【原创翻译】诗歌创作关门大吉：南辕北辙的诗人和诗评家们

莫笑愚

【原创译文】诗歌创作关门大吉：南辕北辙的诗人和诗评家们  

诗歌创作关门大吉：南辕北辙的诗人和诗评家们

作者：大卫.拜斯皮尔；翻译：莫笑愚

        在最后一分钟疯狂的电话、抨击、以及在推特和脸书上大放厥词之后，诗人和诗评家们昨晚未能就最近的关于“诗歌死了”的尖刻攻击打破僵局，使得美国诗界濒临历史上第一次关门大吉。

        这个僵局意味着成千上万的美国诗人不得不临时下岗，而超过数百万人被要求停止诗歌创作或者无薪写诗。美国诗歌基金会、美国诗人学会、美国诗歌协会、桂冠诗人办公室、以及美国作家协会在临近午夜最后期限时联合发出通告，“由于诗歌缺乏音乐感，诗人们现在应当开始执行有序关门计划”。

        在一系列短促的互相攻讦之后，愤怒的“诗歌毫无音乐感”的诗评家们与困惑的诗人们经过一整天也未能找到解决办法。美国的诗人们在周二上午早早了结了他们的诗歌创作，关掉笔记本电脑。来自全国各地的报告还报道了许多诗歌失眠症患者的一宿酣眠。《诗歌》杂志的编辑唐.谢尔认为声称“诗歌死了”的诗评家们不过是在玩游戏，以便开始有关谈判。

       他说： “我们不会回到用枪指着我们脑袋写诗的日子。我们的音乐是我们的音乐是我们的音乐。”他以此作为对格特鲁德.斯泰因的呼应，并且要求诗评家们在谈判开始之前，接受为期六周的、不对诗歌写作主题和风格加以任何限制的临时方案。

        反当代诗人的诗评家们和诗人们在过去寻找相互理解的过程中屡次近乎失败却总能在最后一分钟达成协议，从而避免了对新诗创作和诗歌服务上的干扰。

        在最后期限到来之前的几个小时，诗评家们就诗歌创作“作为期一年延迟”的新计划进行了投票表决，该计划要求诗人们除了用他们认为的最佳语序写下他们认为的最美词汇之外还要做更多。这一建议将拒绝对诗人、打油诗写手、诗歌匠人、俳句写手、码字能手、韵律散文家、以及后现代诗人支付津贴。

        但是几分钟后，诗人们用不着争论就否决了诗评家们的提议，并且将上述为期六周的临时方案旋即交给了对方，并且其中不含美学要件。这天的早一些时候，美国的诗人们花了不到25分钟时间召集诗人并处理诗评家们的“诗歌需要更多音乐元素”的提议。

        “他们已经失去了理智。”在分发诗评家们的建议之前，约耶丽.麦克斯温尼说。“他们一直试图一遍又一遍地做同样的事情。”

        而后，美国诗歌界到午夜基本上濒临诗歌枯竭，尽管据信W.S. 默文被允许每天照旧写作17首诗歌。

        “你工作却得不到报酬”，两任桂冠诗人娜塔莎.特丽丝薇在国会图书馆说。当时正值午夜前夕。特丽丝薇女士致电给《缺乏音乐美的当代诗歌》一书的作者阿瑟.克里斯图尔，后者的持续21个小时的诗歌克星风暴促成了今天的诗歌大关门，不过他们交谈不到10分钟，并且毫无进展。

        “我今晚与桂冠诗人谈过了，”诗评家克里斯图尔在《教育纪事》杂志编辑部办公室说。他把桂冠诗人特丽丝薇的观点总结为：“我不准备谈判。我不准备谈判。”他进而补充说，他认可使用她的抑扬格、排比、和重复修辞，并且感到事情仍然有希望。

        认为诗歌死了的批评家们中最热心的保守派关于看到他们对诗歌的宣战达致不可避免的结论不抱希望，而关门大吉可以测试诗人和他们的读者对文学批评的容忍程度。

        诗评家联盟中的裂缝却在扩大为挫折的裂隙。

        来自科罗拉多州的诗人兼诗评家大卫.梅森说：“你有这么一群口口声声说诗歌死了的人”，“如果你不是恰如其分地跟随他们的计划，只写那些他们想要听到的，相反多多少少赞成自由诗，那就有点过时了。”

        “让诗歌艺术在这样的问题上关门大吉太弱智了。”他接着说。

        事情具有相当的不确定性，如果关门大吉持续一段时间，诗评家们能否在坚持让诗歌界作出让步上保持团结一致是个问题。当被问及诗评家能否抱团坚持到一周结束时，刚刚加入反诗歌阵营的诗评家马克.埃德蒙顿森回答说：“我不知道。我不知道。”

        周一一大早，在紧随周末休息结束之后，诗人们投票封杀了诗评家早先的计划。诗人们随即提交给诗评家们一个提议，要求保持诗歌界的存活直至11月15日，并且不设任何审美要求。

        但是批评家们不接受这项提议，再次要求显著增加诗歌中和谐的音乐要素，以此作为保持诗歌存活的代价。

        谢尔先生痛斥了克里斯图尔先生并指责他一个人应当为诗歌关门负责。“我们的谈判结束了。”他说。

        谢尔先生继续说道：“你知道，你不能听任批评家随意扇你耳光，因为他们今天随意掌括你，明天就会扇你五六次耳光。”“我们不会被批评家随意欺负。”

