A Not-So-Authoritative, But Nevertheless Authentic Word on Performance

I'm working under the assumption right now that, since I signed up to instigate on 1/26, and we're now talking about the reading from 1/19 on 1/26, that I'm instigating. So here we go.

Question 1: What's the difference between a “reading” and a “performance”? (The answer to this seems simple, but the more I read, the more I realize that some theorists use the terms interchangeably, while others—like Maria Damon—seem to differentiate. Either way, I'd like to leave this one open-ended.)

Question 2: According to Jerome Rotthenberg in “How We Came into Performance,” one of the “paradigms” of poetry performance in the 1960s and 1970s was to debunk hierarchies. He writes, “[T]here is no hierarchy of media in the visual arts, no hierarchy of instrumentation in music, and that qualitative distinctions between high and low genres and mode (opera and vaudeville, high rhetoric and slang) are no longer operational...” (10). Can we still say this is true, particularly in consideration of Maria Damon's defense of poetry slams? Furthermore, how can we reconcile both popular and academic (mis)conceptions about the difference between poetry as “art” (avante-garde, experimental, socially-driven) and poetry as “entertainment” (mass-produced, pop-culture-driven, scantily engaged by academic criticism)? The answer to this is, I think, extremely complicated.

First of all, some of Rothenberg's other “paradigms” seem to skirt the problem with number 3—no masterpieces—number 4—art for the sake of use, rather than just art—and number 5—process takes importance over produced work (11). Each of these opens up the possibility of a whole slew of variations on a given text, and yet, none of them breaks down what Dennis Tedlock calls the “fetishization of verbatim quotation” (187). Even my quoting Tedlock here is participating in that process of over-aggrandizing the written word, as it “belongs” to a writer.

And so, by way of a “second of all,” I'd also like to posit that BOTH academics and the general populous are partially at fault for perpetuating the hierarchical system of poetics. Take, for example, the fact that Amiri Baraka is mentioned in nearly every essay we read this week. I won't deny that his poetry is incredibly moving, and that he is an important African American poet. However, when I tried to look up more information about him, I stumbled upon www.afropoets.net, a site that lists several famous and important black poets. Among them, as you can guess, is Baraka, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, etc. etc. What I definitely didn't expect to find was twofold: first, Tupac Shakur, along with 11 of his poems that were released posthumously on his poetry album in 2000, is listed right along with more “traditional” poets; and second, aside from Shakur's entry, there is a noticeable lack of any listing of a poet who participates in anything other than “traditional” poetry circles (i.e. publication of books, poetry awards won, etc.), including famous black slam poets such as Saul Williams (For an awesome performance by Williams on Def Poetry Jam, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzY2-GRDiPM. I also plan to compare Williams's performance here with one of Shakur's poems in class in an attempt to figure out the difference in "quality."). Clearly, then, Shakur serves here as a sort of token mass-mediated poet, while the rest of the focus is on more canonical poetry. In short, the canon's still there for literary aficionados, even if the rest of us are more likely to spend an evening watching a freestyle rap competition than perusing an anthology of New American Poetry. And for those of us outside of literary poetry circles, we nevertheless continue to place more widely known and critically acclaimed poets on pedestals.

Where, then, is the line drawn? And why is there still a line in the first place? If poetry is, as both Rothenberg and Tedlock claim, supposed to serve a social function and contain some form of use value outside of pure aesthetics, can the hierarchy of art over entertainment really be broken down? Is a work more valuable, simply because it moves a certain group of people to do a certain thing? And where does that leave poetry that simply moves us to enjoyment, as with something as campy as the poetry in a film like So I Married an Axe Murderer? Peter Quartermain seems to think so, as he points out that canonical publishing and author recordings attempt to create one authentic and “good” version of a poem (223). In short, majority seems to rule here when establishing quality, authority, and value.

This leads me to my 3rd question (Yeah, I realize we only needed two, but I was really inspired this week, and I'm lucky I managed to narrow it down to just 3.): How do audience interpretations and associations while listening/watching a performance impact the performance itself? Essentially, I wonder how the fact that when I listen to “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and immediately associate it with the scene in the end of the 1958 film The Fly ("Heeeeeelp meeeeee!") changes the artistic status of the poem itself. Something I plan to do in my instigation is have the class listen to Hugo Ball's “Gadji beri bimba” and write down all the associations they have when listening. According to Susan Stewart's discussion of this poem, the non-words Ball uses are more self-referential through the simple phonemes (31-32), and yet for me, none of my associations have to do with anything that is considered academic, linguistic, or high art in general.

And what about the question of authenticity? If the audience's ability to connect with the poem/performance in question, as Maria Damon suggests in her example of the “codependency” prayer/poem (329-330), can we say that each audience member's interpretation and associative chain is, in and of itself, a textual variation? In other words, if the performance is both a never-ending process (Tedlock 183) and reliant on a participating audience (Rothenberg 11), does each listener have a part in creating a separate variation of the poem itself? Damon's same prayer/poem example indicates that authenticity is valued above all else, regardless of its canonical status.

But how can we reconcile authenticity, authority, and textual variation? How can one author-performed work, even if it's an avante-garde performance such as “Gadji beri bimba” or a slam poem by a girl in Minneapolis, be interpreted in so many ways and still be authoritative? Does majority rule again here? And if so, does that negate the importance of works performed in a cafe's open-mic night or even something more widely know, but nevertheless unpopular, such as Derek Walcott's collaborative musical “The Capeman”?