Ed Steck & Rob Fitterman at The Conversant

At The Conversant: Ed Steck, author of Far Rainbow (Make Now Books, 2016), among other poetry--and editor of the newish poetry mag Theme Can, by the by--and Rob Fitterman, whose book Nevermind has just been released from Wonder, have a beautiful conversation. Here's a brief excerpt:

[Ed Steck]: Now, let’s talk poetry. Poetry is escaping – in multitudes – similarly to the escapism of science fiction and fantasy. Feeling trapped in a phantom zone, I vowed to integrate poetry into everyday life in 2016. Meaning, I want to break momentarily from my usual mode of external operation and pinpoint a centralized identity of locale. I’m working on three new projects: Life Media, A Year in Film and Observation, and An Interface for a Fractal Landscape. All three of these projects attempt to integrate fantasy into reality instead of total escape. I’m trying to level the plateau. Do you believe poetry can plateau? Are poets plateauing?

[Rob Fitterman]: If what you mean by plateau is de-elevation then, yeah, artist and poets do this and/or make a conscious effort to do this (the second comes after lots of study so it’s less naïve, more measured). To my mind, it’s an effort to mesh the everyday with something intellectual, even spiritual, but mostly “political”. What I mean is that I prefer poetry (most art, I guess) that torques the everyday (further flattens the plateau, calls attention to it) so that we can see it as a social comment. You’re talking about a very conscious effort to plateau, right? It’s like a vision, a concept, an art idea. It has little to do with everyday life except that it’s your life and you’re working on these poems, as pleasure some days, and as shitty unpaid labor on others. But this same quotidian gesture can be expressed more abstracting through the construct of the text. That what happens in Far Rainbow in sections like this:

the code of weather 1, 2, 3, 4 the code of organism 1, 2, 3, 4 the code of placement 1, 2, 3, 4

In other parts of the book, you speak more directly (you humanoid you!) to others, other parts of text, and the reader.

ES: Yes, I’m talking about a designed and constructed method of plateauing. Is individualism, or identity, or whatever, in art a false form of identity? That’s a slightly faux-savant question, and lightly asking you to bite. But, regardless: identity is abstraction. But, at the core of abstraction is a foundation for the construction of all of an entity’s mirroring(s), displacements, and re-formed incarnations. In other words, the code is at the core of identity, and for the code to continue its progression, re-evaluation, at times, is necessary. The plateau forms at the point of re-evaluation. When, I mention to level the plateau, I really mean to level it by making notches, pits, or mounds to allow new construction, reading(s), and directions to form. I think, what I am saying here, is that, at some point, the plateau levels enough for the commentary to be attributed to its pseudo-geographical metaphoric rite. I think this is the same thing as stealing, or transmitting, or re-transmitting. One can take a plateau-ed piece of art, poem, or film, and reconstruct new levels of interpretation and creation from the creator’s otherwise dead-ended material. Whether this matters, I don’t know. But, it also functions almost like a reference guide in a way, and it’s a bit fun, right?

Read it all at The Conversant.