        除了批评克里斯图尔先生之外，谢尔先生还严厉指责了他称之为“香蕉诗歌理念”的诗评家。

        作为其最后的行动之一，批评家们号召诗人们创作诗歌而不拿任何基金会或政府的补贴。诗人们说批评家们受最极端的因素驱动，利用美国的中流期刊诸如《哈珀斯》和《教育纪事》来获得诗歌界的让步，而他们绝不可能通过传统的文学步骤来赢得这些。“在我们有权利（写作）期间的稀缺之事是（事情）没有一个明确的结尾。”诗人麦克斯威尼通过他的脸书发布了这种言论。


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注：大卫.拜斯皮尔是美国当代诗人，出版有5本诗集。本文由作者于2013年10月9日发表在http://therumpus.net/上。原文链接：http://therumpus.net/2013/10/dav ... tics-fail-to-agree/



附英文原文：

Poetry Shutdown Begins – Poets and Critics Fail to Agree

By David Biespiel, October 9th, 2013

A flurry of last-minute phone calls, philippics, tweets, and Facebook posts by poets and critics late last night failed to break a bitter standoff over the latest poetry-is-dead attacks, setting in motion the first poetry shutdown in the history of American poetry.

The impasse meant that hundreds of thousands of American poets were to be furloughed and more than a million others would be ask to stop writing poems altogether or to write poems without pay. The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, office of the Poet Laureate, and the AWP jointly issued orders shortly before the midnight deadline that “poets should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of music in their poems.”

After a series of rapid-fire back and forth haikus, the angry, poetry-has-no-music critics and bewildered poets ended the day with no resolution. The nation’s poets ended their po-biz early Tuesday morning, turning off their laptops. Reports across the nation included a night of sleep for poetry’s many insomniacs. Don Share, editor of Poetry, dismissed as game-playing the poetry-is-dead critics’ proposal to begin negotiations.

“We will not go back to writing poems with a gun to our heads. Our music is our music is our music,” he said, echoing Gertrude Stein, and demanding that the critics accept a six-week stopgap poetry writing period which has no restrictions on subject or style, before negotiations begin.

Anti-contemporary poet critics and poets had come close to failing to find mutual understanding in the past but had always reached a last-minute agreement to head off a disruption in new poems and poetry services.

In the hours leading up to the deadline, the critics voted for approval of a new plan to tie further poetry writing to a one-year delay in a requirement that poets do more than write their best words in their best order. The proposal would deny subsidies to poets, poetasters, tinkerers, haikuists, meter-makers, versifiers, and would-be postmodernists.

But minutes later, and with almost no debate, the poets killed the critics’ proposal and sent the stopgap measure right back, free of aesthetic prescriptions. Earlier in the day, America’s poets had taken less than 25 minutes to convene and dispose of a poetry-with-more-music proposal by critics.

“They’ve lost their minds,” Joyelle McSweeney said, before disposing of the critics’ proposal. “They keep trying to do the same thing over and over again.”

American poetry was then left essentially to run out of poems at midnight, although it was understood that W.S. Merwin would be allowed to write 17 poems a day per usual.

“You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job,” second term poet laureate Natasha Trethewey said in front of the Library of Congress as the clock ticked to midnight. Ms. Trethewey called Arthur Krystal, author of “The Missing Music in Today’s Poetry,” whose 21 hour poetry-buster precipitated the poetry shutdown, but they spoke for less than 10 minutes, without any sign of progress.

“I talked to the poet laureate tonight,” critic Krystal said from the floor of the Chronicle of Education editorial offices. He summed up laureate Trethewey’s remarks as: “I’m not going to negotiate. I’m not going to negotiate.” He added he approved of the use of her trochees, parallelism, and rhetorical repetition, and felt there was hope.

The poetry-is-dead critics most ardent conservatives were resigned to seeing through their war on poetry to its inevitable conclusion, a shutdown that could test both poets and readers’ patience with literary critics.

Cracks in the critic alliance were opening into fissures of frustration.

“You have this group that keeps saying poetry is dead,” said David Mason of Colorado, a poet-critic, “If you’re not with exactly their plan, exactly what they want to hear, then you’re somehow for free verse, and it’s just getting a little old.”

“It’s moronic to shut down the art of poetry over this,” he continued.

It was far from certain that critics could remain unified on their insistence on poetry concessions if a shutdown lasts for some time. Asked whether critics could hold together through the end of the week, Mark Edmundson, one of the most recent anti-poetry critics, answered: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Earlier Monday, poets voted to kill the previous critic-based plan immediately after ending a weekend break. Poets then sent the critics’ proposal to keep poetry alive through November 15 without aesthetic prescriptions.

But critics would have none of it, again demanding a significant increase in the harmonic musical features of poetry as a price for keeping poetry alive.

Mr. Share laid into Mr. Krystal and put the blame for the shutdown solely on his shoulders. “Our negotiation is over with,” he said.

“You know with a critic you cannot let them slap you around, because they slap you around today, they slap you five or six times tomorrow,” Mr. Share continued. “We are not going to be bullied by critics.”

In addition to criticizing Mr. Krystal, Mr. Share excoriated what he called the “banana poetics mind-set” of the critics.

In one of their final moves, critics called for poets to write poetry without any foundation or government subsidies. Poets say critics are being driven by the most extreme elements to use America’s middle brow periodicals such as Harper’s and the Chronicle of Education to extract concessions on poetry that they could not win through the traditional literary process. “The scary thing about the period we’re in right now is there is no clear end,” said McSweeney, one poet with a Facebook account who is not afraid to use it.

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David Biespiel is the author of five collections of poetry: Charming Gardeners, The Book of Men and Women, Wild Civility, Pilgrims & Beggars, and Shattering Air.

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