According to Webster's New World Dictionary, genre is a distinct kind, or type, as of works of literature, art, or popular fiction. Genre is a reference tool designed to identify a type of literature. Genre can be described as a box where certain categories of literature are supposed to fit, but whom or what defines genre? Throughout this essay I will explain how genre has such an impact on literature today for both the writer and the reader for example, "Since genres are interrelated, there seems always a basis for some readability" (Cohen 13). By comparing and contrasting Lyn Hejinian and Susan Howe's texts and style of writings, I will question the relevance and the significance of genre measured up to the denomination of each piece of literature. I will use poetry as a major genre that is more easily relatable for most everyone. Poetry is a genre that most everyone can relate to on a personal level because it can have different meanings for everyone and no two poems are exactly alike: "If writing were always identical, there would be no kinds and no need for generic distinctions about whole works. And if each piece of writing were different from all others there would be no basis for theorizing or even for communication" (Cohen 14).
Hejinian and Howe seem to break the rules of standard genre in that they do not fit into one specific category. This common characteristic bends the boundaries and puts into question how important genre really is. Hejinian and Howe are both poets and in each of their texts they obviously use poetry as a way for them to address their ideas and to get across to their readers each of their points and or arguments. They both use poetry as well as other subjects in their books and they incorporate two different genres together into each of their pieces of work. In Hejinian's book My Life, she incorporates the genre of autobiography along with poetry. She tells her life story in a way most autobiographies are not told. By using poetry to tell her life to her readers, she is breaking the boundaries of the standard autobiography genre. Howe on the other hand finds a way to tell history by using poetry in her novel Pierce-Arrow.
Wikipedia the online encyclopedia states that "genre is a division of a particular form of art or utterance according to criteria particular to that form. In all art forms, genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries. Genres are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. The scope of the word "genre" is usually confined to art and culture. In genre studies the concept of genre is not compared to originality. Rather, all works are recognized as either reflecting on or participating in the conventions of genre" (Wikipedia). To me this definition makes the most sense when it states that there are no fixed boundaries because it applies to my points about how Hejinian and Howe go beyond the standard boundaries of genre by incorporating multiple genres into one piece.
The way I understand how literary theorist Ralph Cohen thinks of genre is that all text is in relation to genre therefore nothing can ever be new. He says that genre boundaries do not apply to literature because nothing is written outside of genre. However, my question then is if all texts are in relation to genre is it that important or that critical to assign each text to a specific genre? If poetry had or has its own genre than does this allow room for enough liberal and free thought? At the same time I am not suggesting that there should not ever be a place for genre or that it should take away from any specific fields of writing. Most people use the term genre in order to find the type of literature they are looking for whether it is fiction, non-fiction, humor, poetry etc. My definition of genre is a mixture of both the common understanding of genre and Cohen's understanding of genre. I view genre as a way to help identify a piece of literature as well as a way to compare types of literature. Nevertheless, I do not think that genre should be this easily identifiable because I feel as though certain pieces of literature may simply be missed out on when applying this method to genre, especially those works that are in sub-genres like Hejinian's and Howe's. Genre restricts possibilities to change the typical and standard way of writing for the author and it affects how the reader views the piece. It also pushes a reader into choosing a piece of literature on how and where it fits into a certain genre. Genre affects the readers participation, expectations, and perception overall and that is why I think it is crucial to challenge as well as discuss genre.
If you were to place both Hejinian's My Life and Howe's Pierce-Arrow in a specific genre, they would be placed in considerably different genres; Hejinian in autobiography and Howe in history. Or would they? They both write with poetic form and Hejinian uses an open-text style of writing while Howe has personal images, notes and letters throughout her book. They could then be associated with two completely different genres altogether; Hejinian in poetry and autobiography, and Howe in poetry and history. Because it is difficult to assign each of them to one specific genre, they can be considered to be in non-conventional genres that are outside the norm. Talking about genre in a modern sense instead of a classical sense is necessary when reading and trying to understand both Hejinian and Howe's work because these multi-genres play with reader's expectations. What I mean by modern and classical genre is that classical genre dates back to an earlier period when there was not as many genres and sub-genres as there is now, nor were they as accepted or as easy to find as they are now. Modern genre is where I would put Hejinian's and Howe's work because it can fit into genre in sub-categories as I stated earlier.
Genre is a major subject that is prominent throughout both of these pieces. There are a couple of questions that arise if we were to dissect genre as in comparison to Howe's piece. First, what do we think genre is? Where does poetry fit into genre? There can be many answers to my first question and genre can mean something different for everyone. There are obviously types of writing that are easily identified and placed into certain categories, for instance, a romance novel can simply be placed in its own genre but something like poetry, where there are many ways of writing and presenting it as well as many ways of perceiving it, can be complicated. Evidently not all poetry is alike and because it varies in a wide number of areas and is so expressive and personal, it is therefore noticeably difficult to place poetry into one large genre. However, can we take this a step further and find other genres within these larger genres. These categories and sub-categories can sometimes take away from the author and or their work because they are subjected and pressured to fit into a certain genus. There are rules that can be broken and boundaries that are supposed to be crossed.
