Review

Author(s): Langdon Hammer

Review by: Langdon Hammer
Source: Modern Philology, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Aug., 1998), pp. 137-142
Published by: University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/439117
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 BookReviews 137

feministcriticshave allowed. His defense worksfairlywell forJoyce

but seems to me to miscarryin his readingof Lawrence,who reallywas
an "essentialist"in mattersof sexual ideology. It has now become so
common to assume thatthe self is a constructand gender a performa-
tive strategythat even so careful a reader and literaryhistorian as
Parkes does not always stop to deliberate whether indeed "perfor-
mance theory"can be uniformlyapplied to explain not only the sex-
ual rhetoricof novels,but the actual public debates conducted around
and againstbooks adjudged to be obscene.
When Parkessimplyattendsto the evidence at hand he can be quite
persuasive. His two chapters on Lawrence, who complained that his
censorshiptrialgave him an indelible reputationas "a lurid sexuality
specialist,"are particularlywelcome attemptsto recoverthe imagina-
tive daring of Lawrence's work. Parkes's argumentthat The Rainbow
bears an unnervingresemblance to a sacred textoffersa thoughtful
correctiveboth to the originalcharges broughtagainstit and the cur-
rentreasons foritsdisrepute.Parkes'smostconvincingdemonstration
of Joyce'srevolutionaryresponse to the cultureof censorshipoccurs
in his analysisof "Circe,"where all the elementshe has been juggling
come togetherin the hallucinatoryand pornographic"trial"to which
Bloom is subjected in Bella Cohen's brothel.Finally,Parkes is deftin
showinghow Woolf could writea book witha bisexual protagonistat a
timewhen lesbianismwas literallyconsidered an "unspeakable"sexual
practice and was not even recognized, much less mentioned in the
homosexualitylaw.
Thanks to Parkes's work we can better appreciate not just the
modernists'daringbut theirexasperationin creatingworksof artin a
cultureof censorship.This exasperationis wittilyepitomized in Jane
Heap's expostulation:"Whatlegal genius,to bringLaw againstOrder!"
Maria DiBattista
PrincetonUniversity

Politics and Form in Postmodern Poetry:O'Hara, Bishop, Ashbery,

and Merrill.Mutlu KonukBlasing.Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995. Pp. vii+219.

Mutlu Konuk Blasing's Politics and Form in PostmodernPoetryis an im-

portantcontributionto the criticaldebates invoked by the keywords
in its title.At once a workof literaryhistoryand a polemical medita-
tion on the relation between formand content in poetic texts,Blas-
ing's book is writtenagainst the tired but durable representationof

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138 MODERN PHILOLOGY

Americanpoetrysince 1950 as a "heroic drama" in which "a formalist

academic consolidation of earlymodernism'sexperimentalimpulse"
battles"an anti-formalist revoltthatreaffirmspresence and process in
open forms" (p. 1). That versionof events,Blasing rightlypoints out,
depends on "a progressivemodel of literarychange" in which poetry
enacts "a continuingliberation from,or a repeated series of breaks
with,the forcesof tradition"(p. 2) bymeans of technicalinnovation.
Literaryformsare aligned with "moral, metaphysical,and political"
values in thismodel, and the symbolicfunctionsof formsare treated
as invariant,inherentproperties.A legacyof "modernistaestheticide-
ology,"thiswayof conceptualizingliterarychange entails"a reification
of what can only be metaphoric links" between meaning and tech-
nique (p. 2).
Refusing that reificationbrings rhetoric to the fore. Poetry that
avowsitsstatusas rhetoricalconstructionratherthanobjectivetruth-
thatis to say,poetry"thatbreakswiththe modernistfaithin the truth-
value of poetic technique" (p. 3)--Blasing calls "postmodern."As
examples of thiskind of rhetoricalself-consciousness,she focuses on
twopoets usuallyclassed as experimentalists(FrankO'Hara and John
Ashbery)and twoformalpoets (Elizabeth Bishop and JamesMerrill).
Blasing does not call Bishop and Merrill"formalists," because she re-
serves that categoryfor poets who assign inherentmeanings to spe-
cificforms(including experimentalones) ratherthan recognizing,as
Bishop and Merrilldo, thatformalchoices are rhetoricalones. (From
thisperspective,Language poetryand New Formalismare equally "for-
malist" practices.) Blasing challenges the commonplace notion that
experimentalpoetryis "postmodern"and poetrywrittenin "closed"
formis not.
Her use of the term "postmodern"therefore"differsfromits pre-
vailinguse to referexclusivelyto experimentalwork" (p. 3), as exem-
plified in the Norton anthology edited by Paul Hoover, Postmodern
American Poetry(New York,1994), in which Bishop and Merrilldo not
appear. From the perspectiveof Hoover and otheradvocatesof exper-
imentalwriting,formalpoetryis simplyoutmoded. Whatevermightbe
said forpoets such as Bishop and Merrill,theirworkis partof the past;
"It is the avant-gardethatrenewspoetryas a whole throughnew,but
initiallyshocking,artisticstrategies"(Hoover, p. xxv). Blasing reverses
this position by dismissingHoover's avant-gardistsas "late modern"
heirsof modernism'sideologyof innovation,whichtheypreservein a
distilled state. Indeed, Blasing finds a poet such as Charles Olson
"more modern than the moderns" (p. 3). Postmodern poetry she
definesas "anypoetic practice thatquestions modernistassumptions"
(p. 3), and "Olson's 'objectivism' only reaffirmsand facilitatesthe

