Erminia,
Thanks for that description. Very interesting. I don't deny the
Gruppo ' 93 poets their daring and ambition, and maybe what it
comes down to is that these poets were the first to announce
and/or practice pastiche as a kind of poetic "program." (Though I
think it's possible that this is not the case-- see my note on
Russian postmodernist poets below.)
Still, reading your list of "pastiche" characteristics, I right
away thought of the work of an 18th century English poet named
Thomas Chatterton, a prodigy who died very young, a suicide, after
inventing a medieval monk-poet by the name of Thomas Rowley. I
think it's possible to take each one of your descriptions of
"pastiche" and relate them, in precise or suggestive extent, to the
Rowley poems.
As to my parenthetical note above: Are you aware of the Russian
Conceptualist movement of the 1970's and 80's (Prigov,
Rubenshtein, Nekrasov, Druk, and others)? Much of the work of
these poets (and visual artists) is rooted, indeed, in pastiche,
employing (or deploying) language in exactly the ways you
describe in your last post! Chronologically, we might have to say
that the Russians came first in this regard. I've written about these
poets elsewhere and edited an anthology of their work (along with
other currents of Russian postmodernism), if you'd like to learn
more about them.
Anyway, this has been an interesting discussion. Now I want to
learn more about the Gruppo ' 93.
Kent
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