… poetry, alas, can’t do a damned thing against capitalism, even as it devotes its intellectual and affective energies to it in a dialectical dance of opposition and complicity.It can't do a damned thing about the overreaching state or poets who don't know squat about economics in the real world, either.
Friday, April 03, 2015
The consolation of poetry …
… Equipment for Living by Michael Robbins. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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Robbins knows more about economics in the real world than you do:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-capital-piketty-17-contradictions-harvey-20140725-story.html#page=1
He may know more than I thought he did, but that does not mean he knows more than I do. How do you know what my real-world experience of economics is? You might be surprised. But of course you're of those brave and immensely knowing anonymous posters.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it less objectionable for me to assume you know less than he than for you to assume he doesn't know squat? The google search to find the above review took me about half a second. I suggest you put in at least as much effort before publishing your next unfounded calumny.
ReplyDeletePardon, I meant why is it *more* objectionable.
ReplyDeleteWell, now that I've read the piece, I see no reason to change my mind or what I said. Nothing in there about the government setting up loans for people without the means to pay them back. Some mention that we need to tax the rich more. Look, that former behemoth, the Soviet Union, used capital, the ruble, as its medium of exchange. Capital is a very useful innovation. It makes it a lot easier to get beer at the local pub, since you don't have to carry in a sack of flour to barter for it. As for the government, it doesn't make anything or sell anything, and doesn't seem to run anything very well either. The idea that I should trust a politician or a bureaucrat more than I should an entrepreneur is ludicrous. I don't trust any of them, though when I bought my iPad at least I got what I paid for, which is more than I can say for what I get in return for, say, my property taxes. That "speculation in housing asset values" that Robbins mentions was aided and abetted by the government. We do need a radical — from radix, meaning root — reassessment of economic matters, but Marxism has never been one. Marx himself, as he admitted in a letter, did a little stock speculation himself.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet "Anonymous" is Michael Robbins himself. He sure is mad.
ReplyDeleteI think I can explain the anonymous troglodyte. Matthew Robbins is one of the foremost hipster poets, a man who pens such Oh So Profound and Ironic verse such as "In front of Best Buy, the Tibetans are released / but where's the whale on stilts we were promised?" Now I have nothing against whales on stilts (I rather enjoy surreal imagery), but I do have a problem with awful belabored prose that dives into hollow and not especially remarkable idioms such as "Where are the jetpacks we were promised?" to riff from. It betrays a lackluster and not especially deep worldview. I can deduce from this poetry, and from the essays that Frank and Mr. Anonymous link to, that Michael Robbins AIN'T all that as a poet and a thinker. I can also safely bet that Mr. Anonymous, based on the Oh So Profound and Pithy "You suck"-style comments here, has revealed a grasp of economics that, in sheer brain wattage, lies somewhat beneath the intellectual level of a spastic squirrel collecting nuts for the winter.
ReplyDeleteAlso "a dialectical dance of opposition and complicity"? Does Robbins even understand what a dialectic is? Or does he append "dance" in the same haphazard manner that he replaces "jetpacks" with "whales on stilts"? It takes a middling mind indeed not to understand that opposition can involve complicity, or that those who stand on the virtuous side of the fence can be just as sanctimonious and belaful as the superrich squelching out the world from their ivory towers. Not to, you know, express a worldview that's a little more adult than sticking with one side and remaining blind to your own hypocrisies.
ReplyDelete