Fence, GC Waldrep, Language Poetry

I finally got my copy of Fence Magazine V11 N1 via their In Rainbows-esque offer in April. I haven’t been excited by much of the poetry in it so far (although Stacey Richter’s… poem(?) “Yes or No,” a list of Yes, Nos and Maybes of writing was funny: “YES: Characteres with novel methods of getting themselves excused from gym class. Staring at the sun, chugging Windex, bug inserted in ear. NO: No use of the word “orb.”)

But, in an excerpt from Sarah Rosenthal’s anthology called A Community Writing Itself: Conversations With Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area there is a definition of Language Poetry that I thought really hit the nail on the head in terms of its conciseness, understandability, and literary jargonlessness: 

“The Language poets viewed the coherent ego as a mental construct rather than an absolute truth. Further, they felt that this construct could serve as a kind of narcotic. By focusing the poem on personal matters of the psyche, poet and reader could collude to avoid the urgent problems of the world and their own implications in those problems.”

Also, I finished GC Waldrep’s chapbook of poetry called One Way No Exit, published by Tarpaulin Sky. The book is unique because its bound together by metal screws instead of thread, but the poetry itself didn‘t interest me because of its ekphrastic nature: they’re based on photographs by Peter Rathmann and the narrative constantly reminds the reader of it. For me, this drew me out of the book.

There were, though, a couple of lines that really struck me and drove me to respect the poems even though it isn’t my preferred “genre” of poetry:

From “XXII: Snow Hill, Maryland 1989:”

Art about buildings & food is always really about music.
Say you’re driving along the Eastern Shore with the radio blaring
and suddenly you’re hungry and it’s summer and ahead of you
at the edge of the four-lane mirage
you spy a drive-in–THICK SHAKES! GOOD FOOD!–
and being American you try very hard not to thing of words like architecture
so as to concentrate more completely on your hunger, on the Buick you drive… 
but really it’s the music you hear
and it’s the music you keep hearing when at last you pull off the macadam
only to discover that the place is closed and looks as if it has been
for what passes in these parts for a long time. 

One Way No Exit does not generally use complex language, but reads like a directive through Rathmann’s photography without physical cues, only Waldrep’s verbal ones. I would have liked the book better if this awareness of an outside source had been removed.