Literary Critic And Poet Bob Perelman Brings His Controversial Views To The UA. By Margaret Regan THE CHOICE OF Bob Perelman as guest author at next week's UA Poetry Center reading may come as a surprise to audience members who follow the poetry scene. After all, the UA prides itself on its creative writing program, and Perelman, literary critic, author of 10 books of poetry and major practitioner of "language writing," has been an outspoken critic of the work produced in such programs. Perelman and the other language writers, heirs to the early modernists and beat poets, favor poetry that experiments with form, rejects the personal narrative and examines the uses and misuses of language. The poetry that comes out of the MFA schools, they argue, is apolitical, personal and conservative. "American poetry has been dominated by writing workshops and creative-writing departments with large networks of legitimation--publishing, awards, reviews, extensive university connections," Perelman writes in his new book, The Marginalization of Poetry (Princeton University Press, 1996). And these institutions have given a stamp of approval to poetry in which "sensibility and intuition reigned supreme...modernism was no longer especially important...The poet as engaged, oppositional intellectual, and poetic form and syntax as sites of experiment for political and social purposes--these would not be found." In some circles, them's fightin' words. But reached by telephone at his office at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches in the English department, Perelman proves to be affable, if not entirely conciliatory. "A lot of ink has been shed around the 'poetry wars,' " he sighs. "A lot of us were discouraged with the poetry workshop standards. There was a standard tone and subject matter (that you adopted) if you wanted poetry jobs in a university. (He himself "snuck into the academy as an academic," armed with a Berkeley Ph.D.) "There was an aesthetic in place that a lot of people found limiting. A battle line was drawn. At its most sloganish, the battle characterized language writing as intellectual and obscure, mainstream poetry as sentimental and unambitious. One was a sentimental product giving consumers what they wanted, the other was egghead, obscurity for its own sake." Perelman was living in San Francisco, in the 1970s the hotbed of the language writing movement. He edited the magazine Hills, and coordinated as series of influential talks on the new writing. Those were heady times, with the new poets enjoying an intense period of collaboration and community that Perelman says provided a new model for the poet's life. Their opposition to the MFA styles was not their whole raison d'etre. They coalesced, loosely, during the time of political ferment occasioned by the Vietnam War. "There was a distrust of the settled authority of things," the 49-year-old Perelman remembers. "It had an impetus for us. We had to re-invent the world: the world you came into was not sufficient." Their distrust of American foreign policy in a way provoked their distrust of the way language was used in contemporary culture. The new poets were also interested in the new linguistic philosophies of structuralism and post-structuralism. Language itself and literary criticism became legitimate subjects for poetry, and their work "was pushing the boundaries of what poetry can be." Unlike the compartmentalized universities, where literary criticism was the province of English professors and creative writing the province of the poets, the new language writing mapped out a "middle territory bounded on the one side by poetry...and on the other by theory." By this time, as Perelmen dryly notes, the language poets were a long way away from the lyrical likes of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." But in a way that was the whole point. "The Lake Isle" is a beautiful poem, Perelman says, and its author, William Butler Yeats, a great poet, but it's pointless for contemporary poets to continue to try to replicate its tone and subject, or those of other classic poets. Instead, poets ought to write about their own times. The old idea of the poet as a solitary, romantic hero "is a very problematic thing to live out today. It's nostalgia, a poisonous nostalgia...Poetry is not ahistorical. A fantasy of solitariness (like Yeats') doesn't do justice to contemporary life. There's a line of Blake's, 'the poet is in eternity.' I disagree with that. This isn't eternity." Perelman says that in some ways resistance to poetic change is a puzzle, given that "other areas of our culture are obsessed with novelty, in cars, films and music." Yet poetic experimentation has always had rough going, as the early modernists found. "(Gertrude) Stein was ridiculed, (William Carlos) Williams was not given wide recognition until he was in his 60s." Nevertheless, he believes the universities are responsible in part because "readerships are trained. What you're familiar with is what you like." Teaching both literature and creative writing at Penn, he's doing his best both to introduce his students to a variety of styles and break down the rigid barriers between theory and writing. He also sees some breaks in the old battle lines. Last summer he was invited to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and as for the UA, he says, "Well, they invited me." Bob Perelman will read from his poetry at 8 p.m. Wednesday, January 29, in the UA Modern Languages Building auditorium. Following the free reading will be an informal reception and booksigning. Perelman's latest book of poetry is Virtual Reality (Roof Books, New York, 1993, $9.95). For more information, call 321-7760 during business hours. Perelman will also lead a discussion of contemporary poetry at 8 p.m. Tuesday, January 28, at Dinnerware Gallery, 135 E. Congress St. Sponsored by Chax Press and POG, the talk is free and open to the public. For more information call 792-4503.

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth