The recent unfriendly publication of my email exchange with Nathaniel Mackey, along with fragments of a Facebook thread that I had removed—both without permission, as is customary and a sign of respect among authors and publishers—demands some comment and explanation. I have asked that the material be taken down, as it is framed as an act of theft, intended to humiliate, and circulated to recreate the adversarial dynamics of the “poetry wars” of the 1980s. As such it is an extension of what I have called “The Duncan Thing” and have written about previously here.
Perhaps the best way to respond is to change the framework of this discussion, since the material is out there, and attempt to reframe it from my own perspective. Readers may read what I wrote differently in a context that does not evoke literary theft or online flaming. I have had a long-term, friendly, and collegial relationship with Mackey, and have seen and interacted with him many times over several decades—and have often done things that support his work in ways great or small. I will begin, then, with an email I sent to Mackey on March 30, 2017, asking if would be interested in being part of a panel on “Generation and the Arts of the Present” at the ASAP conference in Oakland that fall.
Nate— It was good to see you out here, and hope there will be more such opportunities–
To that end—I am putting together a session for the ASAP (Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present) conference, to be held at Berkeley/Oakland on October 26-28. I want to do something on the question of “Generation and the Arts of the Present”—looked at across the arts, and questioning the usual periodizing/historicizing frameworks. Rather, I want to show how “generation” as the social age of past art practice is negotiated and continued in art that addresses the present. There are many ways of thinking about this—for instance, how is a poet like John Ashbery able to write his most recent, “presentist” works at age 90+ and with a legacy of New York art, yet he is doing so. What is the logic of temporality in the condensation of Ted’s recent Coffin Nail Blues.
I would like to have the question of temporality and jazz, seen as a combination of present-tense address and being “in the tradition,” as one of the important sites for asking this question. Do you think you could bring something to the conversation? “The changing same,” as it were. Very clearly, you entire oeuvre addresses what I am talking about; would you have something to break out for this purpose, an overview?
I am thinking of writing about “generation” in poetics, then, showing how it works at a formal level as well as an exterior frame; Larry Rinder, director of the Berkeley Art Museum, wants to write about “the present” in Bay Area art from the 19th century to now, as part of a show he is putting together, and Charlie Altieri has offered to be a respondent.
It is a good and lively conference, and there will be a lot of Bay Area poetics activity at this one. Could you do it?
Best, Barrett
Mackey was unable to participate, but the event went forward with scholar James Smethurst speaking on generation and jazz. Then on March 23, 2018, about a year later, I contacted Mackey about a symposium on poetics Herman Rapaport and I are in the process of planning, encouraging him to respond to our invitation:
Dear Nate—
Greetings from the phoenix of the midwest.
Herman Rapaport says he has sent our invite to you; I hope you’ll consider being a part of the project. The plan is for roughly 10 poet/critics to discuss the current state of poetics and where it can go. A day at Black Mountain would be a centerpiece—I am planning to write on Olson’s Special View of History.
It’s a good group; you would be very welcome; it’s not far.
Best, Barrett
Mackey declined, saying he had “too much on his plate,” but I followed up on March 26 with a note wondering whether the topic was indeed of interest to him, and letting him know that I had included a short discussion of his work in the concluding chapter of Questions of Poetics:
Nate— Thanks for your response. I think you are more interested in talking about poetry than poetics, which I respect.
You might be interested in a couple of pages on your work—specifically the novels, which I consider poetics, along with the “Other” essay published so long ago in Reps—in my chapter on “What Is a Poet/Critic?” in Questions of Poetics. I can send the pdf.
Our program, btw, will be in North Carolina—not sure about the distances, but we will keep you informed about the agenda.
Best, Barrett
Mackey responded that, on the contrary, he had a copy of my book; he had looked at the two pages in mention and thanked me for them. He goes on to talk about the relation of poetics and poetry in his current practice and sends me a copy of lecture on “Breath and Precarity,” presented at Buffalo.
