Frankenstein vs. the World

On Friday Thom Donovan posted a lovely, compelling rejoinder to some of the recent calls that seem to be in the air (this one, for instance) for a “return” to negative criticism in the poetry world. He writes:

Criticism, not unlike poetry and art, for me should be an art of the potential that intermixes desire with conscience. Criticism recalls Baruch Spinoza’s basic proposition: “we have not yet determined what a body can do.” By engaging poetry, poetry criticism engages the limits of what the poem as an expression of culture or embodiment can do.

Alongside con/crescent press and Elective Affinities, Thom happily mentions Wild Orchids as a recent bearer of an affirmative criticism, and closes his post by citing a long and beautiful passage from A Thousand Plateaus.

Although Sean & I dispensed with the formality of writing a proper editors’ introduction to the inaugural issue of WO (opting instead for a pair of disparate epigraphs — from Lorine Niedecker and F. Nietzsche — we thought were adequately evocative), Thom is right-on that I had Deleuze in mind when thinking of the journal. I have always loved Rosi Braidotti’s gloss of Deleuze’s critical ethos-style, which I’ll toss in here to resound with the great material Thom’s written:

Nomadic, rhizomatic thinking offers simultaneously a point of exit from the linguistic-semiotic vicious circles of absence and negativity, and also an empowerment of affective and unconscious forces as active, expressive, productive. At the heart of nomadology is a positive reading of the human as a positive, pleasure-prone machine capable of all sorts of empowering forces. It is just a question of establishing the most positive possible connections and resonances. . . . This intense positivity marks Deleuze’s conceptual style, his refusal to engage in negative criticism for its own sake and to act instead from positive and empowering relationships to the texts and authors he engages with. Ethics here is closely linked to high intellectual understanding and the quality of one’s intellect. This is the Nietzschean aspect of philosophical nomadology, which stresses that the ethical dimension is a combination of genius and humbleness. The latter entails a sort of impersonality, which could be mistaken for a universalizing faculty, but is really just a cognitive brand of empathy, or intense affinity. It is the capacity for compassion, which combines the power of understanding with the force to endure in sympathy with a people, all of humanity or civilization. It is an extra-personal and a trans-personal capacity, which should be driven away from any universalism and grounded instead in the radical immanence of a sense of belonging to and being accountable for a community, a people, a territory. Nietzsche put it ever so wittily: ‘a good writer possesses not only his mind, but also the mind of his friends.’ (Transpositions, Polity 2006, 178-9; Nietzsche fr. Human, All Too Human, Penguin 1994, 119)

For me, the tail end of this quote drives right to the heart of what is so vital and cool about Thom, Michael Cross, and Kyle Schlesinger’s own critical journal, ON Contemporary Practice: a sensibility for friendship itself as a potential critical model, and a desire to think, collectively, in-step with the present.

An interesting exception to my own enduring affection for positive criticism that’s always provoked me is my huge fandom for Jim Behrle’s irreverent & hysterical comics. While overwhelmingly “negative” in the sense that they offered mercilessly harsh critiques of what ended up seeming like everyone in the poetry world, I think what pulled me in to Behrle’s negative invectives was a certain kind of extreme energy and love (for poetry, for community, for laughs) that I sensed was behind the whole thing. They certainly aren’t guilty of the austere humorlessness that characterizes the worst brands of negative criticism. Also, I always admired the sort of reckless abandon with which Jim seemed to spin the comics off, completely unconcerned to maintain any semblance of polite decorum that might somehow help his own “poetry career” (ha-ha).

Ultimately I think my allergy for negative criticism has to do with negativity’s entanglement with two terrible passions I like/hope to keep a distance from, narcissism and paranoia, and I think Jim’s comics were brilliant because they pulled off negative critiques that managed not to reek of either. Here are a few from years ago I liked so much I saved:

In any case, thanks to Thom for a wonderful post!