Bernstein Charles - BAX 2016: best American experimental writing

BAX 2016

BAX: BEST AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL WRITING

Series Editors Seth Abramson and Jesse Damiani

Managing Editor Michael Martin Shea

BAX 2016

Guest Editors Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris

BAX 2015

Guest Editor Douglas Kearney

BAX 2014

Guest Editor Cole Swensen

BAX 2016

BEST AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL WRITING

Guest Editors | Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris

Series Editors | Seth Abramson and Jesse Damiani

Managing Editor | Michael Martin Shea

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown, Connecticut

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown CT 06459

www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

2016 Wesleyan University Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

Typeset in Minion Pro

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8195-7673-6

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8195-7674-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8195-7675-0

5 4 3 2 1

Cover illustration: Background texture: nomadsoul1 / 123rf.com Stock Photo. Birds: morguefile.com

Contents

Digital-only contributions to BAX 2016 can be found at: bax.site.wesleyan.edu.

DAVID GIBBS

This Is Our Business

RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS

The Undressed Syllable

AMY MARENGO

wishbone drying; this cloudbank; close lightning

TOM MIROVSKI

How to Make a Nature Poem

SAWNIE MORRIS

Elegy to a Baby Albatross at Midway Atoll

AZIZAA

Black Magic Woman

ERYKAH BADU

DialAfreaq

KENDRICK LAMAR

The Blacker the Berry

CHARLES BERNSTEIN AND TRACIE MORRIS

Guest Editors Introduction

America is an experiment.

Thomas Jefferson thought that there needed to be a rebellion against the existing government every twenty years, even if, as he recognized, some of those rebellions were fueled more by ignorance than a desire for liberty. During this election year, we may well ask if all rebellions are equally valued, but every generation certainly needs a revolution of the word. The initial rebellions of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the Black Arts Movement, and Hip Hop are already two generations behind us. Since that time, American poetrys mainstreams have absorbed some of the stylistic manners of these movements but not the burning desire for unpredictability, development, and change. What the mainstreams have absorbed is some of the technique but not the motivation. A style that was cutting edge twenty years ago isnt going to cut it now. A style that is cutting edge right now wont be so for long.

Art isnt easy. Its not just that we need a revolution in style but also a revolution in audience, distribution, circulation, performance, perception, and, indeed, motivation. These revolutions are never a question of being marked as ahead of the timesthat is the problem with the label avant-garde, with its flamboyant promise of being out front. Rather, the issue is staying in and with the times and not letting the times drown us. In editing this collection, we looked for works that refuse to be sunk by a faddist, temporal undertow.

All the standard terms for inventiveness in the arts are vexing, even when well intentioned. Experiment can suggest that the focus is on the work-product or test results, despite the fact that writing that is open to new possibilities is more likely to be aesthetically accomplished than work that closes off such possibilities. Avant-garde often evokes a hermetically sealed tradition hobbled by its own triumphalism. We need avant-garde literary history to revolutionize overly narrow lineages and to acknowledge that the revolution of the word was fomented by writers who operated both inside and outside the cultural, ethnic, religious, or racial mainstreams. Which is to say, along with a host of literary scholars, artists, and anthologists from the past few decades, avant-garde history has not always acknowledged its innovators. At the same time, many of those hostile to what they call avant-garde poetry gerrymander the term to suit their foregone biases against it.

Rather than saying avant-garde, we say en garde: wake up, poetry is about to begin!

In 2015, as for a hundred years before, innovative poetry continued to be controversial. Of course, there is much to be critical of in poetrys multitude of iterations, and most practitioners of anything remotely resembling the experimental are quick to make a wide range of criticism, since this is a group of unlike-minded individuals. But all the hoopla suggests that whats innovative is, paradoxically, at the vital center of contemporary poetics and that its symbolic constructions are therefore subject to the most virulent scrutiny and worthwhile critique.