Aaron McCollough

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More thoughts on the “American Poem”

Posted on June 4, 2007 - Filed Under | 1 Comment

Continuing, casually, to ponder my sense of an “American” poem (viz. Robert’s conclusion on its conceptual irrelevance). I have to say that thinking about / talking about / writing the american poem is thinking about / talking about / writing in relation to weltanschauung. Thus, it is a generic matter as much as anything. The genre in question, however, is determined principally by an (notice I say “an” rather than “the”) american view of life. The american weltanschauung, as I understand it, is extremely labile, but it is informed in large part by the documented and perceived philosophies of the nation’s constitutional framers as well as various commentators, agents provocateur, etc. interested in the humanist/enlightenment project of the “early” nation. Undoubtedly, that project was sewn with and on innumerable flaws. The literary anchor of it (the constitution as “living document”), however, is key and, in its own transcendental way, beyond reproach. The fact that constitutional amendment has proven less-realized-than-imagined (not to mention the fact that the “fathers” were all white guys with white guy interests) is unfortunate for this story, but american constitutional democracy is nevertheless a beautiful and remarkable concept that has continued to exert influence on the culture and psychic fabric of the “place.”

When I say the “American Poem” is about weltanschauung, then, it is that rather nebulous territory I’m talking about. I’m also talking about the bizarre, often terrible, but also sometimes wonderful overdetermined semiosis that is Capital’s linguistic cousin. America didn’t invent capitalism, but it surely turned it into an art form (the economic equivalent of the duende Lorca prizes so much in Spanish bullfighting, perhaps).

Not only is the “American Poem” relevant, it is obligatory. It must be written. Not as any kind of uncomplicated encomiastic political act, but as a way of navigating and negotiating with a powerful spirit (sometimes unforgivably malignant) playing on and in our lives as inhabitants of a late-capitalist world. If there are kernels of good and even revolutionary practice lodged in there somewhere (and I believe there are), then we have to care about “American” poetics.

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