My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch

Contents

Contents 1 Arresting Poetry: Kitsch, Totality, Expression 1 Unpopular Pop 1 Missing Verses 4 Bogus 7 Twice Made 12 Mass Ornament 16 2 Poetic Diction and the Substance of Kitsch 18 Dreams, Mottos, Gossip 18 Chatter and Virtuosity 23 Phraseology 28 Morbid Animation 35 3 Miscreant: Dialectics and the Persistence of the Commonplace 40 Doppelgänger 40 Synthetic Vernaculars 43 Poetry vs. Literature 46 Commonplace 50 Lyric Fatality 54 Thieves’ Latin 59 4 The Spurious Progeny of Bare Nature 62 Balladry and the Burden of Popular Culture 62 Exploded Beings and After-Poets 65 Live Burial 69 vi Contents 5 Illiterature 73 Refrain 73 Lullaby Logic 81 The Cult of Simplicity 88 Pets, Trifles, Toys 96 Gothic Verse and Melodrama 98 Silver Proxy 106 6 Queer Idylls: Imposture, Inversion, Unknowing 108 Topologies of Privacy 108 Reliques 115 Poetaster 117 Kitsch, Camp, and Homo-fascism 119 1800 Words 123 Poison 130 7 Kitsching the Cantos: Totality, Fascism, and les Paradis Artificiels 134 Vortex and Cream Puff 134 Contraband 142 The Kitsch of Apocalypse 146 Epic, Rhapsody, Seizure 151 Bad Infinity 155 Ethnofascist Souvenirs 161 8 Junk: A Shopper’s Guide to Poetic Language (and the New York School) 169 Thermofax: Warhol, Malanga, and the Art of Suicide 169 Dada Kitsch 179 After After-Poets: Collaboration and Collective Writing 186 Coterie and Melodrama 202 The Metaphysics of Kitsch 206 9 Inventing Clichés: The Lost Legacy of Baudelaire’s Muddy Halo 210 Plastic Poetry 210 Liar, Liar 217 Contents vii Afterword 231 In the Poisonous Candy Factory 231 Counterfeit Capital 235 Notes 243 Index 289 This page intentionally left blank My Silver Planet This page intentionally left blank ...