John Gallaher’s lots of things–a ferociously smart guy, a very good poet [three books of his own and a fourth, the very recent and very good collab with KR’s own GC Waldrep, Your Father on The Train of Ghosts], an editor [the Laurel Review and the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics], and a blogger whose blog doesn’t feature the frustratingly common solipsism found on lots of other lit blogs. On reading his blog, I got more and more interested in his take on what he’s calling the New New Sincerity and/or New Spiritualism, and what follows is the first part of a long-ish email conversation about that. A last note: his blog’s worth giving several hours to, as is the ongoing conversation he and Waldrep are having at the BOA blog about their recent book.
WC: My understanding of what you’ve written is that the new New Sincerity is sincerity fully aware of the ironies/absurdities(/bewilderments) it’s risking but is serious about it’s earnestness anyway. Is that somewhat near? (I don’t want to rehash the sincerity stuff too much, both because 1) you’ve written a ton about it already on the blog and 2) I’m hugely more interested in the spirituality thing.) If that’s somewhat close, how/where does New Spirituality, as you conceive of it, enter? What (I’m gulping with awkwardness and hesitation even as I type this) is New Spirituality in poetry, to you, or what’s it do or look like?
JG: OK, I’m back. Yes, I think this is a good working definition of what’s going on right now:
“the new New Sincerity is sincerity fully aware of the ironies/absurdities(/bewilderments)”
And doesn’t that look like Negative Capability? Call it 21st Century Negative Capability then.
I’ve been skeptical of the way a lot of critics were able to notice or say they were, a kind of authorial irony, when the work itself is playing it straight. But on the other hand, the one truly ironic movement in the lat 20 years, Flarf, did participate in something like that very thing. But what of the next generation?
This seems to be what the zeitgeist is saying right now: “We meant it as a goof but somewhere on the way we became believers.” Or something like that. That’s why I’ve conflated The New New Sincerity and The New Spirituality. I think it’s the same general tendency. The spirituality of the past, the methods of devotion, now look quaint and some people play with them ironically . . . but postmodernism, in its various hodge-podges, allows a new kind of spiritual devotion. I think Kazim Ali and G.C. Waldrep are two of the best examples. But also Fanny Howe, Jean Valentine, Donald Revell, and Dana Levin . . .
WC:
I’m with you on what you’ve written, though I wonder about part of the formulation in “we meant it as a goof but somewhere on the way we became believers.” Maybe this is too fine a point, but I wonder if maybe (this is just the way it seems to me) it’s closer to “somewhere on the way we decided we *have* to believe, and so we might as well believe in this.” My question about new spirituality at present (and specifically your take on it) is this sort of Stevensian level of “okay, well, let’s respect/believe in what appears, regardless of what we maybe originally meant, because we’ve ended up realizing (after working and thinking and writing) that faith in *something* is necessary.” Does that make any sense or hold any water?
I’m real curious about the relationship among these moves and irony as well. I feel like the New New Sincerity/New Spirituality stuff you’re/we’re talking about has made the moves it has *because* or the fact that the quaint old methods of devotion were, yes, played with ironically at one point…but we all now see fully that irony is no home, is no lasting, generative, emotionally nutritious place. So maybe what I’m trying to ask is: is the ultimate agenda/point of some of this NewNewSincerity/New Spirituality stuff done in the name/hope of finding some way to live seriously despite the overwhelming threat of irony? Maybe that’s a conflationary + large read (and I’ll sure admit I’ve got massive problems with irony as world view, and that, because of my massive problems, irony’s the hammer I hold as I look at the world seeing only nails), but I’m curious how that plays out for you.
I guess for me this stuff leads to the big question of what the point of this New Spirituality/New New Sincerity is, and it seems to me the same as ever, which is a hope to find something bloody and alive and beating inside good art. However, the intent does end up (as I read it, anyway) feeling almost radical, a return to this credulousness, a return to silencing the whirring part of the brain that’s always interested in finding the ironic angle. Also: it seems like what ties this stuff together is less about finding any object to attach belief to and much more about jolting the muscles of faith into action and flex, a prevention of further atrophy.