The next occasion for contact was the current discussion on Grant Jenkins’s review of my book, framed in relation to the controversy over Louis Zukofsky’s work that took place between Robert Duncan and I—over forty years ago. This event, and the tape that the San Francisco State Poetry Center made of it (and which was, as well, purloined and made available online without permission from the Poetry Archive), is truly “the Thing that will not die,” and I objected to Jenkins’s use of it to frame his discussion of my book, which deals with Language writing after 2000 (and many other questions). I put my blog post up on Facebook, and comments were slow to come in. A thread developed around the theme of “myth” and “language,” with me taking the position that myth, in general, is mystificatory—a form of ideology—following, pretty much, the line taken by Critical Theory, especially Dialectic of Enlightenment. In a Facebook post, one frequently says things that are one-offs, not backed up with citations or footnotes—it is not a place for careful thinking, but is often useful to testing ideas where that level of seriousness, or lack of it, is understood (at least, that is how I use Facebook). My thread is also private, and I consider participants to be guests of a sort—certain manners obtain, and when they don’t, it is perfectly legitimate to take down material that is intended to flame. FB is not a public forum, in that sense.
Mackey’s intervention began with an innocuous comment that combined a reference to Dizzy Gillespie and Sun Ra, to the effect that myth is widely used in black avant-garde culture. I responded that that is good for “some ppl” but that there was also the Triumph of the Will to consider. In retrospect, this was the beginning of a flame, with Mackey claiming in his later correspondence that I was “ghettoizing” black artists by using the locution “some ppl.” Pretty slim evidence, I would say, and the point seems to me to be one that is well taken—yes, many black artists use myth, from Zora Neale Hurston to the movie Black Panther. That does not mean, from my perspective, that myth is not subject to critique, and since the main topic was Robert Duncan’s mythopoeia, I stood my ground. In so doing, the discussion started to take a turn from prodding intervention to raw antagonism—a bit too quickly, I would say. A number of productive comments came from Andrew Mossin, Luke Harley, Norman Finkelstein, Ben Friedlander, Soma Feldmar, and others, who were interested in exploring the topic. But the flame from Nate started to get quite intense, and I was not careful in response on one or more occasion I am sure. A challenge behavior had erupted, and while some serious issues were raised (the ethnicity of 70s avant-gardes; my writing on Kara Walker), they were pitched with an increasing antagonism. With the light of day and after a couple of concluding insults, including upload of the tune Blind Man, I made a copy of the thread and took it down. I did not want to return to 2015, with random screen shots circulating online.
I then wrote Mackey, to the effect that things had gotten a bit too heated and that we should “take it outside” in the proverbial sense. Let’s have a conversation between us and see if we can air this out. I thought, to begin with, that this might lead to some form of publication or event, and that it might be an interesting conversation to have—but I was not going to yield any ground, that was certain. This is how I framed the opening of my proposal, on May 8, to discuss the matter back channel, not online where it had turned into an antagonism that I did not want to continue:
Nate— I took that down. You must be aware of the possibility that various yahoos out there will cut and paste fragments of discussions like that and spread them all over the internet. I am happy to keep talking with you on what we have on the table, but this got out of control. Out of the kitchen indeed!
I note that you listened to the tape of the Duncan/Watten event twice. That tape was purloined from the SF State archives, probably by [name removed], and circulated without my permission. And that is a serious thing. I’ve corresponded with Steve Dickison and he tells me no release is on file. A copy probably went to Robert Bertholf, and was circulated as a scandal in itself. I think my post on the uses of that event by the New College crowd was accurate—that’s what kept it alive. It was the stealing of the tape and a series of articles in Poetry Flash in the mid 80s that became a major moment in the Poetry Wars–populist poets vs. Language poets. Fortunately for you, you have only your personal view of those events.
But I understand something from this—namely, the defense of Duncan sets up a—what?—scary, objectifying, denying entity called Language writing but which could also be “theory” or “Marxism” about the same time. Or you can tell me what counts as the force of your defensiveness around Duncan.
Two more things—I would be happy, when we calm down, if you were to read chapter 1 of Questions of Poetics—which is my attempt to show how liberationist and language-centered poetries come from a similar moment in the 60s. This was the paper given at Orono that Baraka objected to from the back row, and my interest at the time was to have a further conversation. Amiri took that to the bank, but that’s another story.
And I would still be happy too to pursue a conversation with you, but not in the form it took. One of the main points I am trying to make is returning to the 70s and what I was able to say at age 30 is an easy way to handle the much more nuanced discussions I advance decades later.
And as a footnote—anyone can racially characterize the poetry communities in the 70s; it’s a cheap shot. The New College crowd, the New Narrativists, were “white.” Was that a racialized whiteness? You would have to show there was denial in some form of black and minority culture, and there wasn’t. Our crowd was deeply involved in improvised musics. In poetry, there were differences of aesthetics and particularly form. Things changed in the 80s and have continued to this day.
