to exist until joined symbiotically to a critieal text. Yet even arnpoem as aseptic as “PCOET” bears some relation to the poetryrnof the past: with some effort, you can read it or say it aloud. Itsrnorigin in the human body has not been fully eradicated. Consequently,rnthe avant-garde has already moved on to bolder,rnmore radical experiments. For, as George Hartley points out,rnpoetry no longer has to limit itself to sounds produced by humanrnvocal cords: the tape recorder has “provided a way out ofrnthis limitation of the human body.” Hartley cites a passage byrnanother language poet, Steve McCaffcry, who celebrates a newrntool, electronic tape, because, he argues, it “liberates compositionrnfrom the athletic sequentiality of the human body, piecesrnmay be edited, cutting, in effect, becomes the potentialrncompositional basis in which segments can be arranged andrnrearranged outside of real time performance.”rnHaving fractured the literary atom—the word—the literaryrnavant-garde is now engaged in smashing its subatomic particlesrnin order to manufacture a poetry of pure sound bites. Similarrndevelopments have taken place within the other arts. But thisrnprogressive smashing of traditional artistic forms and genres—rnalong with the routine introduction of randomness and chaosrninto artistic compositions of all sorts—has left us at the end ofrnthe 20th century with a number of vexing questions: Whererndoes art go from here? How far can the arts advance before the’rnare completely estranged from any but a professional audience?rnWhy must “serious” art be so cold and inhuman—or conversely,rnso arch and frivolous, so free of deep human concern? Whyrnmust we sneak off guiltily to the movies to en)oy a good storv,rnturn on our stereo to hear lyrics with meter and rhyme, tune inrncountry and pop radio stations to hear singable melodies?rnSome answers to these questions have recently begun tornemerge, and from a surprising source: modern science.rnFrederick Turner, a poet and thinker of remarkable intelligencernand originality, has used much of this newly emerging scientificrninformation to fashion a powerful critique of the postmodernrnaesthetic. Tracing modern art’s destructive tendencies to arnnumber of historical developments and widely held myths.rnTurner suggests a way out of our cultural impasse and charts arnnew path for the arts.rnIn an essay entitled “Beyond Destructive Art” (from Rebirthrnof Value), Turner argues that for the past two centuries developmentsrnin science have resulted in new ideas concerningrnhuman freedom and creativity. In science’s early stages. Turnerrnwrites, freedom appeared to be problematic because physicsrnand mathematics “were capable at that time of observing andrnrecording only one kind of process—that is the deterministicrnand predictable kind.” Since the universe appeared to be largelyrndeterministic, art took on the task of asserting humanrnfreedom by seizing onto the “alternative to determinism thatrnscience so unwisely offered—disorder, destruction, unrule.”rnConsequently, the forms and traditions of the arts—which hadrntheir being in time and space and appeared to constitute yetrnanother set of determinative principles—were systematicallyrndismantled and destroyed.rnLater, in this century, when quantum theory was developed,rnartists and theorists seized onto its discoveries, too. The apparentrnrandomness that appeared in the behavior of subatomicrnparticles, the loss of certainty that accompanied the developmentrnof quantum mechanics, seemed to offer an alternative torndeterminism. Chance and disorder were therefore introducedrninto modern artistic compositions. The late John Cage, for instance,rnhas used the I Ching and computers to generate thernchance elements he routinely (and predictably) introduces intornhis musical compositions, poems, and lectures.rnA second force that contributed to the destruction of the artsrnwas the economic revolution that occurred when the worldrnchanged from an economy based on husbandry and the use ofrnrenewable resources to one in which. Turner writes, “wc essentiallyrnmined and burned our raw materials to produce goods.”rnCombustion became the model of artistic creation, and whenrnit did, Turner suggests, our artistic traditions were consideredrn”as a fuel to be strip-mined and destroyed to release | their |rnstored energy.”rnTurner identifies a third, less frequently noticed influence onrnmodern art: the radical demographic change that occurredrnas populations exploded with the rise of industrialization. Hernwrites:rnOne consequence of this huge increase in world populationrn. . . has been the creation of huge ungovernable populationsrnof adolescent youths at the most volatile and unstablernstages of national economic development in mostrnsocieties. These populations… wrought irreversiblernchanges on the societies upon which they were visited.rnOne of them was to fix the oedipal stage of rebellionrnagainst parental authority as the governing and archetypalrnposture of liberation and creativity… . Artistic creativityrnis therefore associated with the adolescent style ofrnconformist rebellion . . .rn”The result for art,” Turner concludes, “was what VirginiarnWoolf, in A Room of One’s Own, sadly describes as a sterilernmasculinization of modernist art.” Ezra Pound’s Bohemianism,rnBeat rebellion of the 5()’s, and punk rock nihilism of thern70’s might be regarded as successive versions of this juvenilernmasculine aesthetic. Turner’s analysis might also suggest whyrnrock music, the very embodiment of adolescent male rebellion,rnhas for several decades now been the most popular art formrnthroughout the world.rnTurner points out that many of the forces that brought aboutrnour current crisis have already begun to dissipate. The populationsrnof most of the industrialized countries have leveled outrnand aged. Feminism has initiated a critique of masculine culturernthat has already begun to refcminize the arts. The sciencernof ecolog}’ has shown the dangers of fossil-burning and nuclearrnfission. Combustion as a model for artistic creation is alreadyrndiscredited.rnWhat continues to propel art down the path of destructionrn(and deconstruction) is an outmoded view of sciencernmaintained bv postmodern theorists and avant-garde artists tornjustify their own practices. The whole endeavor of Derrideanrndeconstruction, for instance, is to reduce works of literature to arnsoup of “traces” and “differances” similar to the primal chaosrnthat immediately succeeded the Big Bang.rnBut the old positivistic model of the universe, for whichrnnotions about chaos and indeterminacy seemed to providernsome relief, has now been superseded by a new model shapedrnby the sciences of chaos theory, evolution, sociobiology, neurobiology,rnand the study of feedback systems. Turner proposes arnnew worldview which recognizes the fact that higher-level,rnmore complex forms of order emerge naturally from lower-level,rnsimpler ones—a process which has been accelerating fromrnthe instant of the Big Bang to the present at an ever-increasingrn22/CHRONICLESrnrnrn