Hey Chris. Man, this is interesting. Yeah, I think a lot of people just really like novelty but aren't self aware enough to admit this. So almost anything an artist does next, short of committing identity suicide, is lame. That or they like being able to classify everyone/thing and are discomforted when an artist betrays their scheme. Both of which, on thinking about it, I'm often very guilty of. As for poets:

Amiri Baraka is a master of change. While I'm not necessarily his number one fan, I've always respected just how far out of the way he went to alienate/provoke people.

And then Paul Blackburn. He started out strong and then became a prolific writer of sloppy, excessive poems. But his last collection, The Journals, is an obscure classic.

But I also like these guys for their "bad" poems. They were at least bad via their excessiveness. Also, I'm not stuck in the 70s. I swear.

this is an issue i think about a lot. here's some of what i think. i look at a band like modest mouse, and on the surface i agree--they've been appealing to me less and less with each cd after moon & anatartica. i love that cd. the one after that was good. the newest doesn't do much for me save for a few songs.

the thing about modest mouse is that i think issac brock is being very smart and self-aware about fans like me. the direction he's taken the band in has been a very conscious choice, and the idea that he is "selling out" i think is one that informs, to some degree, a lot of what he's doing now. it is a significant part of the conversation he's creating with his music. there is a tongue-and-cheek aspect to this that i love. it's kind of a running joke in the music, but at the same time he still manages to go forward and write interesting new music. i suppose the drawback is that, for me, there is some "magic" lost. (but to be clear, i think they still write great songs; it's their albums on a whole i'm not as keen about). so, to me, what modest mouse is doing is a very calculated aesthetic choice, and one that i support. it's a constant recalibration of their sound and direction.

arcade fire is a different story. i feel like they abandonned something essential on neon bible. the shift is too calculated and so are the songs, especially the lyrics ("mirror, mirror on the wall, show me where them bombs will fall"? please.) it feels like they suddenly decided to be more political, which is fine, but the songs on neon bible seem to be completely unaware of the songs on funeral, and that, for me, is a turn-off. of course i can't say that this is what happened for sure. only the band knows that. but it's what, in my mind, killed the band's spark on neon bible. instead of recaliberating, they started from scratch, and the results were pretty mediocre.

a band like wilco is different still. for me, they just got lazy and are doing little more than coasting, not quite phoning it in, but also not showing much growth.

to apply this to poetry, i think a poet like rae armantrout, for example, is more on the modest mouse tip--a constant recalibrater, an artist associated with the very specific movement and sound of language poetry, but who seems make her growth as an artist her primary focus. she even has a poem where she says flat out that we may know her as a language poet, but asks what that means--what do we know when we "know" that. i think modest is asking a similar question in terms of their indie rock roots.

the point i'm trying to make, i think, is that burning out or fading away is a false dichotomy. it's more a question of what kind of artist one wants to be/is capable of being. if you want to last, you have to find a way to keep evolving, and also accept that there are liable to be some ups and downs and that you're going to lose people along the way. here i'm thinking of musicians like david bowie or david byrne. they've lasted and are still interesting. or you can be someone who blows up and is huge and then spend the rest of your career trying to recapture/reinvent that "magic" moment. (of course, there are all shades of variation between these two ways of being that i'm skipping over, but these are my basic thoughts.)

right...i agree. i just wanted a catchy title. in the post i talk about the two options you present at the end. but isn't there also another option...to keep producing that same great poem for books and books and books, while still keeping the magic and avoiding the "just mailing it in syndrome?" maybe something like guided by voices? or ashbery?

i'm not sure i follow. it seems like you've answered your own question.

is anyone accusing ashbery of being a bad imitation of himself?

What question is that? Perhaps the question in the title is casting a misleading shadow over the post. In general, I am interested in how different artists, over the course of a long career, either evolve or stay the same, how that works for them or not, and how fans/readers/etc. react.

that sounds like a book

Yeah, i missed the MM show, unfortunately. But, in the hopes of bridging conexts here, I would say that the old MM came from the gut, viscerally, whereas the new stuff seems to have less of that fire. Someone like Bly would call it "heat". The screams aren't the same screams. Not as desperate, etc. I don't feel MM's more recent work in the same way, lyrically.

I'm left wondering, by this post, if the (sometimes terrible) distinctions and camps that are often used in academic circles wouldn't actually help here to serve as standards, when we begin to judge these kinds of arcs in a career.
For instance, I tend to think that progressive or post avant poets are seen as having MORE of a tendency toward progressing (someone like Karen Volkman or Peter Gizzi, or Dean Young just off the top of the head, of course) vs someone like Sharon Olds or Stanley Kunitz.

That makes sense to me...but then, where would Ashbery fall? Or one of my personal faves when it comes to longevity, Ammons? They both feel pretty consistent to me over the arc of their career, but I wouldn't put them in the Quietude camp. The certainly aren't the Beatles when it comes to re-inventing themselves, yet I like them just as much for that.

