Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass

                             Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun

                             The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.

  ^{Opus 15, with its deliberately mockery of grafted musical pretensions- later brought to unintendedly hilarious nadirs by Zukofsky’s A, is not a good poem, but its very insistent end-rhymes & phallic ending lend a comic touch that make even a hardened cynic smirk. Is the music poor? Yes. Why this was not pointed out originally says a lot of Poetry Criticism’s failings- which continue through today. That is, throw up any amount of crap, propose a theory behind it, & watch the rationalizing begin. But in truth, it is no worse than, say, a typical late Romantic poem by a Walter De la Mare- a man who wrote superbly musical lyrics which said absolutely nothing new. Opus 67, however, is a better poem- both as satire- & in real terms. The tweak at Western Intellectual Orientalist pretensions, just getting into gear back in the teens, is not too intrusive. The poem is also light & breezy in imagery & thought: ‘tigers as eating lemons’. Yet, let’s see how little more than a decade later what was satirized then flowered into unadulterated pretension. Reznikoff’s (1) is an especially good example of this pretension, especially in contrast to Ficke’s poem. The blue enameled sky with white domes, of Ficke, becomes mere polished blue sky. & look at the larding of cliché: trees/winter, polished blue sky, boughs blown, April buds, wind turning, & dark green light- all in 8 lines! But what of the Objectivist rationale? Perhaps it explains how this string of clichés works? Well, perhaps Reznikoff was faithfully transcribing what he saw- but what a lack of imagination. &, apparently the clichés abound because we all see the same things. So, then, what is the point of making- or claiming, in reality- that this is art? Just, because, is the usual reply when a movement’s tenets are queried. Well. OK, but that does not make the art good- & this (again, a prototypical example) is a bad poem. The Objectivists, along with William Carlos Williams (who generally stands apart & above them in most estimates, including mine- although no real Williams fan), are the primary culprits in the blandeurizing & ennui-inducement in later, more contemporary poetry. They would grab ahold of the Beatniks with a ferocity. But note how little fun is had in the art, especially compared to the preceding Spectric poems. The Objectivists were also the party to foist the idea that the best way to convey an emotion or idea is to attempt to convey that with the words. That is, if you want to write a poem on boredom, make the poem boring- what could better reflect the characteristics of boredom? That this idea appeals to utter laziness- artistic & intellectual, as well a disdain for the reader who must endure such, was beside the point, to Objectivists. But, lets’ see what Oppen does with this. Oppen actually got some fame by winning a Pulitzer prize in the 1960s. Surely, he’s better than the talent-challenged Reznikoff? Well, yes he is- in general, & in this poem, 1 of his more famous. Still, the 1st 4 stanzas do not do anything new, imagistically. The thing that makes this a decent poem is the right margined 1st lines of each stanza- which are meant to convey the bob of the deer’s head, & the last stanza, which also lends the poem an ‘awareness of its artifice’, then evokes a Rilkean ‘moment’, before an abrupt end. But, successful or not, the last stanza totally goes against the very idea of Objectivism. How could an ‘objective’ speaker leap into the recognition of the artifice, & break the 4th wall- so to speak? Simple. It cannot- at least if it wants to claim consistency with the movement’s tenets. & therein the pea that lays under every -ism’s mattress. Eventually all the poets of a movement become sensitive-assed princesses & bitch & squirm against the position/bed they’ve claimed. Sometimes poets abandon -isms, but usually, if attracted to 1 they fall for another flawed sailor, they get a new -ism. Or the initial -ism morphs.}
  Such was the case with Objectivism, as it also birthed a similar sounding movement: Projectivism- a movement founded by erstwhile Black Mountain poet Charles Olson. Olson, however, was a SERIOUS poet. His movement, & manifesto Projectivist Verse, had ‘real’ dicta: ‘(1) A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader. . . . the poem itself must, at all points, be a high energy-construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge. So: how is the poet to accomplish same energy, how is he, what is the process by which a poet get in, at all points energy at least the equivalent of the energy which propelled him in the first place, yet an energy which is peculiar to verse alone and which will be, obviously, also different from the energy which the reader, because he is a third term, will take away? This is the problem which any poet who departs from closed form is specially confronted by. And it involves a whole series of new recognitions. From the moment he ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION--puts himself in the open--he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares, for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware. . . . (2) . . . the principle, the law which presides conspicuously over such composition, and, when obeyed, is the reason why a projective poem can come into being. It is this: FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT. (Or so it got phrased by one, R. Creeley, and it makes absolute sense to me, with this possible corollary, that right form, in any given poem, is the only and exclusively possible extension of content under hand.) (3) Now (3) the process of the thing, how the principle can be made so to shape the energies that the form is accomplished. And I think it can be boiled down to one statement (first pounded into my head by Edward Dahlberg): ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION.’ Impressive wording, but rarely, if ever, put in to practice by Olson or his acolytes. Key point- take note of all the pseudo-scientific jargon. This is what marks any artistic theory as nothing but alot of bullshit being peddled. The more bullshit peddled, the weaker the rationale. That Olson WAS Projectivism seems to be lost on all but a few astute poetic historians. A more ‘genuine’ ‘movement’- so to speak- was that from which Olson had come from before forming his 1-Man Gang: The Black Mountain School of poetry, made up of teachers who taught at the school Olson founded: Olson himself, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Jonathan Williams, Larry Eigner, & Robert Creeley among the better known names. This group- surprise, surprise- also had a titular journal: The Black Mountain Review. Open fields, grand collage, the poet’s breath, & compositional fields were among the not-too deep nor original contributions of this brood. That, again, there was not any real similarity between these poets’ poems- neither in mood, phraseology, nor substance- does not seem to have deterred their being lumped together. Let’s go through some of these poems:

