Grappling With Postmodernism:  Fusion and Extrication
at The New School and Baruch College (10/15 and 10/17)

Short Fuse, A New Global Anthology

If you've found yourself wandering, scanning for a high fly beyond the regulation playing field—that saturated sward of postmodernism—then squeeze your glove for Short Fuse. Wholly unlike the engineered rage against metalanguage that our forbearers gave us, editors Todd Swift and Philip Norton have collected 'Fusion Poetry' (their coinage). In celebration of this paragon of global sound and text, Rattapallax Press launched their 300-page anthology with a global gala at The New School during World Series action.

In a welcome departure from the paralyzing skepticism that once pervaded the postmodern movement, Swift and Norton introduced Short Fuse, not as a pithy catchphrase (or post-9/11 malapropism), but rather, as an ideology born of the longstanding tradition of demystification and disorientation which runs through an increasingly complex literary pipeline. This surge of new energy was easily felt throughout this marathon reading and was enhanced by work from Sean Thomas Dougherty, Todd Colby, and Srikanth Reddy, to name only three. In a lively atmosphere of emerging and mid-career poets, the auditorium reeked of a change in poetic consciousness. An implied broadcast:  the end of the episodic and the ambivalent; in its wake, a willingness to reconnect and draw conclusions.

Short Fuse appears robust already in its infancy. With its fat text and compact disk (a trademark Rattapallax bonus), this anthology contains a healthy stripe of intelligence and talent. Swift and Norton have carefully stitched together layers of jagged seams to unite poets working in a wide variety of modes. The anthology joins free verse to the dramatic monologue, to the approbation of the vernacular within a uniquely stylized political milieu. A willingness and urgency to fix oneself in a political stance is noticeable throughout, as demonstrated by Kevin Higgins's poem, "A Brief History Of Those Who Made Their Point Politely And Then Went Home." At its most pronounced, Short Fuse tries so hard to document a revolution not yet kindled—even as it fuels a truly organic movement—that its efforts can seem a bit daunting. Nevertheless, as exemplified by Ritah Parrish's stunning "Letter To Jewel," Swift and Norton have unabashedly taken the field, an international one, and by this gesture are signing us away from kitschy consumer poetry toward a re-examination of displacement.

Brit Lit Forum, Evasion and Enrichment:  New Writing from the UK and Ireland

As coherent and spontaneous a phenomenon as Tuesday's Short Fuse anthology reading was, Thursday's event was an unusual study in disconnectedness. The Council for Literary Magazines and Presses joined with the Baruch Center for the Performing Arts, Rattapallax, and Poets House to present five heavy-hitter panelists from the UK and Ireland in a discussion moderated by Todd Swift. Though each has a fine major league record, together they played like a pick-up team anticipating the umpire's call:  hard rain, game postponed. To his credit, Swift hung in and pitched (a doubleheader for him).

Unlike the newborn independence of Short Fuse, this evening succeeded mostly in tracing a few unresolved umbilical ties to postmodernity. The autocracy implemented by postmodernist Paul Muldoon became known within the first five minutes of a discussion that repeatedly stalled. Mr. Muldoon operates from a space which is neither public nor exhaustible, and it was a unique privilege to be afforded a private viewing. He was clearly manager of his own franchise, complete with ad campaigns for general poetic truths and with ill-defined responsibilities of the modern poet. When Swift identified the target issues as 'politics, poetry, and publishing,' the group seemed surprised.

"I steer clear of agenda," Muldoon said without hesitation. "As a poet, I have no more political insight than any other citizen." When Swift asked the panel about the poet's responsibility to the political, Muldoon shouted, "Every poem should be revolutionary!"—a bold, general statement that hardly goes beyond the Beat aesthetic. Simon Armitage offered a sorrowful, bewildered avowal of accountability and poetic responsibility in relation to the media. Pascale Petit acknowledged receiving notably more public-spirited work from women after 9/11; it was "fresh, light, apocalyptic." Mimi Khalvati reaffirmed that she was just looking for good poems. "The main responsibility," she said, "is poetic truth, which is not the same as having personal conviction." Glyn Maxwell was not disinclined to political poetry; the key for him was authenticity and source. "American poetry has calcified," he said. "Students have decided—at age 22—that formal is dead. Poetry needs to derive from the body and it can survive."

Swift tried pitching balls of all sizes, but on either side of Mr. Muldon—whose work he described as 'a fusion of lyricism and playful postmodernism'—the panelists were reticent, hardly breaking swing when they did respond. More than once, Swift felt compelled to pinch-hit for himself. With no clearcut path into the night, he was left to moderate discordant issues ranging from the British poetic reaction to events surrounding 9/11, to literary readership in the UK, and even more general issues of identity—as exile at home, as working-class poet, as Irish poet. Amid snickers and outright barks from the audience, Swift benignly trumpeted statements that attempted to shift the focus from Muldoon to the others, but to little effect. Besides learning that Khalvati enjoys writing in England as an outsider (and is still being complimented on her fluency) and that Petit prefers writing in English to writing in French, but sees the genteel politeness of the British as problematic (poetically), the audience was not treated to any polemical engagement. Thus, the chief entertainment remained Muldoon's wit—some of it cranky at Swift's expense—which brought us no closer to colloquy than it did this team to the dug-out.

In The Illusions of Postmodernism (Blackwell, 1996), Terry Eagleton writes, "[T]he politics of postmodernism, then, have been at once enrichment and evasion. If they have opened up vital new political questions, it is partly because they have beat an undignified retreat from older political issues— not because these have disappeared or been resolved, but because they are for the moment proving intractable." Eagleton could not have summed up the evening better.

(Kimberly Burwick is the magazine's Series Review
and Series on Series editor. [Masthead])