[Wgcp-whc] WG/CP--minutes & Rachel Back visit this Fri (10/5

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

Dear All,

I would like to send extended minutes of our preliminary discussion of the work
of poet/scholar/ translator Rachel Tzvia Back.  However, since we are having
another meeting this Friday in which Rachel Back will join us I will instead
send along the questions that arose in our discussion and that I have forwarded
to Rachel.

Additionally I can say that our discussion touched on extremely important and
complex issues of poetry and the ethics of representation of occupation and
colonization, which is at the core of Back's book On Ruins and Return ,and
(obscure as it may sound) the representation of representation--in the form of
cultural myths and images as well as journalism, reportage, and poetic acts of
witness.  What happens, for instance, when one set of images is transposed from
one historical and cultural context to another (as in Back's use of the buffalo
and her placement of this animal as a trope within the milieu of
Israeli-Palestinian situation).  Also, in what ways can lyric subjectivity--and
in Back's work the I is consistent and a constellating, mediating force that
bears witness, negotiates experience, and presents a view of that experience

We also discussed the ways that Back's work presses the lines and distinctions
of political and lyric poetry, showing the limitations and the opportunities of
both.  She also puts political and historical contexts in dialogue with the
domestic, which in itself may be construed as a politico-aesthetic act.

We also discussed formal questions in terms of Back's more straightforward lyric
and the work of Susan Howe.  Back has written extensively on Howe and sees
Howe's formal negotiations as working against authorized versions of history to
court both the silence of the Other and in recognizing that silenced Other
discover that repressed self that emerges to meet the silence.  In that way, we
discussed the role of poetry's formal negotiations and their role in
representing or divining the past as well as the fraught space of the present
tense.


Here I'll past the last 2 paragraphs of a short introduction that Back has
written for an anthology entitled _Poems from With an Iron Pen:
Hebrew Protest Poetry 1984?2004_.  The claims she makes about contributors
sheds light on her own poetics and beliefs in poetry's role in engaging the
realities of historical situations.

***

The female voice in this anthology is represented by 12 poets whose powerful
imagery and language forbid our looking away from the crimes, and the resulting
scars, of the Occupation. From the violence which has permeated body and soul as
represented in Falah's deceptively simple "Thursday at Angel's Bakery" and "The
Night After the Surgeries," to the dramatic and searing memory of a house
demolition in Amir's "Retinal Tear"? from the hopelessness of watching what
might have been a temporary situation become embedded in one's society as
expressed in Falah's "Then We Didn't Yet Know" ("Then we didn't yet know/ that
the Occupation would be forever") to the despair of an impossible affiliation
with and attraction to an "infected" homeland in Kaplan's "(In Reply to the
Question What Are You Still Doing Here)"?the poetry of these protesting women
examines the dark crevices of the Occupation.

The majority of the poems in the anthology?including those of Amir, Falah and
Kaplan?have never before been published in English translation. As a result,
the English-speaking world has been left with the impression that Israeli poets
are silent or supportive of Israeli policy in the occupied territories. In a
desire to refute this impression and make these assertive and moving poems of
protest available outside the borders of Israel, the Hebrew editor Tal Nitzan
and English editor Rachel Tzvia Back are now working to publish this anthology
in an English-language edition. Jewish communities in particular need to hear
Israeli poets speak out, not in rejection of Israel but in horror at the
atrocities committed by the Israeli government toward the Palestinian people as
a consequence of the post-1967 occupation.

It is in the belief that a poetic voice can penetrate and influence places where
a theoretical or political voice cannot, and it is with the conviction that
poetry may, in Susan Sontag's words, "?open up avenues of compassion? and
remind us that we might, just might, aspire to be different, and better, than
we are,"1 that these translations of the protest poems by Amir, Falah and
Kaplan were crafted and are now presented here.  (from Bridges: A Jewish
Feminist Journal 11.2 (2006) 58)
***


I'll paste the questions below (and apologies in advance for those ?s that
appear when cutting and pasting--anyone with advice about how to prevent that
glitch do let me know--) and urge anyone interested in joining us this Friday
to do so--and of course we welcome visitors and so forth.

"The Working Group in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics meets every other Friday
at 3.00 PM in room 116 at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University to
discuss problems and issues of contemporary poetry within international
alternative and /or avant-garde traditions of lyric poetry. All are welcome to
attend."


Exit, stage left,

Richard Deming, Co-coordinator



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Questions

N. B. the "you" = Rachel Back

Your work seems to be addressing the issue of place.  How is place different
from space?  How has your situation in Israel shaped that understanding of
place?how does it differ from an American sense of place?  How does poetry
participate in the understanding of place?


We noted that your work address or engages what are often seen as three
different poetic modes: the domestic, the political, and the lyrical?  In what
ways is this a conscious blurring of modes and how do you conceive of these
different traditions of poetry?  Do you see it (the conflation) as having
radical implications?

Are there special pressures on an American born poet living in Israel to engage
in political discourse by way of poetry?


In On Ruins and Return, you blur together myths, history, and reportage from
both the U.S. and Israel (and Palestine).  In many ways, the work investigates
the fluidity and the hard and fast reality of these situations and the
identities that spring form them.  Thus, do you see yourself as an American, as
Israeli or as American-Israeli (especially since the answer will give a sense of
your subject position in terms of the historically events and situations you
write about).


Could you say something about proximity to the violent events that are described
in On Ruins and Return. Given your emphasis on the ?grace of accuracy? the
fact that some of the descriptions of events come by way of reportage and the
news (rather than direct confrontation).  If we see your work as being a kind
of poetry of witness, what role does the media?s meditation play in how one
reads that witnessing?

How does she discover the veracity of reportage and in what ways does the form
participate in them?

Given your being in a sense part of two different cultures, could you describe
the ways that the reactions in Israel are different and similar to the
responses in the US?

In what ways do your formal negotiations approach and depart from the work of
Susan Howe?

We discussed the ways that your work seems to negotiate different poetic modes. 
 How does politics enter into poetry? Can political material become lyric and
retain its efficacy? How much can a poem be direct in the ways that political
activism must be and still be lyric or aesthetic? What is the role of the lyric
in negotiating politics.


In Led by Language you use an epigraph from Susan Howe that reads: ?historical
imagination gathers in the missing.?  In your poems, how do you invoke or
describe a missing?  How do you (or do you) see your own poetry as posing a
challenge to ?the structure of authority under which poetry has been
written? (quoting from your citation of Naylor).

A related question would be: how does On Ruins and Return stand in terms of
avant-garde poetics?  Is this a concern for you?

How does your scholarship inform your poetry and your poetry inform your
scholarship?