SNAKEOIL said (at 8:05pm today)...
In regards to Michael Nicoloff's poetry: just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it's not good.
SNAKEOIL said (at 8:12pm today)...
p.s. i bet you think american apparel is "omg so edgy!"
fake transgressive L.A. dumb ass
ANONYMOUS said (at 8:49pm today)...
For all yr smack about Eileen's hair--your should have seen Nicoloff's fantastic hair six months ago. I mean, fantastic! But wait!!--that would mean that you had actually attended some readings in the Bay Area and knew who Nicoloff was. Because he was there...and probably reading his great and really fast poems at several of them.
You should really check out this guy:
http://trainwreckunion.blogspot.com/
You'd be great friends. He's equally uninformed.
in response to SNAKEOIL, why yes, like, totally, like, omg, american apparel is like so edgy. i love their flashy rehashing of the eighties onsies, omg and i love that they are like totally all over the place now like so whenever i travel i can stop in and get some awesome dayglo leggings, omg, like totally, because like, sustainability most definitely means going global, fo sho, ah mah gah.
in response to ANONYMOUS, who i suspect is most likely the same person as SNAKEOIL (suspect is the word 'smack' and the time in which this last comment was posted, so close to the other two); well, you are correct, i have not seen Nicoloff's hair any other way than the way it was worn that sunday at 21 Grand. but, thanks to flickr, i have this great photo of his hair, and i'm only guessing that this is what you were referring to when you say "fantastic!"
i apologize for any offensive/uninformed criticism i have relayed over the internet. perhaps you feel as though i have provided the blind and dumb criticism that Roland Barthes once wrote about, but i have not once claimed to be an intellectual nor have i stated that i understand or do not understand anything whatsoever. all i intended to do, which i apparently was not very clear about, was criticize the performance of these poets. i find it sad that presently, to be considered an acclaimed poet (in any nationally or officially recognized manner) one no longer has to include performances on their resume. the only criteria necessary are physical publications. Homer's art of orally composed poetry is slowly dying.
3 comments:
Hi Melissa--
I know that you're feeling a bit under attack here, and I guess I'm responsible for that given that I felt the need to respond to what you'd said when I ran across it, and I'm sorry for that. I'm not interested in having this turn into a drawn-out fight, but if you want to see what I wrote and then drop me an email, the post is here: http://nicoloff.blogspot.com/
One request, though: can we leave the subtle mocking of my appearance out of the discussion?
Thanks,
Michael
I think what people are objecting to, Melissa, and what caused so many hostile tones in your comment box, is your willingness to opine about an artform you don't currently seem to be very familiar with, at least in terms of its current debates. Trying to speak precisely about things you know isn't the definition of an intellectual, it's the definition of being sensitive to reality. And that's something even non-intellectuals can value.
Here, for instance, you opine that that Homer's orally composed art is slowly dying. Leaving aside my doubt you know ancient greek and have a real sense what Homer's art really sounded like "in performance," let's just note that orality seems to be your thing, and you've decided this one reading proves it is perishing in our dear land. Yet the fact is plenty of poets continue to use and draw from spoken rhythms, and many of those are more famous & nationally or officially recognized than Nicoloff. In some ways I could argue Michael is engaged in a resistive dialogue to some those nationally-recognized poets, just as certain visual artists are in a resistive dialogue with representational and neo-representational painting, including at the worst end of the spectrum the likes of Thomas Kincade whom you properly revile. And that's what's really interesting here: that you have such a sophisticated and seemingly broadminded view of contemporary visual art, but such a conservative and reactionary conviction about exactly what poetry is and should be. Certainly you're entitled to dislike Michael's work or reading style, but you must see how similar your vague criticism is to someone saying to you "those pyramid of yours don't even attempt to achieve Rembrandt's mastery of light and shadow, so that makes them amateur and boring." To which the only possible answer is: are you new to the art of the last 100 years?
If you want to foreground performance and speech, you should go for it, but consider using some positive examples of what you're in favor of so that people know what you're valuing. Many writers work with orality, although in very different ways: there's Slam poetry, parts of the Beat "prophetic" tradition, colloquial poets like Ted Kooser, and many other trends. Yet you've yet to demonstrate you know anything about any of those. If you did, I'd probably argue that Homer has very little to do with ANY of these speech-performative poetic trends, but that's another argument (still, at the very least, let's keep in mind that Homer didn't actually have an alphabet, so of course he was an oral poet).
Anyways, I'm sincerely glad you're trying to engage with contemporary poetry and some of the fierce aesthetic arguments that take place within it, but it's good practice to have some sort of feel what you're talking about before just launching in. To put it differently, how would you feel if someone said: "So she stacked up some tables & climbed on them as I guess some kind of angsty commentary, didn't even try to communicate something to me the way I know all great art is supposed to, no acknowlegement of me as an audience, no use of perspective, color, or depth of field, yawn," etc. Yet that's the essence of your message to Nicoloff.
yrs,
Brent Cunningham
Thomas Kincade, the painter of light. Love that fucker.
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