April 26: I wrote the following as a reply to a blog enter at G. M. Palmer's blog, strongverse:
I have too many comments--mostly negative, I'm afraid--to try to put them into any coherent order.
1. It's highly unlikely that you composed visual poetry with panache at the age of 15. Saying so makes you sound like the idiots who claim a child could equal Jackson Pollock.
2. Basing a classification of schools of poetry on "the school of quietude" is foolish because the latter's lack of anything near a responsible definition. Moreover, it seems to cover too diverse a confusion of poetries, basically any kind that Ron Silliman fails to sympathize with.
3. Renaming "the school of quietude" "oral poetry" is absurd because much of Silliman's poetry is oral, in your sense, as is much of language poetry, which he contrasts to "the school of quietude." And what about performance poetry and sound poetry, both of which are entirely oral, and neither of which anyone considers "school of quietude" poetry that I know of? What about political poetry, and what I call contra-genteel poetry, neither of which is quiet.
4. At least as silly is calling poetry not in "the school of quietude" visual poetry. Much of it is lyrical and thus, for Silliman, would have to be considered in "the school of quietude." Visual poetry is a narrow sort of poetry--too narrow to call one of the two major kinds of poetry.
5. I divide poetries many ways, for instance, into knownstream poetry and otherstream poetry, the first kind being poetry just about every member of a college English department will be familiar with, the second poetry few in any such department will know more than the name of, it that. Poetry published in bigCirc magazines, discussed by the name critics, taught in colleges, given prizes, etc., versus poetry rarely published anywhere except in micro-zines or on the Internet, only mentioned by name critics sneeringly and briefly, taught or even mentioned in few colleges, and hardly ever awarded prizes.
6. My formal taxonomy of poetry begins with linguaesthetic and pluraesthetic poetry. This division, ironically, has points somewhat in common with yours inasmuch as linguaesthetic poetry would include your oral poetry since it is all poetry that is linguistically aesthetic only, whereas the main member of the pluraesthetic poetry group is visual poetry, pluraesthetic poetry being poetry making significant use of more expressive modalities than the verbal.
7. Thanks for starting this discussion however I disagree with what you said. I'm all for any attempt to classify poetry.
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I should add that for me both the sound of words and their appearance on a piece of paper or computer screen is linguistic--lingui-auditory and linguivisual. As I have previously ordained, how words sound (as words) is not auditory but sub-auditory. Similarly, how they look (as words) is sub-visual.
And now to a taxonomy of knowledge, alpha, beta, gamma, delta and omega. Omega knowledge is the lowest kind: ordinary things, poorly defined or undefined, verbally, and their ad hoc names. Delta knowledge is omega knowledge with reasonably competent verbal definitions added. Gamma knowledge is delta knowledge plus named groups of things, reasonably defined (verbally)--typology. Beta knowledge is taxonomical knowledge: systematic groupings of things. Alpha knowledge is of taxonomized groupings. For instance, my taxonomy of poetry is beta knowledge; my theory of psychology, which includes my theory of aesthetics, which includes my taxonomy of poetry, is alpha knowledge.
There's also alpha squared knowlege, which is the systematic knowledge of everything. The ultimate goal.
I think most people aren't even aware of alpha knowledge; they may not even be aware of beta knowledge; certainly they make little or no use of the latter. My greatest problem in life may be my inability to be satisfied with any kind of knowledge less than beta knowledge. For one thing, it makes me too intolerant of those satisfied with gamma knowledge--or even less.
Needless to say, valid delta knowledge is superior to invalid alpha knowledge (and I consider both valid and invalid knowledge to be knowledge)
Note: no definition can be perfect, but a reasonable one will be close enough for the rational, if not for the nullinguists.
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