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry. 

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me 

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even 

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret, 

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find, 

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that 

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines 

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for 

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.   

  This is a really bad poem- starting with its banal title, & through its attempted coyness, it does not hide that the it/secret is the ‘search’ itself- a trite concept. Poor enjambment does not help this poem which at 32 lines should really be at least 1/3 the length. the premise is threadbare & the occasional music is not nearly enough to rescue the poem. But is there really any controlling theoretical underpinning to the poem? No. Perhaps another poem will represent this movement more? Here are Robert Creeley’s ‘A Token’ & ‘Other’:

My lady
fair with
soft
arms, what 

can I say to
you-words, words
as if all
worlds were there  

Other  

Having begun in thought there
in that factual embodied wonder
what was lost in the emptied lovers
patience and mind I first felt there
wondered again and again what for
myself so meager and finally singular
despite all issued therefrom whether
sister or mother or brother and father
come to love's emptied place too late
to feel it again see again first there
all the peculiar wet tenderness the care
of her for whom to be other was first fate    

  Now, let us tread warily here. Robert Creeley has been called a Projectivist poet, a Black Mountain Poet, even a Beatnik poet; but is mostly referred to as a Minimalist poet. That means he writes small poems without elaboration- or so is claimed. On to the poems: A Token offers nothing but refried, & boiled down, Romanticism. 3 bad line breaks out of 8 is not a good ratio. The last 2 lines are the strongest part, but coming off such a flaccid 1st 6 lines almost anything would ‘seem’ strong. Is this poem Minimal? Yes. So what? The notion of communication as a self-enclosed realm is the only thing new, yet its presentation in lament weakens its power. The whole poem seems to have been written in 3-4 minutes, tops. That this tiny poem’s obvious flaws were not addressed harkens back to the laziness problem that all movements spawn. Adherence to dicta can really be nothing but laziness- or so it seems. Is this poem Black Mountain? Whatever! Does anyone have a clue? No. Is it Projectivist? Let us return to the 3 dicta: 1) Is any energy transferred? Uh….next point- 2) Is the form an extension of content? Not really, since one could easily enjamb this poem in a dozen different ways without affecting its message. Therefore the form is not dependent on the content. 0 for 2. 3) Do the perceptions lead directly into 1 another? Why, YES! So does this 1 for 3 batting average qualify this poem as Projectivist? Well, the perceptions follow 1 another for a very important reason- in language- ALL language- perceptions follow each other because WORDS follow each other! You cannot get around the fact! Whether the perception is an image, an idea, a theory, or merely a sound! Therefore Dictum 3 of Projectivism is wholly pointless as a qualifier since all poetry, & all writing, obeys it fundamentally! So this poem meets 1 dictum which all writing meets, fails in the most characteristic dictum, & has another dictum which is so out & out silly that its preposterousness will get no further comment. But, maybe, his 2nd attempt will fare better?
  Well, this is a longer poem, & a bit better poem. There is a ruminant who ponders love, fate, selfness. There is some musicality here, a bad line break, & a few clichés: what was lost, love’s emptiness, & wet tenderness. But, this is a passable poem, I guess. But, the real test is its link to Projectivism. Back to the 3 Dicta: 1) ….on to # 2! 2) Again, a no-no. Breaking this poem’s lines in another way would not significantly alter its import to the reader. 3) It’s a poem, language….so, YES, again! Another .333 hitter.
  But Creeley is not the only Projectivist, is he? Well, there is Olson, himself- but his poems are generally so long & cumbersome that to attempt dissection here is not really feasible, nor fair. So, let us turn to another acolyte, Jonathan Williams, & this little ditty:

God bless her pore
little ol
dried up
soul!
jest make
good kindlin wood
fer Hell . . .   