I guess with post avant it seems that some deviation or variation from book to book can easily get seen as experiment or "project", whereas on the Laureate Level many times the arc is much more readable and trackable. We get these readouts with every book charting the evolution of the poet.

But the answer, i think, regarding Ashbery and Ammons is really that they are so highly original and at the same time so aesthetically capacious that one can never feel entirely let down by their work because its essence is so large, its genius so broad that even in a book like, for me, Ashbery's "Shadow Train" or something, there may be a few thuds but still, it's Ashbery. His footprint is so large. With someone like Creeley, however, whose genius I tend to see as less capacious than A and A, it seemed to be that he was publishing some stinkers here and there toward the end. Kind of parodies of the old stuff. So, when the poet disappoints, I'm thinking that it depends on the breadth of their genius, and how much they still have to offer despite the less than stellar aspects.

I think it might be that simple (or miraculous I guess)...some people just have more genius in the tank.

i was just going to say maybe it's a matter of ethos, but i think that's kind of what salerno is saying. if you cast yourself as avant your audience has a whole different set of expectations and takes you on completely different terms than if you're of the laureate stature. laureates HAVE to fit a very specific idea of the poet, one that has little room for change or growth.

while i agree that ammons and ashbery have "more genius" than many, i think for them it's an ethos thing as well. they are more on the avant side of the fence than not. and let's not forget, ashbery is viewed as a kind of touchstone poet among many avant-ist writers (despite/in spite of his massive mainstream popularity, at least in the academy).

Does Ammons really belong to a camp? Outside of our grad school experience, I don't ever hear people mention him.

But what I was getting at in response to Chris' point about avant audiences being more open to change, is that neither of them changed all that much over the course of their career and it didn't seem to upset readers too much.

Some poets have the ability to hit us with the same insight over and over again, the same imperative or didactic or assertive bent (Chris T. maybe think of someone like Gluck) who can find a way to redeploy her "truths"...look at Gluck's Wild Iris coming after her first few books...she goes with the different personas, essentially splitting herself (in Wild Iris) and in a sense solves the problem of the poet's stagnation. Or the poet keeps the same tools and turns them against her familiar truths to test them in new contexts. Or something.

I also want to say that I like the Ramones, and I like the Beatles, but I know which one really evolved and which one kind of wrote the same tune over and again. And I think that the Gluck example, for me, kind of explains why.

I just found my copy of Lonesome Crowded West and am loading into my iTunes! It's the one i've been missing.

i think the avant audiences are more tolerant of ongoing project--silliman's "alphabet" duplessis' "drafts"—that i don't think make big changes. ammons and ashbery had/have an ongoing aesthetic project, even though they have discreet books, so perhaps that’s part of why they maintain(ed) readers—they dind’t so much change as slowly evolve over time.

poets decidedly in the laureate/soq camps often hit on something and after that it all seems like an ever more faded carbon copy. i think it’s often a mix of those poets not being able to find a way to stay interesting/relevant, but also a market thing.

you're not going to take any big aesthetic risks that might get you kicked out off random house's roster. they cave to the market.

Chris,

Def Leppard was quoting Neil Young from Rust Never Sleeps, "My My, Hey Hey" with that "burn out / fade away" bit. Famously, as well, Kurt Cobain used that same line in his suicide note.

Kind of off to the side, but any opportunity to mention Neil Young, you know?

And then just to chime in on the topic, as it's one of my favorites.

In music: seriously, I wobbled my way through A Ghost Is Born, and actively disliked Sky Blue Sky. I hear they're working on a new album that should be out this spring. Wilco is a good music example, because for awhile they were taking big chances, makingbig changes, and they were paying off. And now it just seems like they're spinning a wheel to decided what to do next. There doesn't seem any real desire or weight behind it. Jay Bennett I miss you.

On the other hand, The Flaming Lips are also working on a new album, due out this summer, and over the years they've changed pretty dramatically, and it continues to add layers.

In poetry, there's the example of Jorie Graham, who, to people writing in the late 80s, early 90s, was huge. Her influence was just everywhere. And now. Well, her name doesn't come up. "Fade away," I suppose. But she could come back.

I think a lot of people reading poetry in the late 1940s might have thought Stevens was fading away, as the poems he was writing then aren't his strongest, but now, looking back, no one thinks of it that way.

Whereas, well, Ashbery is a good example. He just keeps the machine rolling, and I love each book. And now, in the last couple years, his stature suddenly took another big jump. SImilar to, in music, the way people talk about Neil Young.

Thanks, John. Yeah...after seeing I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART (that was the name of the documentary, right?), I bet no one thought they'd be missing Jay Bennett. I sure didn't. But I do...I really do. JAY! Come back, buddy. Please. I agree with you on the other points as well. All good examples. And just for good measure I'll type N-E-I-L Y-O-U-N-G just for you.