Speculative Lyric
Andrew Joron came up with the term to describe his science-fiction poetry. An apt term to describe the project a. rawlings and I are currently conducting (previously described as "archeography," until a. informed me it meant something else)(on the other hand, our collaboration also falls under the influence of 'pataphysics). Other poets whose work also falls the "speculative lyric" label? Joron, in his book Cry to Zero (an essay from which has been excerpted in the latest issue of Parthenon West Review) mentions Robert Duncan. I can also think of Christine Hume's Alaskaphrenia, Johannes, Aase Berg.
Anyone else?
Anyone else?
Comments
Also, I'll write a Toasted Cheese essay on imperative lyricism if you write one on speculative lyricism. Then we can watch them have a thumb war.
Do you mean romantic or Romantic?
Either way, as a gesture, it seems inquiry and lyricism, which I'm admittedly assuming are the cornerstones of SL, can and should encompass other schools/modes/tones/topics etc. Just because you don't find something interesting doesn't mean it's excluding from your favorite movement, you ain't no bouncer neither.
If a third cornerstone is philological tinkering, then I'm not sure you have an appropriately named invention. Hume, I would argue, isn't scientific in the way you're thinking, and in her own right as deeply and darkly imagistic as Clark.
And anti-romantic? Really??
i do mean 'romantic' in both senses of the word as described by you.
another concern of speculative lyric is to write not "a poetry about science," but a "poetry as science" (cf. Albert Einstein's and Max Planck's essay on science, Karl Popper's). Johannes might disagree with me on this, but I will also refer in a way to Robert Duncan's conception of the Poem-as-Universe. It's a bit abstract and obstruse, but in a way, it's a way of reading/writing that is not theological in any way (that is to say, in which the author-god -- I think I am repeating myself here -- gives meaning to the reader). Just by addressing the reader with a "You" toward whom Clark's persona points things, Clark shows that he is just repeating old tropes from traditional (and tired) lyric poetry. I'd like to point you to the review of the book in Constant Critic, where Clark's work is discussed not in terms of innovative writing, but as I said, in terms of traditional lyric (all those references to Rimbaud).
SL is also somewhat procedural. If you read a.'s, Johannes, derek beaulieu's, Aase Berg's or my work, you will find some form of writing rule. A rule that you can somewhat find in Hume's Alaskaphrenia, which has more in common with Bök's poem "Midwinter Glaciara."