Which, btw, makes me sorry you didn’t find the various ways I supported your work to be meaningful. At least in that context, so we try again.
Barrett
I intended this to be direct, but not a flame. At the same time, I was and am critical of the fascination with the tape of the Duncan event—a moment of prurience and regression combined. Mackey’s racial characterization of the 70s avant-garde is also something I wanted to address, even if one cannot go back forty years and change the structure of the literary community or invent writers who did not exist, much as one would like to. Mackey’s response was to differ, and was constructive on many accounts. He regretted my taking down my posts; wondered why I did not want to circulate the Duncan tape; claimed that Duncan is a major poet and that one need not explain why one finds value in his work. He says he was not calling me out as racist in writing on Kara Walker, and that he appreciates the ways I have supported his work, even though he did not want me to exaggerate them or use them as leverage in a conversation like the one we were having. All well and good so far, but the substantial disagreement that is emerging concerns the central claim in this letter, which I address in the next (May 9), is Duncan:
Nate— Thank you for the letter. I will respond to some of this and we can continue as we wish.
First, on taking down the posts. Regrettably, that is informed by past experiences of similar threads that get screen shot and spread around the internet, like wildfire. Mongrel Coalition and co. My thread is “private” not public. Think of it as a convo in a kitchen at a party. It’s getting late. Someone crosses a line. The line is crossed again. We start to say things that are regrettable in a different light. I’m not going to monumentalize a misfire, no.
For your amusement, here is Ben Friedlander’s bc account, when I asked how he saw it:
So that is how he saw it. My experience is when people who are watching such a conversation start to feel like that—are reminded of when they got beat up—they retreat and suffer an alienation from the entire discussion. They feel fear and become paralyzed. This is exactly what happened with the Duncan/Watten event and also with the Baraka/Watten event—the occasion of my chapter 1. In that one I wanted an “open” discussion of the politics of the 60s and got royally burned. No one remembers the fine points of the discussion, that is for sure. It was Amiri telling off a white man, one of his specialty acts.
That reminds me that you were present at my Santa Cruz presentation of chapter 1—I don’t remember a riot happening on that occasion. And Luke tells me that he and you went over chapter 1 and discussed specifics when the book came out.
Our conversation on line, in any case, was not that. What would be preserved was an antagonism and that is not something I wanted to host, in that form. In a longer form where people are being careful, I’m fine with disagreement. Facebook is not conducive to fine points, and misunderstandings proliferate.
Then there is the question of race. Referencing Ben above, the point where you wanted me to back down and “gave a hint of threat” was the line, “So you’re against white folks’ use of myth?” Actually, I had just responded to your quip about Gillespie/Sun Ra with “Works for some ppl, in some contexts. Then there’s the Triumph of the Will.” So I mentioned Nazis and you mentioned race. But we were both still smiling. Me getting into your space further would be “Did RD have elements of Anglo-Saxonism in his work? Yes he did.” To me this is all to the point and interesting, but it may be seen as inadmissibly linking “Western man” fantasies with Nazism and Anglo-Saxonism, and hence a major component of racism. The place where the gloves came off is when you said, “How often do you call out racism in QUESTIONS OF POETICS”? and I said “God-damned Robert Duncan.” As I now know you read chapter 1, that is pretty reductive and hence a poke, as the whole chapter is about expressive vs. constructivist poetics.
And you got pokey, schoolyard: “If it’s right enough to start it here, why not?” and “there’s the old saying about staying out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat.” And finally, ending it with “pathetic” and a recording of “Blind Man” is a pretty specific call-out. I need not go on.
Your first paragraph below thus strikes me as disingenuous. You were calling out, racially baiting. We can find the specific points.
On the Zukofsky tape—the reason is that this was [possibly] stolen from the archive by [name removed] and used to return to that moment in a characterizing way in the mid 80s—i.e., some years later. The tape was “pelf” whose unauthorized use was galvanizing. No one would have questioned Duncan’s right not to release material, but they ignored mine. So I needed to insist on my rights as author. That is not unexceptional. I remember hearing Creeley talk about a lawsuit he was in about the unauthorized use of “I Know a Man.” He saw himself as up there with Bob Dylan or something. The larger point—where this all began—is that returning to that scene is a way that my work, say over the past forty years, is not being read. It is a defense, specifically. As for your doubt about Duncan’s actions—they were physical. Everyone who was there would agree, and the air got literally sucked out of the room. You can’t hear that on tape, no. You want to defend Duncan as not having abused his power and the public forum in that instance? No one would agree with that. Not even Palmer.
