P=L=A=T=H POLITICS

P=L=A=T=H POLITICS
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1. What would a LangPo—
Approach to Sylvia Plath
Be like in regard to today’s
Gendered readings and
Revisionist texts?
________________________

“What remains is to fully
bring Plath’s poetics into
the framework of the same
cultural logics that produced
The New American Poets—
think of Ginsberg’s A
Supermarket in California,
for instance”
—Barrett Watten,
“Sylvia Plath’s Collage,”
Entry 06 Jan 16 2010

http://barrettwatten.net/tag/sylvia-plath/
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2. What would such a gay
Revisionist text look like
Going beyond Ginsberg’s
“A Supermarket in
California” & The New
American Poets?
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“I prefer poems in
anthologies to poems
in individual books.
A poem in an anthology
has forgotten its author.
It receives coaching
From things next to it
that probably don’t like
or can’t understand it.”
—Tan Lin, “Ambient
Stylistics,” Telling It
Slant: Avant-Garde
Poetics of the 1990s
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3. How bitchy & negative
Would such a revised
LangPo Arielesque poem
Look like—or would it
Begin back with Colossus?
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"Language writing, and
revisionist contextual
and gendered readings
have opened up Plath’s
poetics, allowing one to
see her negativity as
critical and cultural,
not simply formal and
expressive."
—Barrett Watten
“Sylvia Plath’s Collage,”
Entry 06 Jan 16 2010
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4. What’s the difference
Between Plath in the ‘60s
And Plath now that goes
Beyond “A Supermarket
In California” and her
Eisenhower political
Collage that Watten
And Rose discuss?

http://barrettwatten.net/tag/sylvia-plath/
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“More and more
relentlessly, the objective
environment of human
beings is coming to
wear the expression of
commodity. At the same
time, advertising seeks
to disguise the commodity
character of things.”
—Walter Benjamin,
“Central Park,” Essays
on Charles Baudelaire
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5. Is Benjamin’s path-breaking
Work in the theory of media
Relevant to this new Plath (“The
Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technological Reproducibility”)?
____________________________

“The commercialization and
final alienation of the intelligentsia
subsumed by commodification
and fashion; the replacement of
experience by the new concept
of information.”
—Walter Benjamin,
“Introduction,” Essays
on Charles Baudelaire
_____________

6. Are Sylvia Plath and—
Charles Baudelaire both
Lyric poets in an Era of
High Late Capitalism?
If so, so what?
______________

“From the littérateur to
the professional conspirator,
everyone who belonged to
the bohème could recognize
a bit of himself in the
ragpicker. Each person was
in a more or less blunted
stage of revolt against
society and faced a more or
less precarious future.”
—Walter Benjamin,
“Charles Baudelaire: “A
Lyric Poet in the Era of High
Capitalism,” Essays on
Charles Baudelaire
____________________

7. The Blogosphere & Internet—
Seem to be new aspects of
The Guttenberg Revolution,
Corresponding to the form of
New means of production?
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“The new is permeated with
the old, each epoch dreams
the one to follow. These images
are wish images—in them the
collective seeks to overcome
and transfigure the immaturity
of the social product and the
inadequacies in the social
organization of production.”
—Walter Benjamin,
“Paris: The Capitol of the
Nineteenth Century,” Essays
on Charles Baudelaire
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8. Is the Internet—
And Blogosphere poetics
Simply a new feuilleton?
________________________

“Balzac was the first to speak
of the ruins of the bourgeoisie.
But it was Surrealism that first
Opened our eyes to them. The
Development of the forces of
Production shattered the wish
Symbols of the previous century
Even before the monuments
Representing them had
Collapsed. Literature submits
To montage in the feuilleton.”
—Walter Benjamin,
“Paris: The Capitol of the
Nineteenth Century,” Essays
on Charles Baudelaire
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9. How would Plath—
Author “Colossus” and
“Ariel” today in regard to
The New Feuilleton? How
Would Ginsberg to the
Same with “A Supermarket
In California”?
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“For a century and a half,
the literary life of the day
had been centered around
journals. Toward the end
of the third decade of the
century, this began to
change. The Feuilleton
provided a market for
belles-lettres in the
daily newspaper.”
—Walter Benjamin,
“Paris: The Capitol of the
Nineteenth Century,” Essays
on Charles Baudelaire
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The Feuilleton today—
Baudelaire like a connoisseur
Of narcotics, commodities
Deriving the same effect
From the crowd that surged
Then as now, intoxicated
By the Internet, epitomizing
The changes when both the
July & Guttenberg Revolutions
With the Blogosphere began
Assimilating the man of letters
So that once the writer enters
The marketplace, he looks around
As if in a digital panorama,
Porno & prostitution flaring up,
Flickering on the Vide-screen,
Like an anthill opening up its
Outlets, everywhere following
A devious path, like an enemy
Bent on a surprise attack, it
Stirs at the heart of the city
Of mire like a worm that takes
Its food from the Crowd