I've been repeating these ideas in different ways for years. Sorry about that.
There should be a literary-critical context which challenges and modifies the assumptions of the "post-avant". I'm trying to provide some building blocks for that effort.
The basis is not technical in the sense of surface elements of versification or style. It has to do with the concept of a poem, what poetry is, in relation to the non-verbal phenomena which it represents.
The basis is not political in the sense that "poets" are part of a class of intellectuals in solidarity & struggle with the oppressed & with each other. Or in the sense that "poets" are bearers of ancient aristocratic traditions carried on by an aesthetic elite in democracy. Poetry is not the offspring of ideology.
The basis is aesthetic, in the sense that the poem is the end of poetry. But the aesthetic is one that recognizes that what is happening is not just a refining-away of all that is not poetry. Poetry is a refining-together, an integration. Of evocation, understanding, empathy - the "word" with the "flesh". The poem is the fruit of a dual bond, a conjunction.
Showing posts with label post-avant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label post-avant. Show all posts
3.25.2005
11.19.2003
KP's essay provoked in me a sort of nostalgia for the fascination I felt for the "investigative" poetics of Pound/WCW et al., about 15 years ago.
A rush of energy from the mere practice of collage/documentation - the inclusive "grab-bag" technique which allows the immediacy (or the illusion of immediacy) of events to break into the poem.
But to think that poets have some privileged insight into politics or history as a consequence of these techniques. . . or to think that such poetry grants a privileged insight to others. . . these claims are questionable.
I am put off by the easy contrast of "faith" (equated with fundamentalism) and "investigation", which is linked in the essay to a whiff of intellectual pride (as in the rhetorical exaggeration of the opening sentences, where KP says that these days simply being critically intellectual is an act of defiance; echoed in the ambiguous citation of paranoid conspiracy theories).
& it seems to me that there is an Achilles' heel in an approach which vaunts investigative journalism as the implied substance of poetry. In a sense, both faith & the purpose of poetry are useless & unproveable, in parallel ways; a poetics which devalues them becomes, in the end, only journalism.
Prevallet's essay doesn't go that far. But I'm raising questions, because I see parallels between the "post-avant" formulations of, say, Ron Silliman, and the politically-correct version of "rhizomatic" poetry/journalism proposed by KP. For both, poetic technique and political viewpoint are mutually-reinforcing. This may be all well and good for those who admire both the technique & the politics; but for skeptics, such simple equations often produce empty generalizations & blind spots.
A rush of energy from the mere practice of collage/documentation - the inclusive "grab-bag" technique which allows the immediacy (or the illusion of immediacy) of events to break into the poem.
But to think that poets have some privileged insight into politics or history as a consequence of these techniques. . . or to think that such poetry grants a privileged insight to others. . . these claims are questionable.
I am put off by the easy contrast of "faith" (equated with fundamentalism) and "investigation", which is linked in the essay to a whiff of intellectual pride (as in the rhetorical exaggeration of the opening sentences, where KP says that these days simply being critically intellectual is an act of defiance; echoed in the ambiguous citation of paranoid conspiracy theories).
& it seems to me that there is an Achilles' heel in an approach which vaunts investigative journalism as the implied substance of poetry. In a sense, both faith & the purpose of poetry are useless & unproveable, in parallel ways; a poetics which devalues them becomes, in the end, only journalism.
Prevallet's essay doesn't go that far. But I'm raising questions, because I see parallels between the "post-avant" formulations of, say, Ron Silliman, and the politically-correct version of "rhizomatic" poetry/journalism proposed by KP. For both, poetic technique and political viewpoint are mutually-reinforcing. This may be all well and good for those who admire both the technique & the politics; but for skeptics, such simple equations often produce empty generalizations & blind spots.
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