The Holloway Series in Poetry - Caroline Bergvall

[nizorel]

you're using an irrelevant (needless to say outdated?) critical approach to engage with Bergvall's largely conceptual poetics. Regardless of whether or not the thematic content of her poetry is "ugly," maybe vulgar is more apt, understand that she's politically relevant and plays with language in a shockingly original/provocative way, which under another rubric is quite beautiful

[KhagarBalugrak]

I'm sorry to see that you people are so brainwashed that you actually think this stuff is good. I know how things work at schools these days - only the ugly and the banal and the disjunct are allowed - but you guys need to resist that. Stop writing this mind-jarring garbage and produce something beautiful. If you do not, if you meekly conform all your life, you will never achieve anything that gives you wholesome satisfaction.

[nizorel]

@KhagarBalugrak yeah... Bergvall's really quite the conformist. If only she had the audacity to "produce something beautiful."

????

[KhagarBalugrak]

@nizorel, at one part in one of Bergvall's poems, she talks about a girl ejaculating into her hand. Is that really a beautiful image? Or is it ugly, pornographic and crude? Clearly, the latter is true. And yes, Bergvall is a conformist. Everybody in college is forced to write ugly poems like these. This kind of poetry isn't about individual expression, but about it's negation and perversion.

[KhagarBalugrak]

@nizorel, and yes, Bergvall lacks the audacity to produce something beautiful, as well as the necessary intellectual honesty to allow herself to recognize ugliness and beauty in poetry. Writing something beautiful, whatever your professors may have told you, is not cliche in the least. Ugliness is cliche, because it's very narrow in scope, and limited to violence, pornographic images, bodily waste, and hatred. Beauty encompasses nearly everything, from love to joy to sadness.