Henry wrote:
>
> What bothers me about the "avant-garde tradition" scene is the knee-jerk
> dichotomizing between mainstream (Heaney?) & avant-garde (Prynne?
> Bernstein?) which for the most part translates into academic rather than
> general audiences and a kind of incestuous relationship between critical
> theory and "difficult", "marginal", "innovative" writing.
I agree with you that dichotomizing often does have a knee-jerk quality,
on both sides of the divide, and that when we come to (many) particular
cases, such divisions clarify nothing; I'd also want to add that such
divisions _do_ operate institutionally, educationally and in terms of
visibility. HOw all that has come about is rather complicated, I think,
and demands analyses that take in the whole literary field. As far as the
incestuous closeness of theory and innovative writing goes...well, I see
what you mean in terms of some aspects of the u.s. scene (Perloff,
Bernstein, etc.), but I just don't think this applies to the u.k. and
ireland. Yes, there is a good deal of writing on Prynne in a critical
theory vein (though of a heterodox and often baffled kind), but where's
the discourse on Bill Griffiths, Barry MacSweeney, Wendy Mulford, Maggie
O'Sullivan, Andrew Crozier, Geraldine Monk, et al.? Maybe a few reviews
or the odd essay in fugitive little magazines, no more than that. And as
far as I'm aware, a more or less total lack of knowledge and interest in
the academy (maybe someone will think of honorable exceptions to this
last bit, but I think the general observation holds).
>
> Your concept of "underwriting" has a sort of Janus face: on the one hand,
> an exploration of the undercurrents in a text can open up the very
> "incarnational" exactitude of meaning & motive that appeals to me; on
> the other hand, the eagerness to dig up the subtext has a familiar
> deterministic ring to it, which unfortunately is the one and only
> THEME of much of the soi-disant poesie der poesie - writing about
> writing, writing about writing's alienation from any readership
> whatsoever. That's a stale theme which is really only the BEGINNING
> of the problem for a poet (whom does s/he address?
> The underwriter is the interlocutor, the listener).
>
Hmm...I wish I was being as sophisticated as you seem to indicate. I
meant underwriting in the sense of guarantee (not subtext or undercurrent)
- i.e. how does the writer or reader ground the sense of the incarnational
/ openness (tho' these terms are surely not equivalent?) in the words on
the page? Perhaps I'm not grasping your position, but I'm having trouble
seeing how we might situate inc./open. in a text. Certainly a
contemporary example would help; not sure that anyone will rule out
Shakespeare, Dickinson, Whitman, or even Jones, but what contemporary
poet might fit here? And why? How does your position lead you to
recognize a fitting kind of poem?
Best,
Jeremy
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