Retracting my Charges

July 22, 2005

Kasey clarifies and expands on his previous post regarding eclecticism and not only does it now make more sense to me, but I instinctively agree. The jazz analogy helps, as does putting the emphasis of problematic contextualization back in the hands of those packaging the materials, where it rightfully belongs.

As for my comment that I’m not sure that some of what I read in the post-avant publications is poetry, which elicited two angry young emails, let me say a few things.

I’m not denigrating those poems or poets. Poetry is, to me, a somewhat specific discipline within the larger umbrella of making art with words, which lies within the larger context of making things with words. Just as everything one does with paints is not necessarily the art of painting– it could be graphic design, illustration, architectural rendering, etc– everything done with words is not necessarily (or perhaps not productively) called poetry.

Whether my theory means that some post-avant writing has gone “beyond” or “regressed” or is just “different” depends on many things, including my mood and the piece in question.

It just seems to me that there is a possibility that something which breaks so clearly with practically every convention and expectation (not to mention the past) might not be of the same group any longer. I find it hard to consider a work which has no intended meaning in the choice of words (not necessarily a message, but a coherent conveyance of some idea through syntax) to be poetry, or at least it doesn’t make sense to evaluate it by the same criteria. It’s equally unfair to both authors to judge a Sharon Olds poem by the criteria one would a piece by Ron Silliman. The reverse is also true.

Tags: Poetry and Poetics