On Duncan as a “major poet”—certainly he would have said so, and did: “I know how big I am,” he remarked. The authors are in eternity and he is among them. But at the same time he is a “derivative” major poet—his “major” is his “minor” so to speak, so in awe of the big table in eternity he is. This moment of self-canonizing, certainly possible among poets particularly the romantics, may be responsible for the illusion even among many of my friends that you can make your own place in canonical history. It actually does not work like that. My ranking of Duncan is similar to H.D.—important, flawed, and a failure on their own account. There are many who feel that more strongly—see Loewinsohn’s review of Ground Work: Before the War [corrected], which was totally bitter on this kind of claim. Duncan vastly overstated his importance to the point of delusion. That makes his fantasy less in my view, and gets him kicked out of Valhalla. Critique of myth right then—permanent self-mythifying. Use at your own risk.
So no, I would not say either RD or H.D. are “major” poets and I am not concerned with that designation generally. I am concerned with “what is living and what is dead.” For me, RD’s voice is a dead echo chamber of self-importance; I can hardly listen to it. I really do not like his work—I hope that comes through.
Finally, you were calling me out in terms of race—as racialized in a negative, unpleasant, antagonistic way—in responding to many specifics at the end of the thread. Erica Hunt, Jonathan Jackson, Kara Walker, Lorenzo Thomas, Anthony Braxton, Harryette Mullen—all sites of real engagement. I shouldn’t write on Jonathan Jackson bc I would be displaying a black corpse like Kenny Goldsmith—wow! tell me to stop now before I call down big trouble! You racially characterized my editing of This and claimed that I should have been able to locate the writer Aldon found some decades later. You were asking for my credentials—you were being a cop.
Another thing I mentioned was my editing of Diasporic Avant-Gardes which, way before the current debates on POC, was a substantial and totally ignored contribution. I do think that deserves credit. Of course I am not asking for pay-back. But in at least four important ways over the years, I’ve engaged your work: article in Reps; visit to WSU; Diasporic Avant-Gardes; discussion in current book. That is a real, but measured, response.
OK, that’s enough for tonight, as they say. Good morning. Barrett
While this was a strong response, I actually thought it was friendly. At least I still had my smile on, even as in retrospect that in itself might have been provocative. But the touchstone here, I think, was my refusal to sign off on Robert Duncan’s self-mythifying reputation, his persistent claim to be at the table (a largely homosocial one) where the Authors in Eternity hold their convivial conversation. Rather, I wrote, “RD’s voice is a dead echo chamber of self-importance”; I wrote that and I meant it. One fantasy I have had since this thread is writing a post of all the things I do not like about Duncan and his poetics, from the “tone leading of vowels” to his incantatory reading style to his canon-making arguments to his politics of person. In every sense, Duncan is not in my view a candidate for admission into authorial eternity—even if I believed in it, which I don’t. The second strong point concerned race, following Mackey’s negative comments on my writing on Kara Walker and comment that were I to write on Jonathan Jackson, I would be making the same gesture of appropriating a black corpse that Kenneth Goldsmith did—even if I hadn’t written anything! I am still contemplating how I would deal with the very strong feelings that I experienced when attending the funeral of Jonathan Jackson in 1970, and I did not want Mackey’s injunction in my head should I choose to do so (though in fact it will be impossible not to take it into account; I’ve been interpellated in terms of what I can and cannot say about a black political martyr).