  Well, whether or not this poem is any good, it is a lot more interesting to look at visually. This poem goes by the old dictum of allowing a long, interesting title juxtaposed with a quirky little poem. This sort of playfulness, however, is centuries old & practiced worldwide. The title is funny, quirky, & presents an opportunity for political commentary. While the notion of what the actual poem part says is nice, it does little to go beyond aphorism. The dialect used gives it a Southern American twang, which is fine. But the sentiments are universal & 1 wonders why this is set Southern? Of course, there is no reason to NOT set it in the South. But, that is about the only provocation in the poem. Back to the dread 3 Dicta: 1) _____ 2) Is the speaker really pausing at the end of the lines? No. It seems a device merely to make the poem appear more weighty than it is. 3) So, we’re 1 for 3 again. That’s great for baseball, but in the real world, mild success 1/3 of the time is considered failure. So, too, as a movement was Projectivism & its Black Mountain precursor. But another offshoot of the Black Mountaineers could claim, at least, success in a broader cultural context. That group? The Beatniks!
  Probably the most overly-analyzed group of writers this past century has put forth- The Beatniks, aka The Beats, The Beat Movement, The Beat Generation, etc., were, in truth, poetically speaking, merely the dozen or so great poems Allen Ginsberg wrote, the 5 or 6 penned by each Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, & Lawrence Ferlinghetti, & the occasional passable poem by token Beatnik-babes Anne Waldman & Diane Di Prima, & token Black Beatnik LeRoi Jones. There are a few dozen or so other barely known poetasters claiming dubious Beatnik credentials (from their claimed progenitor Kenneth Rexroth- a near-great poet- to doggerelist Richard Brautigan to pseudo-Beatnik Jack Spicer) & most of their drivel splatters the pages of Black Sparrow Press books. This group probably has garnered more attention for less output than nearly any other movement. Their obsessions with sex, drugs, Buddhism, & politics plus their dubious & disingenuous intellectual rationale: ‘1st thought, best thought’ for writing account for the attraction by young wannabe poets who do not want to spend the time or effort learning to craft good poetry. But, beyond that, there is nothing that really coheres them as a ‘school’ either.
  The 1st Beatnik to gain popular notice was Ginsberg, when he delivered a performance of his poem Howl at the now-legendary (a term that accompanies most of the Beatniks’ self-described activities- & may, in truth- have been patented by 1 of them!) 6 Gallery poetry reading on October 13th, 1955. The poem, publicized by an obscenity charge that made Ginsberg a symbol of American sexual depravity, was the great expression- some purport- of Beatnikness- which itself had no real definition, for even its adherents could not decide whether it reflected a pessimistic hoboic attitude- being beat down by life, or an optimistic beatific attitude. Nonetheless, this was easily the single most influential ‘movement’ in 20th Century Poetics, if only because of the easiness of its approach to art; that is, if you define influence by mere numbers of devotees. In that regard the Beatnik quagmire is a sinkhole that is still gurgling.
