a fucked up relief to say so after years of bumbling around in my dumb white female body talking about it with others, with great nuance! and complication! counting things or getting dressed and undressed in the middle of a conference paper, a befuddled jab somehow at this problem I think now, the whole tangled thing.
Just bashing one’s head against it, the thing that reared you.
I was trying to hold race and gender together there, when I started writing this last night. Even though I know that at the level of the anthology, the institution, the reading series, the magazine, that unless the feminist framework has been or is explicitly anti-racist it’s also often been a white supremacist venture.
And other knots in the tangle of domination.
But I also notice I was having a hard time just saying it, writing through the unfamiliar rain.
John Keene describes the “emotional discomfort, sometimes expressed in body language, as caution, or hesitation, or carefulness, in speaking and acting” of some white people at the conference in Missoula.
John Keene names with far greater clarity what I was trying to when he writes that the conference in Missoula “directly grappled, in discussions that took place both inside and outside the various classrooms and auditoriums, with the discourses and ideology of whiteness as normativity, and the systems and structures that have made it so, institutionalized racism, and, in particular, the unnameable thing in our society, the ideology of white supremacy.”
JT names with far greater clarity what I was trying to when she posts in the feed: OHHH & IF YOUR "POETRY" IS NOT ACTIVELY WORKING TO DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY, IT IS PROBABLY SUPPORTING IT.
The unnameable thing.
In the unfamiliar rain that sounds like you remember it, that sounds beautiful, it’s important to pause there and listen. Something’s getting clarified. There is a lot to learn. Or stay with. Come alongside.
It’s because the work of so many.
Because Cathy Park Hong and Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde.
Because the Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo.
Because Amy King and Why Are People so Invested in Kenneth Goldsmith or is Colonialist Poetry Easy.
Because Heriberto Yepez and El escándalo del sujeto-concepto: Kenneth Goldsmith.
Because Timothy Yu and Engagement, Race, and Public Poetry in America.
Because Morgan Parker’s White People Love Me: Dispatches from the Token.
Because Aaron Apps’ The (Dis)embodied Voice: A Response to Kenneth Goldsmith.
-STEPHANIE YOUNG
Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland. Her most recent book is URSULA or UNIVERSITY. Other poetry includes Picture Palace and Telling the Future Off. With Juliana Spahr, she edited A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a- machine-gun Feminism. She edited the anthology Bay Poetics, and is managing editor of Deep Oakland (www.deepoakland.org).