Mackey’s response, however, revealed the extent that he was not kidding; the smiles and even the gloves were off. In the next email he adopts a more ironic and patronizing tone, questioning whether any harm could come to readers from the Facebook thread (regardless of Ben Friedlander’s report of how its tone affected him), clarifying that he had not read my chapter or liked the Santa Cruz talk that preceded it, proposing that my locution “some ppl” ghettoized black artists who were interested in myth, questioning in large terms the history/myth binary (certainly open for sustained discussion), calling me a Republican, wanting to return to the Duncan event via video as he is not convinced Duncan really did anything wrong, wondering why I don’t give up on the issue as he did with an earlier conflict with Baraka, and claiming that my issues with the Duncan event/tape had to do with a bruising encounter with “an elder”—suggesting a kind of patrilineal ethics that is evidently also a model for literary tradition. “I did not drag my father past that tree” as Gertrude Stein famously wrote; literary strife is just Oedipal rehearsal. Finally, the issue of my mentioning instances where I supported Mackey’s work clearly irritated him, and this was the point at which he decided to make the correspondence public—cc’ing it to eleven, it turned out, white males who were either involved in the thread or had asked about it. For the record, this part of the discussion, I believed, was an attempt to clear the air on a personal level, and I would never have made it a public issue. It is Mackey, in fact, who made it public. As for no possible harm coming from cc’ing the exchange—this was untrue, as Mackey went and did it himself. Making the exchange public was nothing more than a personal attack, an attempt to humiliate, and to create what Mackey evidently wanted in the first place: a platform to attack my position on Duncan.
In the next email, I call “foul” (May 10). I did not agree to circulate the exchange to a list of persons not of my choosing; there was no consultation, no reciprocity, and no recourse. I may be naive, but I assume such rules are in place—call me Habermasian. My choice at this point was either to leave substantial questions unanswered or damn the torpedoes and persist. The dynamics of the situation demanded that I stay with it, and I am always interested in resolution (especially where there seems to be none in sight). The way out, they say, is through—so let’s go through this to the bitter end:
Dear Nate:
That was a foul, and you know it. I wrote you one on one; I might have suggested publishing some part of our correspondence, but it was not a public document. Given that this is email, I am going to ask you not to forward the conversation further. But what can I do?
So we may be in the Stuck Place. I liked my last letter; found it was clarifying. You can put scare quotes around things you found to be instrumental; I was being suggestive, not reactive.
Going down the list, which now feels like a chore:
The remark from Ben was I think good on the kind of challenge behavior that happened on my thread, and now seems to be happening here. I should remember that challenge behavior, no matter how much in a “community of discourse” as I assume poetry to be, never works if race is a part of it. It is not possible. Not now, if ever.
So let me say right now that I would like to take that off the table. What Ben said, however, I thought would help bring to light an aspect of the dynamic that was happening. Let’s call it the “racial unconscious.” I wrote about that in my discussion of Kara Walker; you saw only instrumental assertions, I do this or that, which were part of the mix and meant to work within a larger context, including my giving the introduction to Kara Walker, exhibition history, movies, my teaching, etc.
I wish you would read chapter 1; your memory of the Santa Cruz occasion is patronizing, defensive. The talk went well, and was an intervention to work being done at SC on the 60s and the Cultural Revolution—my take on the diverse and unsettled voices of the 60s would not go well with a Maoist, for instance. I didn’t say, btw, that you were lying and was simply clarifying what I understood from Luke. That in itself is a sorry part of this.
This is my point on the 60s, btw—many voices, highly unresolved, conflictual, productive. No one “logic of liberation,” hence the turn to identity politics in the 70s would always be denying part of the unsettledness that preceded it. This is a critical point that leads toward the material poetics and against the holism that were at stake in the Duncan/Watten event. So do return to that unsettled time, and its consequences, in the article to get a better sense of what I was saying there.
As for the account of events at Berkeley—I was a participant in many of them, from the Oakland Induction Center to People’s Park. So there’s that. My text was the film Berkeley in the 60s, which is what I worked with at the Orono talk. It is interesting, actually limiting, that you think only poetry would authorize an account of that period—I do read Duncan, Levertov, Creeley, and Merwin, and I think well. But I also follow cultural studies in bringing nonliterary texts into dialogue with literary ones.
On “some ppl” I was being light, you took it heavy. But you were already being challenging, yes? What I meant, in thumbnail, was that yes there is a lot of myth and futurism and science fiction in jazz and black arts, a rather large area, all the way to Octavia Butler and Skip Delany. So myth is not one thing. Some people are into it; works for them. But that is not the kind of myth I am primarily thinking about. I am thinking myth in terms of the mythopoeia that was advanced by Duncan and Olson, backed by the critical canon they refer to. Jane Harrison and the fourfold unities. I want to bring myth forward into ideology, which is what I am interested in.
When you take my saying that to be “ghettoizing,” I will say you are racially characterizing, and I believe I am right in seeing this tenor in your part of the discussion. So—could you please not perspectivize in this bifurcated way? But as soon as there is challenge, I guess it will happen.
