Ali said:
"Kent, sorry but I don't really get what Perloff's pyramid has to do with
slams. did she mean to say that the idea of a poetry slam is, ermmm,
grondless and flimsy? do you think slams are avant-guard? i think, if poetry
was a pyramid, then a real avant-guardist would be a crocodile in the Nile,
allowed no where near the royals (dead or alive); or a broken statue in
Akhenaton's deserted castle."
Ali,
You're right that when you start to analyze the Antin/Perloff metaphor that
it becomes a head-scratcher. I think Marjorie more or less means that slam
poetries are an expression of the plebian, populist aesthetic foundation
upon which more refined artistic expressions are built up over time, until
one gets the gold-plated pinnacle of Language/avant-gardist poetries at the
tip-top. It's a very old mind-set, I suppose, going all the way back to
Egypt, when you think about it.
As for the avant-gardist crocodile, that's a great analogy, and I would
pretty much agree taht ideally, yes. But I'm afraid that here in the U.S.,
at least, the crocodiles now sun and mate in their Nile-imitation exhibits,
and are brought out at the end of the year to growl on command (up on two
legs) from behind podiums at the MLA.
Kent
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