Hejinian's style of writing My Life is obviously a completely different style than most autobiographies out there. She reflects on memories most everyone reading it can relate to but, "There are no photo-like descriptions of Hejinian's body, of her physical self, nor are actual photographs documenting her life collected in the center of the book, as is common in the mass-market autobiography" (Spahr 145). I felt that this quote clearly explained the differences between Hejinian's My Life and the average book found under the genre autobiography. By writing her autobiography in a nontraditional way, she is opening up for a discussion of an unconventional way of writing and using language as well as a new question of where this piece should fit into genre for example, "My Life challenges our inclination to isolate, identify, and limit the burden of meaning given to an event (the sentence or line). Here, where certain phrases recur in the work, recontextualized and with new emphasis, repetition disrupts the initial apparent meaning scheme" (Hejinian 44). This is pointing out the fact that Hejinian likes to repeat a handful of lines throughout the text with some lines meaning the same thing every time and others that have a somewhat different meaning with every repetition for instance, "A pause, a rose, something on paper" (Hejinian 41) and "As for we who "love to be astonished" (Hejinian 40).
She also uses an open text style of writing where there is a relationship between both readers and writers. According to Hejinian, "The "open text" by definition, is open to the world and particularly to the reader. It invites participation, rejects authority of the writer over the reader and thus, by analogy, the authority implicit in other (social, economic, cultural) hierarchies" (Hejinian 43). This furthermore adds to the intricate placing of My Life in a specific genre. She prefers open text because it is experimental and therefore involves the reader. She says that open text is anything outside of the "norm". Open text allows the reader to become more deeply involved with not only the writer and what they have to say, but with the words themselves. The reader can partake in what the reader is conveying in a more concentrated way. With these new thoughts and ideas, the open text device allows language to become part of the culture and not a social structure. An example of open text straight from Hejinian's book My Life is the description of a specific day where she recalls tremendous emotion and she illustrates this with poetry:
It snaps back to bind yellow to a day in October 1978. I was hassled with feelings hurt so furious lost my temper and threw bean pot to floor, slammed door-but there was nowhere to go, spattered with beans, and I came back in, chagrined. The run, that if you broke it, you'd have none (Hejinian 132).
Howe's Pierce-Arrow is more of a collaboration of the past history with poetic form and idea. When writing Pierce-Arrow, Howe was trying to capture events and people that weren't depicted as much in earlier documented history. Because Howe intertwines both poetry and history there is uncertainty of where her piece fits into genre. The opportunity for poets to be able to write freely without boundaries is important for the expression within poetry for instance:
Depressed by raw icy air
my nerves are by nature
of foggy climate nervous
the twoness of two hats
Nervous moving the hat
from side to side why not
either magic or science
Howe conveys many images in this passage by writing in a way that each reader can take something different out of the context of this piece. Incorporating multiple topics in one book like Howe does in Pierce-Arrowis enlightening for the reader because it changes expectations and therefore becomes eye opening. A question then that arises for me anyway is, Does genre restrict possibilities to change the typical and standard way of writing for the author and how does this affect the reader as well?
I think Howe re-wrote history with poetry, to force the reader to see the language instead of through it. In Peter Nicholls "The Pastness of Landscape": Susa Howe's Pierce-Arrow, he also calls attention to the fact that one of Howe's primary goals in Pierce-Arrowis to incorporate history for instance, "At the same time, Pierce-Arrowrecalls us to Howe's persistent concern with the opacities of personal and historical memory, but it does so by thematizing the limits to understanding in ways that deliberately invite comparison with the figural and ethical dilemmas of a philosophical Romanticism" (Nicholls 441). Howe is aware of the fact that in the past, women were not taken seriously as writers, and even more so if they were interested in writing about history. I think Howe, whether purposely or not, is empowered by having the opportunity to not only write poetry, but history as well and the fact that she mixes the two, shows how far women in literature have come as well as how far published literature has come in general. This push for change is necessary for literature to grow. Hejinian and Howe use genre conventions to create meaning by intellectually writing in the style they want and by not conforming to a standard genre setting. Their ability to challenge genre by incorporating more than one genre in their work creates sub-genres that expand the conventions of literature.
It is important to address genre because we can not escape it. Genre surrounds all types of literature and in order to be able to change the stereotypical genres and open up the ideas of multiple genres and new genres we must challenge what is already apparent throughout literature. There are many different styles of writing although poetry allows the most room for experimenting with writing styles. Poetry is one of the most flexible genres for fluctuating a writer's creativity when it comes to style. Hejinian displays this throughout My Lifeby describing detailed occasions in her life and representing them through poetry for instance, "I was sipping Shirley Temples wearing my Mary Janes. My grandfather was as serious as any general before any battle though he had been too young for the First War and too old for the Second" (Hejinian 24). Here Hejinian uses some humor to describe to her readers about her grandfather. The line about Shirley Temples and Mary Janes can relate to a lot of people's childhood and it carries a sort of wit with it. Hejinian and Howe and their pieces represent the struggle to move forward in literature today and at the same time they change the structure and meaning of genre.
Cohen, Ralph. "Do Post Modern Genres Exist?" Postmodern Genres. Norman U of Oklahoma P. (1989). 11-27.
Hejinian, Lyn. "Intoduction and Rejection of Closure." The Language of Inquiry. Los Angeles: U of California P, (2000). 1-6, 318-336 .
Neufeldt, Victoria. "Webster's New World Dictionary." New York, NY. (1995). 248.
Nicholls, Peter. "The Pastness of Landscape: Susan Howe's "Pierce-Arrow"." Contemporary Literature. 43.3(2002). 441-460 .
Spahr, Juliana. "Resignifying Autobiography: Lyn Hejinian's My Life." American Literaturez: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography. 68.1(1996). 139-159.
Genre Wikipedia. 11 Dec. 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre.