On myth/history, that is a large topic that I don’t think is usefully reduced to Eurocentricism. You can bring up Hegel, and indeed the work of critical theory and cultural studies over the past fifty years has been to rethink that. Let’s go back to Herodotus/Thucydides, why not? That is a critical discussion, not an either/or.
As for the tape, really I don’t want to hear more about it. I heard lots about it in the 80s, when [name removed] purloined the tape from the archive and brought it to Poetry Flash, and the fact that Grant framed his review of my book is what I needed to address. The tape was a fetish, a sacrificial object, for the Duncan community. It’s a cult object. For me, it is Bad History.
What I said about Duncan is my view. I think it is important to ground it in a physical response. Duncan was well known to be an intellectual bully. There is also the question of sexual predation, substantiated in the Jarnot biography. There is much to unpack in the psyche of Robert Duncan that is not sweetness and light, put it that way. As someone on the receiving end, I think I am quite authorized to think what I do about it. But it is the reproduction of the event itself—by you and others, who were at a distance or were not there–that concerns me most, and was the basis for my post on “The Duncan Thing.” Recently, the purloined tape was put up on line, so it is a fairly new revival, by those unfriendly to my work. You listened to it twice, looking for the smoking gun. Apparently, the Thing does not want to go away.
I should recuse myself, eh?
You did not bring up the force of my objection to your comments on my relation to or writing about other black artists or people. You were telling me not to write about Jonathan Jackson or I would be displaying a corpse like Kenny Goldsmith. Horrors of horrors to mention Goldsmith—I write against his work, and its reception, in my book. You were, in fact, telling me not to write about that topic, or about Kara Walker. What am I to do? You want to install a voice in my head saying, “don’t do that.” Well, I will now need to take that into account. This is what I meant by policing—an internalized logic. I have never been pulled over for Driving While Black, however—but am well aware of that form of policing, and of course there is a difference. I live in Detroit.
Are you suggesting I should not teach Fruitvale Station or Get Out at Wayne State, to multi-ethnic classrooms? But I do. And if I write about Jonathan Jackson, it will be informed by that experience. Should I not teach Kara Walker’s work in my seminar next semester? Should I avoid Baraka, particularly if I have criticisms of his work?
There is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t logic here concerning representing race. I’m damned for my editing This, but you don’t mention helping publish your work in Representations or editing Diasporic Avant-Gardes. Or my friendships with Erica Hunt or Lorenzo Thomas. What indeed am I to do?
On the several times I have engaged your work in public contexts, that is something indeed to clarify. It came up in the context of editorial responsibility. And a larger responsibility in terms of engaging writers of color. Since I am talking to you, that’s why I mentioned it. When I argued for publishing your “Other: From Noun to Verb” article at Representations, I was in a subaltern position. One of the arguments against publishing it was that academics hostile to Reps would think they they were advocating the “aesthetic” over the political by publishing your piece. I made the case for publishing it; this was an intellectual act and political accomplishment.
Yet another voice in the head is to “avoid tokenism.” And yes, by all means. Tokenism was a word coined by then-LeRoi Jones concerning his inclusion in the Allen anthology; it’s in an essay in Home. At an MLA session in the late 80s, Marjorie Perloff put it out there that you were the writer of color that met her standards, or some such. Leaving the session, I remarked to a young poet I had just met, and turned out to be Joshua Clover, that to say that was racist. Clover turned around and published a poem in Zyzzyva that contained the line, “Barry says Marjorie is a racist”; I wrote him a strongly worded letter to say that on his own behalf. Interesting!
I am sorry, however, that you found that offensive, and I certainly would only speak like that in a one on one conversation, not publicly. So it is regrettable that you circulated it to the crowd. However, whatever. Things will remain as they are, and people will think what they think.
In conversation about this with Carla and Canadian writer Gail Scott, who was visiting, I recalled Baraka’s line, “I am inside someone who hates me.” I think that is brilliant, revealing, tragic. With you and Duncan—and mythic community overall—I would say there is something like “I am inside someone who loves me.” But Duncan’s love, which is the focus of my argument in the “The Lost America of Love,” is the site of abjection and denial. So there’s that—being inside a love that is also abjection. You mentioned a corpse, etc. And then there is the homosociality of the mythic community, the killing of totem father and the pact. All of your cc’s were—check the list.