JG:
Here is your question:
“What’s New New Sincerity/New Spirituality a reaction to? Is this present aesthetic moment a response to ellipticals and whatever else Burt (or whoever) names and points at? That, to me, is something real fascinating: how this poetic shift may be ameliorative and/or corrective. Does that fly for you? Where are we coming from to make this stuff at present resonate and shake?”
And your take on it:
“(for what it’s worth: I absolutely think New^2 Sincerity/New Spirituality is somehow a reaction to some of the more free-wheeling carefree moves of the ellipticals…even though I think ultimately the awarenesses that are reached in lots of contemporary poetry aren’t all that radically different from the awareness that were reached a decade or 2 back: it’s that Carver title, the new path to the water whatever. Who knows, though: I’m still young enough to believe in satisfyingly solid lines around things [sometimes].)”
First, excellent question. And I like your answer.
I’m coming at it from a slightly different direction, which I’ve skirted a bit on my blog last week, but here’s my more direct approach at it.
The historic situation we’ve found ourselves in, post WWII, that we’ve come to call post-modernity, if it can be said to have a reigning philosophy, it’s one of very heavy skepticism of grand narratives. In my estimation, that skepticism has been directed mostly at utopian thinking, or progressive thinking. If modernity ended at Auschwitz, post-modernity began there.
I hope this doesn’t sound too circuitous. I’ll jump ahead. The new existential dilemma is the same as the old one: how not to despair. With grand narratives under scrutiny and looked at skeptically, how does one not fall into a black hole of negative philosophy? In the face of the contemporary, one does not need to revert to a sort of dandyism of playful deconstruction and existential irony. This has been the charge against a lot of the art produced over the past couple decades, and has been espoused by some philosophers. Rorty, I think? I’m bad at remembering names. The philosophers of ephemera are often read this way. And whether or not poets believed they were working in this economy, they were often also read that way. Language Poetry was read this way by many. New York School poetry was read this way. Certainly the elliptical poets (who were they anyway? Jorie Graham?) and the larger next generation (which includes a lot of poets roughly my age) were read this way.
So, I think the reaction of The New2 Sincerity / New Spirituality is more against that grand narrative, the narrative that one must go into skepticism. I’m 46, it’s impossible for me to escape my skepticism, but I’m young enough to step outside the ironic stance. And how one deals with those two reigning mindsets reveals a lot. That, and, of course, one’s attitudes on such other grand narratives as The Personal Resonant Story, as in Narrative / Story itself.
But the outcome of the existential dilemma need not be despair–that’s a self-focused, understandable, outcome, but not the only one available. One can become interested in the welfare of others. One can get more Zen-like. There are many options outside of the ones offered us by the big consumer product drop.
People often think of the post-modern situation in art as one of pastiche and quick transitions which undercut each other ideologically and tonally . . . the pairing of dictions in a grand smearing of the power-vertical into the communal-horizontal. Those might have been the main tracks of artistic exploration from the 60s through the 90s, with various levels of appropriation and sincerity . . . but it’s just as appropriate to think of post-modernism in art as the full-scale wearing of whatever tradition one is drawn to. So that Surrealism and New York School can coexist as readily as, say, the direct use of survivor narratives that C.D. Wright is using right now. The project book is still huge, for this very reason. Rather than a flurry of masks, one can wear a longer sequence of masks, of subjects. Cole Swensen.
What does it mean when G.C. Waldrep is asked, “How, in the post-modern period, could you convert to the Amish?” And he replies, “It’s the post-modern period that specifically allows for this.” (That’s all paraphrase, but you get the general idea.)
I hope this was more direct? I tend to wander when I write.
ps: as the post-modern period is a state of mind, it can manifest in various forms, some seemingly contradictory: Doubt / Devotion; Irony / Sincerity. How else to describe Heather Christle and Zachary Schomburg?