  Its most noted bastard spawn, & merely the same ideals repackaged in a Multicultural package, is the Spoken Word/Poetry Slam/Nuyoricanism of the last 2 decades. While the Beatniks were mostly middle class Jews who viewed art as a way to ‘slum’ into the real world & gather ideas & material for art, Nuyoricanism differs, if only slightly, because of an initially lower Judaic content in its core. Ostensibly, the movement grew out of early-1970s New York street poetry- the descendent of Doo-Wop & the progenitor of rap, which evolved into a group of poets led by Puerto Rican poetasters Miguel Piñero & Miguel Algarin, & black spoken word poobah Steve Cannon, founding a reading series & titular café, which eventually gave rise to the mid-1980s phenomenon of poetry slams; although this dubious honor is disputed by Chicago spoken wordists like Marc Smith- who claims to have coined the term ‘poetry slam’- if not the idea of poetic contests- which owe their origins to the decades old phenomenon of putdowns, ‘doing the dozens’, ‘rankout contests’, & the like. Regardless, little poetry attends these usually personalized rants which have the Beatnik attitude laced with the worst of Confessionalist self-indulgence. Yet, the very ‘streetness’ of the Nuyoricans [in essence- their defining rationale] was ‘co-opted’ by a number of Jewish Beatnik wannabes- poets Bob Holman & Hal Sirowitz- who along with spoken wordists Maggie Estep & Dana Bryant, rode this movement’s crest to early 1990s pop fame on outlets as cable TV’s MTV & its assorted ancillary ventures. So co-opted, in fact, was the movement that by the late 1980s- barely a decade into the ‘movement’ it was being ridiculed by its critics on the left & right, the street & academia, as being sellouts & (not-too incorrectly) derisively labeled Jewyoricans! That there was not a single defining thing nor idea in the actual ‘poetry’, save for its being very bad, self-indulgent, politically correct, & shouted so quickly that no one could understand what was being said, speaks for itself. It, especially as the spawn of Beatnikism (the literary equivalent of ‘pop art’), in a real sense, is the very sine qua non of modern Poetic Theory: lacking in form, content, & making no pretense for their necessity. In short- utter vacuity, save for the all-consuming pretense of political import. This very insistence on politicization, however, only further marginalizes them (indeed- any -ism), therefore seeding new ground for future replacement -isms. Yet, Nuyoricanism may indeed be preferable to its only viable contemporary alternative: the literary equivalent of that visual arts fraud, Abstract Expressionism: I, of course, refer to that grab bag of nonsensical theories which go under monickers as Abstractism, Concretism, &/or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, which- despite their own pretensions of significant differences between them, are all 1 & the same, & just as abominable as their literarily pretenseless Nuyorican oppositional counterparts. But before we tackle the Languagist group of yahoos, let’s expose some of the horrific writing propagated by the Beatniks, & the Jewyo- er- Nuyoricans. Here’s ‘No Problem Party Poem’ by burnt-out Beatnik Diane di Prima:

  This poem is an absolutely prototypical Beatnik poem- self-indulgent, lacking in music, & any poetic technique- save 1, repetition. But the repetition is so bad in its attempted hipness & mythologizing referentiality, & so devoid of any real content that it’s virtually worthless, literarily. Yet, this drivel was loved & imitated by 1000s of young people in the 1950s & 1960s. In a bit, we will see how this followed a predictable evolution into even more ridiculous depths. But, let us now look at a 2nd di Prima ‘gem’:

The Window  

you are my bread
and the hairline noise
of my bones
you are almost
the sea 

you are not stone
or molten sound
I think
you have no hands 

this kind of bird flies backwards
and this love
breaks on a windowpane
where no light talks 

this is not the time
for crossing tongues
(the sand here
never shifts) 

I think
tomorrow
turned you with his toe
and you will
shine
and shine
unspent and underground  

  Well, this poem is longer, but still offers little beyond clichés: sea, stone, lament of love, a windowpane, light, etc. There are a couple of nice turns: hairline noise of bones, & shining unspent and underground. That this refers to, ostensibly, a real window, is nice, although it puts the speaker in a familiar setting- gazing outside to gaze inside. But here we get a problem- while this poem is better than the 1st poem it is not really Beatnik in approach. In fact, it’s a very Confessional poem. But I will not touch that school in this essay. Besides, the poem is very much discernible in content & intent. Let us move on to another Beatnik ‘legend’. Gary Snyder has really tried to distance himself from the Beatniks, especially with his cloak of Zen Buddhism. But let’s look at this Snyder poem & discern its Beatnikness [Note, that I am not touching any of the longer, more famed poems by Beatniks, because their long lines & diarrhetic mouthings are so clichéd & laughable that they undermine the tenability of any seriousness attached to the term Beatnik.]:

walking half-drunk in a strange pad
making it out to the cool gray
  san francisco dawn -- 

white gulls over white houses,
  fog down the bay, 

tamalpais a fresh green hill in the new sun,
driving across the bridge in a beat old car
  to work.   

  This poem is a hallmark Beatnik poem (& not far from a Hallmark Card poem!)- from its protagonist’s drunken state, the use of hipster terms like pad & cool, its lower case starts of lines & city name, on down to its use of the word beat. But aside from a few staid images nothing occurs that has not occurred before in 100s of other poems. This poem is wholly generic. It could have been written by any Beatnik, or poet. A few banal images does not subsume a poem into a school. Yet, Snyder has made a beaucoup career of such scribblings- including, like Oppen, a Pulitzer! But the Beatniks were not the only group to master dullness in verse. Their spawn, the Nuyoricans, decided to make a movement of dullness admixed with excessive self-centeredness, rage against the world, a total disavowal of the notion that art needs thought & dedication behind it, as well as a love of dullness, exemplified by their obsession with profanity. Here is a poem by stolid Hal Sirowitz, 1 of the Jewyoricans who ousted & co-opted Nuyoricanism from its ‘street roots’:

Beauty is only skin deep, Father said,
but don't tell your mother I told
you that or she'll think I'm saying
that she's ugly. But I didn't marry her
just for her looks. I married her because I thought that she was kind.
I happen to be wrong tonight. But
that doesn't mean I won't be right tomorrow.   

  That this was written by a Jewyorican is obvious- its self-referencing is a classic Beatnik trope & the whole tenor of the poems by this poetaster devolves to his psycho-emotional problems & lack of any formal sense of how to construct a poem. Here we go: Line-by-line- 1 is a cliché, 2 is supposed to let you know this is a ‘private’ moment overheard, thus has deep meaning- yet is poorly enjambed, 3 is poorly broken & an extension of 2, 4 gives us the expected punch line 2 & 3 set up, then we get the endearment of daddy- he’s a good man. Line 5 tells us this. Then we pan back in 6 & 7 ends with a feigned optimism. The title implies that all this is a rationale of the speaker- he grew up in a not-so good familial situation. That the title does nothing to involve the reader in the dilemma, as well as having no music nor imagery to string the narrative upon, is 1 of the classic traits of both Beatnikism & Nuyoricanism. But this poem is a relatively tame example of the Poetry Slam attitude. While Sirowitz garnered some slight fame with his 2 books of ‘Said’ poems on his Mother & Therapist, Maggie Estep rocketed to Slam Bam stardom in the mid-1990s craze with Spoken Word. Here is a classic Estep ‘poem’. Look how she makes the earlier di Prima poem look Victorian by comparison!