I’ll close with my interest in the film Get Out and the racial unconscious. Such a thing exists, but is not one thing. The film shows that there is not one position to view it from (unlike Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner). There is no liberal subject that can coexist with race. I think that is as it is and should be—the real question is what do we do now?
The same may be true of this conversation—there is no one subject of “myth” if writers of color find it a resource and a counter to dominant ideology. I am interested in ideology critique, and if myth is critical, good. If it is constitutive of another form of oppression, as I think it is with Duncan and in many other political examples, no. You see this differently. And, unfortunately, you are highly offended that I do not agree, about Duncan or myth.
Going forward, if you can suggest a public forum where we can continue a dialogue—say pick a couple of texts and write back and forth—I would do that. But I would like you to have read my work in question before doing so. You could give me a text or texts you would like me to read, and I would do that. This conversation, however, is between us and I would like to keep it that way.
Best, Barrett
This letter—which I think is a good one, and which I am now happy to have out there—was I think too much for Mackey. He couldn’t respond point by point—just hopeless, he complained. My refusal to back down on Duncan, plus my recollection of Mackey’s early reception in the 80s, did not give him a place to continue. And so he started to shut it down. I think it is important that in this letter I offered to continue the dialogue in a public venue, either as an event or in print, but Mackey declines. I want to note how unlike that response is to the event Amiri Baraka and I staged at the Orono 60s conference, on terms that were negotiated and agreed on by both parties. What would come next, however, is the opposite of any sort of collegiality or community. Mackey writes, misreading what I said (perhaps due to overly dense syntax, though it still scans), that I intended to take race off the table; he objects strenuously to my claim to have supported his work; he says he has no interest in a public conversation (again, belied by his actions). I respond on May 11:
Dear Nate–
You misread me, there and in many places, unfortunately. Sorry for any ambiguity. If you will look again, the antecedent for “taking off the table” is this: “The remark from Ben was I think good on the kind of challenge behavior that happened on my thread, and now seems to be happening here. I should remember that challenge behavior, no matter how much in a ‘community of discourse’ as I assume poetry to be, never works if race is a part of it. It is not possible. Not now, if ever.” I think that was an opening to the kind of discussion that might occur. The challenge behavior I am referring to is precisely how this started, and continued, and as far as you are concerned, will end.
To return: it is unethical of you to send my private correspondence to 11 other people—of your choosing–without my permission. I object. But it is also interesting and revealing, even symptomatic of something wrong with this discourse, that these are 11 white males, “brothers” in the homosocial compact of your imagining. And it is the homosociality of the Duncan tradition that I find most problematic. Freud, “Totem and Taboo,” is the locus classicus for that. The exclusion of women—the sharing of women among the rivalrous males after they have killed the totem father—is what makes homosociality politically obnoxious.
The New American Poetry was homosocial in its origins; Duncan was a major influence on that. When Norman put up a picture of the cover the New American Poetry, I had to reflect that, however historically important that anthology was, it is still very flawed—particularly in its “canon-making argument.” As well, it is in fact the site for the coining of the word “tokenism” in relation to Jones/Baraka’s inclusion, a positionality that it might be well to reconsider. There is a dated “period style” there too.
You are arguing from the “authority” of the New American poetry as literary tradition in your defense of Duncan and myth. I have no problem with your arguing for the aesthetics or poetics or even politics of same. But authority is what this is about, and my book is in fact an unlinking of that authority in historically specific ways. It’s over, and has been since the early 90s. I am happy to have participated in that result.
In your intervention, you brought a gamey aggressivity to my thread. I responded in kind, but it turned into a flame. I did not want to preserve that. You were “going off” in my kitchen, so to speak, and so I suggested we step outside. This was not the forum you wanted, so you asked in your Bros.
To return to the main point: Grant Jenkins’s review misreads, refuses to read, my book in numerous ways, and does so by employing the “covering myth” of the Duncan/Watten event. The only thing he reads in chapter 1, which is crucial for this discussion, is the section on Duncan, which he finds “fair” as if some kind of unfairness were at stake.
I invite you, and others you are in contact with, to read what I have to say about Duncan in chapter 1, and also in the section on “The Lost America of Love,” which I linked in “Entry 34.” On the Poetry Center event, please consult Jarnot’s biography (you seem not to like that) and the various references to the occasion in The Grand Piano. Also, it is well to remember that the topic of the event was Zukofsky, not Duncan—some rivalry there, in fact—and I address Zukofsky in my first section of The Grand Piano.