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 BookReviews 139

deeper collusion of technologyand humanism,without'interference'

fromsuch archaic notions as the 'subject' and his 'soul' " (p. 57).
Blasing's prototypicalmodernist (who articulatesthe assumptions
that postmodern poetry questions) is Ezra Pound. She represents
Pound as a spokesman for the organicistideal of verbal transparency
seeking to purge poetryof rhetoric."AndPound characteristically as-
sociates rhetoricwithcertainpoetic forms:imagistversefreesitselfof
rhetoricbyfreeingitselfof meter,"Blasing explains. "Eventually,even
the grandlypersuasiveand highlydidactic thrustof the Cantoscan be
naturalized,and rhetoricallymotivatedargumentscan be presented
as self-evident,absolute truthsrevealed by the 'adequacy' of Pound's
technique" (pp. 6-7). But thisaccount of Pound depends on his own
accounts of his practice,whichmaynot be reliable. In fact,ifwe study
his modulated use of diverse poetic forms,including many archaic
ones, we may decide that Pound himselfshows the sensitivity to the
"rhetoricof form"that Blasing findscharacteristicof postmodern-
thatis, post-Poundian-poetry (as Blasing herselfallows,p. 15). And
ifPound's poetryis a possible exception,whatof Stevens,Frost,Crane,
Eliot? Blasing's definitionof the "modern" requires the least qual-
ificationwhen applied not to the major poets of the 1920s but to
America'spostwarexperimentalists, who in thissense reallyare "more
modern than the moderns."
Since the 1970s, influenced by deconstructionand other develop-
ments in literarytheory,experimentalpoetryhas conducted its own
critiqueof organicism.Language poetryis one formthatcritiquehas
taken, and Blasing engages it. (Her book's titlepointedlyalludes to
The Politics of PoeticForm: Poetryand Public Policy [New York, 1990], a
collection of position-piecesbysome of the best knownLanguage po-
ets, edited by Charles Bernstein.) Language poetry'srefusalnot only
of rhymeand meter,but also of conventional syntaxand grammar,
responds to the emergence of free verse as the technical norm in
American poetry.No longer a means to authenticatepoetic voice (as
it seemed to Olson), free verse today betokens institutionallysanc-
tioned subjectivity,the fetishof personal expression. The antirepre-
sentational art of Language poetryand other avant-gardepractices
seeks a wayout of this situationby turningto new,programmatically
artificialsystemsfororganizingverse,including,in some cases, math-
ematical models. The appeal of such work (as formulated,e.g., by
Marjorie Perloff in her book Radical Artifice:WritingPoetryin theAge of
Media [Chicago, 1990]) lies in its resistance to the call for natural
speech thatprevailsin all cornersof American culture,fromthe po-
etryworkshopto the talkshow.Blasing sees in thismove onlya return
to modernist scientism,a new repression of rhetoric. Her reply is

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140 MODERN PHILOLOGY

appealingly brisk: "If the alternativeis communication and the at-

tendant commodificationof subjectivity,so be it, and poetics had
betterfinda wayto get on withit. For poetryenjoysno special dispen-
sation; neithermeternor mathematicscan save it fromcommodifica-
tion" (p. 25).
The inevitability of commodificationmakes "complicitouscritique"
the best political position that can be claimed for poetry,Blasing
argues, and "complicitouscritique" (she takes the phrase fromLinda
Hutcheon's A PoeticsofPostmodernism: History,
Theory,Fiction[New York,
1988]) is theonlypositionthat"can avoidthepoliticalself-righteousness
of a pure critique,which can onlyreduce to pure complicity"(p. 22).
As Blasing uses it, "politics"is synonymous(or nearlyso) with"rheto-
ric,"whereverpoetryis concerned,and poets choose politicalpositions
by choosing rhetoricalones. Repressing the rhetoricalcharacter of
poetrymeans totalizingformand content,and declaring one's meta-
phors true: the politicsof thatstance are "totalitarian"(Blasing never
minces words). To acknowledge and explore the rhetoricalcharacter
of poetry,by contrast,is to sustain "a democratic respect for differ-
ence" (p. 27). It is also to understandpoetry'sdistinctivegenericprop-
erties. For what is specific to poetry is not (contrary to popular
sentiment)the "inseparabilityof itsformand content"but itscapacity
to demonstratethe contingencyof all form-contentrelations (p. 18);
"the divide between formand content,"ratherthan a riftto be over-
come, is forBlasing "the condition forthe functioningof poetic lan-
guage" (p. 18). This principleopens out onto a general theoryof the
politics of poetic thinking:by foregroundingthe constructednessof
meaning, poetrydenaturalizesthe worldand propounds a critiqueof
thingsas theyare (p. 19). This is,accordingto Blasing,poetry'sgeneric
political function-the politicsproper to it as a genre.
Some readerswillfindthisthesisidealizing:a wayforpoetryto have
its politics (and politics of an attractivekind) withouthaving to en-
gage actual political issues. While there may be some truthin that
objection, it misses Blasing's point: poetryis alwaysalready political,
because it is alwaysrhetorical.A more substantialobjection may be
thatBlasing'semphasison poetry'sgenericspecificity, whichinevitably
has a transhistoricalcharacter,does more to describe literarychange
than to explain it. FollowingTzvetanTodorovand the Russian formal-
istJurijTynjanov,Blasingviewsliterarychange as a "redistribution of
formsand functions"such that (in Todorov'swords) "theformchanges
function,thefunctionchangesform"(p. 158). By rejectingthe develop-
mental logic of a "progressive"model, thismodel of literarychange
makes it possible to analyze all manner of complex aesthetic strate-
gies, including pastiche, one of postmodernism'sformal signatures.