FUCK ME
I'm all screwed up so
FUCK ME. 

FUCK ME
and take out the garbage
feed the cat and FUCK ME
you can do it, I know you can. 

FUCK ME
and theorize about
Sado Masochism's relationship
to classical philosophy
tell me how this stimulates
the fabric of most human relationships,
I love that kind of pointless intellectualism
so do it again and
FUCK ME. 

Stop being logical
stop contemplating
the origins of evil
and the beauty of death
this is not a TV movie about Plato's sex life,
this is FUCK ME
so FUCK ME 

It's the pause that refreshes
just add water and
FUCK ME. 

I wrote this
so I'd have a good excuse to say "FUCK ME"
over and over
and over
so I could get a lot of attention
and look, it worked!
So thank you
thank you
and fuck ME.    

  In the last few years there have been a few moments & few artists in the arts scene that have proven wrong the age-old koan that an artist cannot use the word ‘fuck’ effectively. I’ve done it to great effect in poetry, rock-rappers Limp Bizkit have crafted a number of excellent songs in which the F-word is prominent & the point, & a great, great film- probably the best-written, if not plain best, movie of 1999- South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut showed near-infinite creativity in its deployment. But unlike Limp Bizkit or the movie- Estep makes very poor use of the F-word. Compare here self-referential ‘so I’d have a good excuse to say “FUCK ME”’ pales to some of the permutations Limp Bizkit uses in its killer tune Hotdog: ‘If I say "Fuck", two more times//That's forty six "Fucks" in this fucked up rhyme’. In contrast, Estep’s character garners no sympathy nor humor because it is simply a rant without any revelation of hidden depth. A reader, or audience member, is merely annoyed at such juvenilia. Estep, to be fair, is not only a descendant of the Beatniks, but also of the worst self-indulgent aspects of the grand Confessional divas of the 1950s: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, & Adrienne Rich, with her closest affinity being to the self-indulgent & talent-poor Rich. Neither poet has ever shown any real music, much less Muse. Yet Nuyoricanism has waned in the last 5 or so years, as- indeed- has the whole mid-90s take on poetry, despite Academia’s obsession with shoving bad poetry down our throats during April’s National Poetry Month nonsense. Contemporary poetry has been very anomic of late. But that is not without the efforts of a dedicated band of poetasters who subscribe (or circumscribe?) themselves to another seemingly ‘difficult’ notion which is in reality but an excuse to not have to exercise any critical skills over their writing. These are poets who practice ‘Abstraction’- or so they would have us believe.
  While vague ideas of Abstract poetry have floated around for centuries- some claiming lineage from William Blake, Metaphysical Poets, the Middle Eastern/Subcontinental Mystic Poets of the 10th through 13th centuries, the Skalds of Norse lore, & assorted other strains of poetry throughout the ages- the term itself came to fruition in the 20th century. Symbolists & Surrealists often claimed themselves as dabbling in (lower case a) ‘abstract poetry’. But the capitalized A ‘Abstract Poetry’ of the last 50 or so years can be linked basically in a continuum from Ezra Pound’s garbled & doggerelistic pseudo-epic The Cantos, through Louis Zukofsky’s deadly dull & interminable counterpart A, through the founding of the 1960s poetic movement of Concrete Poetry, or Concretism. Yet even this movement’s origins & aims are in dispute- sense the pattern which seems to unfold about each of these so-called movements? To some poets Concretism is a form of collage in which ‘Found Poetry’ is the nexus. Snippets of words & phrases from real life things as ads, newspaper stories, overheard conversations, & the like, are included. Yet, despite this very countercultural & 1960s stance, the most famous example of a Found Poem is still Marianne Moore’s classic An Octopus- written decades before Found Poetry’s supposed origin. Others merely play with typology- although e.e. cummings, again, predates the movement by decades. Still others insist Concretism is poetry whose shape on the page has import- although, again, preceded by Symbolists as Mallarmé & Nonsense Poet Lewis Carroll by decades, & Metaphysical poets as George Herbert by centuries. Regardless, this coterie insists that ‘reduced language’ is the essence of Concretism. How this differs from Minimalism- the strain of poetry that morphs from William Carlos Williams to Robert Creeley to Larry Eigner- is a matter of debate to approximately 7 living human beings. Yet they are a contentious 7!
  Some claim the term ‘Concrete Poetry’ originates with an obscure Swiss poetaster named Eugen Gomringer- although acolytes of Öyvind Fahlström- a Swedish poetaster, dissent with vehemence. In typical fashion of a movement, however, Gomringer did not call his poetry ‘Concrete’- they were ‘Constellations’- a cribbed term from Mallarmé. These ‘poems’- in very loose terms were noted for 2 basic features- extreme brevity, & occasionally being palindromes- words or sentences that have the exact same sequence of letters whether read forward or backwards. The similarity of this to the movement’s motto (not otto!), ‘form=content/content=form’, is reductivism in the extreme. Note its similarity to the credo of Projectivism as well: ‘FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT’! That these movements all claim ‘new discoveries’ & an experimental nature, even as they shamelessly ape each others claims & posits is 1 of the more humorous aspects of this silly business of poetic theorizing. I will now present 2 of the most famous Concrete poems by Eugen Gomringer. believe me, these are considered evidence of ‘genius’ by the Concretic Horde!:

ping pong
       ping pong ping
       pong ping pong
                      ping pong 

Silencio  

silencio silencio silencio
silencio silencio silencio
silencio             silencio
silencio silencio silencio
silencio silencio silencio    

  No, you did not miss anything. Those are the 2 poems. I swear! That most teenagers’ notebook scribblings display more creativity is a point that is apparently missed by Concretic aesthetes. Concrete Poetry is the ultimate ‘gimmick art’. Compare these to Mallarmé’s or Herbert’s poems which make use of the page, & actually say something beyond the gimmick. These don’t even rate, by comparison. But, let us look at the rationales espoused by the champions of such drivel. The 1st poem is supposed to manifest the genius of capturing the motion of a ping pong ball as it whizzes back & forth over a table tennis net. Well, that’s obvious, so what? Not that it would remove the poem from the ignominy of gimmickry, but Gomringer missed a surefire way to improve this poem & give Concretic theorists an orgasm. Had he moved the word ping, in line 4, 5 spaces rightward it would have been positioned under line 3’s final pong, & line 4’s pong would be vertically alone. The poem would then be a virtual mirror image with all the words, horizontally or vertically, not having any repetition of itself back-to-back. Again, that would not make this Song Of Myself, but it would show a rationale that this sloppy & lazy poem lacks. I will guarantee you that neither Gomringer nor his acolytes ever cogitated upon this, but if any are reading this criticism, I equally guarantee you that they are fast at work with a defense for why Gomringer ‘deliberately’ did not move line 4 over 5 spaces rightward! Thus, the essence of artistic deceit & haughtiness. On to the 2nd poem. 1, I guess can be thankful that unlike later concrete & gimmick poems, this poem stops its gimmick after a mere 5 lines. OK, we get it- by uttering the word we are voiding its definition & sentiment. & the missing silencio in the smack-dab middle of the poem- ah, this MUST be the key! Well, I guess. You see, this symbolizes the subversion of the subversion that speaking the word silencio aloud represents. That these poems & ideas are both the heights of tautology & solipsism is a point never to be reckoned with. But if you think this stuff is pretentious, fuggeddaboudit!
  The champion of poetic pretentiousness has to go to Concrete Poetry’s evil twin- L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry. Here are some of the propagators of this most heinous of literary frauds: Bruce Andrews, Rae Armantrout, Charles Bernstein, Alan Davies, Ray DiPalma, Robert Grenier, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Steve McCaffery, Michael Palmer, Bob Perelman, James Sherry, Ron Silliman, Diane Ward, Barrett Watten, Hannah Weiner, Kit Robinson, Peter Seaton, Steve Benson, David Bromige, & Clark Coolidge. Not a poet of any real talent can be found in this lot. In fact, this most blatant of political movements (moreso, even then the Beatniks- who like their visual counterparts the Pop Artists- could laugh at themselves & the world) is contrived of mostly political ideals & ends being espoused- such as "Let us undermine the bourgeoisie.": Ron Silliman, a member thereof speaking (as well as forever the most idiotic sucker to the 1996 APR/Araki Yasusada hoax, & then