Demonstrategy. H. L. Hix
rel="nofollow" href="#u846b6db7-ef8b-54a1-b7c2-39cc3c52a27d">Preamble
Article 1: Make another world, make this world otherwise.
Article 2: Double stance, double vision.
Article 3: Think making, make thinking.
3.1: Poetry Against Philosophy
3.2: Poetry Against Fragmentation
Article 4: See what is at stake, change what is at stake.
4.1: Poetry For Reparation
4.2: Poetry For Preparation
Article 5: Everything that descends must diverge.
5.1: Poetry Against Patriarchy
5.2: Poetry Against Tyranny
Article 6: Ask me once, stranger you; ask me twice, stranger me.
6.1: Poetry For Xenophilia
6.2: Poetry For Change
Article 7: No secrets means no exceptions.
7.1: Poetry Against Expectations
7.2: Poetry Against Exceptionalism
Article 8: Tell me someone I don’t already know.
8.1: Poetry For Discovery
8.2: Poetry For Self-Knowledge
Article 9: One word changes, one word changes everything.
9.1: Poetry Against Correspondence
9.2: Poetry Against Fungibility
Article 10: Not yet as it should be, no longer as it was.
10.1: Poetry For Dissent
10.2: Poetry For Hybridity
Acknowledgments
Before this inquiry was one, it was many.
Of those several inquiries, various were tentatively voiced, some at conferences (the “Poetic Ecologies” conference in Brussels, the national conferences of ASLE, MLA, and AWP, the conference of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature, the “Hybrids, Monsters, and Other Aliens” conference in London, the “Under Western Skies” conference in Calgary, the “Flow and Fracture: the Ecopoetic Avant Garde” conference in Brussels, and the “Wit, Scholar, Mentor” conference in Austin), some as lectures (at Virginia Wesleyan University, Chulalongkorn University, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the University of Kansas). I thank my gracious hosts and interlocutors at those venues, especially Franca Bellarsi, Chad Weidner, Josh Weinstein, Lucile Desblache, Robert Boschman, Surapeepan Chatraporn, Jüri Talvet, Katre Talviste, and Gene Fendt. A few of these inquiries enjoyed first lives as lectures at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s low-residency MFA program, and I am grateful to the members of that vibrant community.
Also, versions of individual inquiries were provisionally ventured in print, in these vehicles: At Length (6.1); Comparative Critical Studies (10.2); Interlitteraria (1.1, 5.1, 10.1); Likestarlings (1.2); Making Poems, ed. Todd F. Davis and Erin Murphy (8.1); On Rhyme, ed. David Caplan (9.1); Poems and Their Making, ed. Philip Brady (8.2); Until Everything Is Continuous Again, ed. Jonathan Weinert and Kevin Prufer (4.2); Voltage Poetry (6.2); AWP Writers Chronicle (2.1, 7.1); and The Yale Review (3.2). I am indebted to the editors of those publications for their intellectual nurture.
I am grateful yet again for Phil Brady’s sage editorial counsel.
Demonstrategy
H. L. Hix
Preamble
I intend the coinage demonstrategy to break two ways, toward two pretended etymologies. As demon strategy, this book’s title derives from daimon, the ancient Greek word for a divinity, genius, attendant spirit, and strategía, Greek for generalship, decision, command. As demonstrate-gy, it derives from the prefix de- and the root monstrare, the Latin verb meaning to show.
Both derivations imply that poetry, like a magnetic field, has two poles, in poetry’s case one pole affirmative, the other oppositional.
The derivation from daimon poses the question Wittgenstein asked in this way: “Is this the sense of belief in the Devil: that not everything that comes to us as an inspiration comes from what is good?” It marks the tendency, in origin stories about poetry, to personify poetry’s affirmative pole as a benign being, a god or angel or muse, and its oppositional pole as a malign being, a devil, as when Czeslaw Milosz grants that “poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,” but adds the disclaimer that “it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.” As a demon strategy, is poetry animated by a demon like the one that secured Socrates from error, or like those that gave the Gerasene to break all chains and fetters? This book’s answer to that either/or is yes, to both.
The derivation from monstrare also offers an either/or. Does poetry demonstrate in the affirmative sense, as a lab experiment might demonstrate that one element can bond with another, and as a mathematical proof might demonstrate that the square of the length of one side of a right triangle equals the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides? Or does it demonstrate in the oppositional sense, as workers in a union might demonstrate against unfair employment practices, and as affected citizens might demonstrate against an unjust political decision? Again, this book’s answer to the either/or is yes, to both.
Thus the double entendre in the subtitle: that poetry itself ever urges both a for and an against, and that the book gives both a case for poetry and a case against it. That, because “for” and “against,” also, each has more than one meaning. “For” here, to mean both in favor of, as in “I’m for gun control,” and in service of, as in “the car is for getting back and forth to work.” “Against,” to mean both