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 BookReviews 141

But it does not address the question of whyformschange function

(and vice versa): Blasing simplyproceeds withoutan alternativeto the
principle of historicalcausation provided by technological develop-
ment. (In thisrespect,her thinkingis "postmodern"in the usual sense
of thatterm.)
Her focus,rather,is on the close reading of poetic texts.This is the
projectof the main body of the book, whichconsistsof fourchapters,
each organized as a general discussionof a singlepoet. Readers of her
AmericanPoetry:The RhetoricofIts Forms(New Haven, Conn., 1987) will
be prepared for the precision and vigor of Blasing's interpretations.
Like a New Critic,Blasing savorsironyand paradox, and she describes
these effectsin pithyprose. For example, here is what she has to say
about "A Miracle forBreakfast," a Depression-erapoem Bishop cast in
the formof a sestina: "If her poem critiques political and religious
rhetoric as substitutivesatisfactionsfor real hunger, its allegorical
rhetoricand baroque formalso workto resistthe illusion thatpoetry
can supplyanythingbut symbolicsatisfactions"(p. 87). What makes
Blasing unlike a New Criticand more like a deconstructiveone, how-
ever,is her preferencefordifferenceover totality, the mechanical over
the organic. (Her sense of thecentrality-and inescapability-of rhet-
oric obviouslyrecallsPaul De Man.) Her interpretations are in thisway
programmatically antinatural;theyconsistently refuseto naturalizepo-
etic language bydissolvingitsdifficulty and self-reference. This means
that Blasing reads poetryallegorically,routingreferencethroughlit-
eraryhistoryand formalcodes. To takejust one example: the bus trip
described in "The Moose" by Bishop is for Blasing a complex "meta-
phor of transport"builtout of allusions to Whitman,Frost,and Crane
(pp. 90-107).
The growingbody of workon Bishop, which has been preoccupied
withher biography,will be enhanced byBlasing's dry-eyedapproach.
About Ashbery,Blasing is just as cogent and unsentimental:"Flow
Chartis not merelya parodic simulacrumof a Romanticpoem; it has a
more serious undercurrentand a real investmentin chartingthe for-
tunes of the subjectivelife,public as well as private.Yet he has neither
'metaphysicalreasons' nor culturalimperativesforproducingwhathe
does.... He goes on doing what he does because he has lost the
'formulafor stopping,'as Jean Baudrillardremarksapropos joggers"
(p. 153). While Ashberyhas had a great deal of criticalattention,the
same is not true of O'Hara, who emerges fromthis studyas a newly
central figure. (Central, because he evades the competing positions
that define his culturalmoment and ours. As Blasing puts it, "Those
aligned with academic values and those moved by Olsonian poetics
alikewillfindO'Hara lightweight" [p. 33].) But the strongestdiscussion

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142 MODERN PHILOLOGY

is of Merrill.As one reads thatfinalchapter,one feelswithsatisfaction

that the argumentwas alwaysheaded there-that the specificprob-
lems Merrill poses for literaryhistory(how do we account for "his
noncanonical use of canonical forms"?[p. 156]) must have set the
project into motion in the firstplace. "Atthe same time that [Mer-
rill] dismissesexperimentaltechniques,'natural' or organicforms,and
Orphic models of poetry,"Blasingwrites,"he demystifies his inherited,
traditionalformsand calls into doubt the assumptions of closure,
containment,protection,and controlthataccompanythem" (p. 172).
It is Blasing'sdistinctionto have accomplished,in criticism,thesesame
tasks.

Langdon Hammer
YaleUniversity

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