On your work, I discuss your prose in relation to your essay “Other: From Noun to Verb,” as I knew and liked that essay. The context is to think about how the poet/critic dyad unpacks in terms of race, class, and gender. For gender, I discuss Lyn’s use of Scheherezade, and for class my writing on “the Bride of the Assembly Line.” I hope you will check out the argument of chapter 6, then, on the “poet/critic.”
Since you cc’d 11 brothers of your authorial compact, I will send this thread privately to people I am talking to, but only a few—so no gang there. I’ll be interested in what Tyrone Williams, Carla Harryman, and Alan Golding think about all this—but not as part of some giant listserv in the sky.
All good, see you around. Barrett
This was my attempt to resituate the discussion on the larger politics of the New American poetry—a topic I am not a stranger to. Much water has flowed under the bridge; if there isn’t a revision account of the New Americans in terms of race, class, and gender, they are at risk of obsolescence. Michael Davidson’s discussion of the homosociality of the New Americans in Guys Like Us is to the point. I wanted to end with a request to elevate the discussion to at least what is publishable, but Mackey would have other plans. While he writes, in response, that he has no interest in taking the conversation to a public forum, that is precisely what he did. I hoped to conclude on May 11, repeating that he had no business copying my correspondence to others and complaining about the racial characterizations of 70s avant-gardes that he advances. I also point to Mackey’s evident selfishness in belittling the support offered to him in his career, while doing little for others.
Dear Nate— You have no business copying to your chosen group; no business telling me not to write about Jonathan Jackson—interior censorship!; and no business questioning my editing of This. You are not the designated arbiter of the racial composition of 70s groups, and if so please use equal opportunity skepticism for the New College crowd, the New Narrativists, the NY Language crowd, St. Marks Church, Bolinas, Something Else Press, Black Sparrow Press, North Point Press, clients of Marjorie Perloff, and so on.
I don’t think you have properly recognized the value of the several things I’ve done for you over the years, no. So if you want to blow up again, go right ahead. I don’t recall your having done anything for me except act diffident over the years, and if there is something I’ve forgotten please let me know.
No to last wordism. I liked my last as ending, but you keep cc’ing. Nasty habit.
BW
At this point I was pissed; the conversation should really not continue. But Mackey would have the last word, putting the whole thing online courtesy none other than Kent Johnson. That Mackey would permit Johnson to do this really is a low point and ought to be surprising to many. And who is Kent Johnson? Ron Silliman has a choice descriptor for him in our account of Leningrad, when we did everything to avoid him at our 1989 “Summer School” at the end of the Soviet period. (I believe Ron offered a section of Leningrad to Hambone, but Mackey was not interested in it.) After that point, from the 90s forward and through the various incarnations of the Poetics Listserv, Johnson made a career out of hounding Language writers, and many people blocked his emails and posts or otherwise tuned him out. At one point, on the subpoetics listserv, Johnson went so far as to ghost-write a series of posts purportedly by me saying what a reprobate I thought he was—not only purloined letters but completely made-up ones under my name! More recently, he obtained the tape of the Duncan event, circulated outside the Poetry Center Archive without permission, and put it up for the Schadenfreude of all Duncanites.
This brings me back to Duncan, and his narrative of literary hierarchy. Evidently Mackey wants a part of that—to bring Duncan’s mythopoeia in line with the turn to myth in African and non-European sources. I would rather go back to the classics of anthropology, and their critique, to do that than invoke the Pound tradition, its racial politics, or its use of Leo Frobenius. It is a project, however, that will come undone of its own incompatibilities, particularly in terms of Duncan and race. While I have confined my readings of Duncan to what interests me, scholars may want to go farther and look into his remarks on LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka that I noted while scanning the index of his letters to Denise Levertov. The page citations are 234 (“LeRoi is a nice fellow with terrible taste); 401–2 (difference of interpretation of the god Damballah); 492–93 (Jones’s nonappearance at the Berkeley Poetry Festival and his public rhetoric: “what he read was blatantly demogogic”). I will be interested to know where such an inquiry will lead. But the attempt to re-found Duncan tradition will only succeed among Duncanites—there is too much work, since the 70s, that is just indifferent to it.
Copyright (c) Barrett Watten 2018. May not be reproduced in print or media without permission, with the exception of short extracts in notes and reviews.