quickly retracting after its revelation- more in a later essay)! How they plan to do that with their art, much less any art- well….Of course, this is the old rationale of ‘Intent over Content’ in yet another (yet same) form. Or as Bernstein says in the The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (essays in defense of this tripe): ‘What looks natural about a given poem is actually the result of a number of procedures and assumptions about writing that the author may be more or less conscious of when composing. Those procedures and assumptions are in fact social constructions which have become conventions. Thus most Language poets attempt to remind us of the socially contrived basis of any writing. They do not do so, however, by abandoning modes of writing, for such an action is impossible. Modes cannot be escaped, but they can be taken for granted. They can also be meant.’ Now, if you are experiencing 1 of those DUH! moments, or those moments where you resent being condescended to, you are not alone. This garbage is just an elaborately worded way of stating that Language poets write- yes, just write, although it is different from other writers or poets- because I, the poet, say so!
  Yet, most of this tribe shun the term L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry- no surprise, eh? So removed from any sense of poetry as ‘an act of communication’ are these poets that Silliman wrote in an essay: ‘Gutenberg's moveable type erased gesturality from the graphemic dimension of books. That this in turn functions to alienate the producer from his or her product is tangible even to authors who compose on the typewriter: to see one's text in a new typeface (inevitably asserting different spatio-visual values) is almost as radical a shock as first seeing oneself on film or videotape, or initially hearing one's voice remarkably other on a tape recorder.’ Note the total absence of focus on the writing ITSELF! Bigwordthrowingarounding abounds in this clique. Here are some Bernstein beauts in that mode: 'dysraphism...a congenital misseaming of embryonic parts’ & ‘provisional limits’. This obfuscation & pedantry is all-too typical of Language poets &, in truth, all movementists. & it is all designed as rationalales for bad poetry- would as much time & effort be devoted to the poetry as to the theorizing & something novel & excellent might result. But have the Languagists ever declared a Manifesto? Damned straight!- in 1988: Language Poetry is ‘the activity which blurs the distinction between reader and writer, poet and critic', & shares a 'deep disinterest in poetics of identity’’. The last bit being a broadside at the Nuyorican/PC Elitist ilk. That neither group has produced, nor seems capable of producing a poet whose verse will last more than a few years before it is seen as tripe is not acknowledged by either side. But a deep disinterest in identity? Total bullshit. The very thrust of Languagists is that ‘we, poor suburban Whities with no talent nor impetus to produce great poetry will mope & foist our rationalized word game crap upon you, the reader- & nothing else.’ That is the key to the whole Language Poetry movement- just to be published- without having any effect at all. The fact that this is really the rationale of all poets who cling to -isms, well- the obvious slips by alot of folks! On to some poems &/or vivisections: