At 12:56 PM 7/20/02 -0500, you wrote:
>A review in The Boston Review of American poets Forrest Gander
>and Cole Swensen raises some interesting questions about the
>premises and proceedings of "lyrical abstraction," arguably the
>dominant academic mode in U.S. poetry today, as easy and
>formulaic as the dominant "scenic" workshop mode of the 70's and
>80's. The article's first paragraph is below.
>http://bostonreview.mit.edu/
>
>"As contemporary poets turn in increasing numbers to the
>fashionable strategy of combining experimental techniques with
>lyric and narrative modes, many of these recent efforts have taken
>on a familiar look and a familiar set of conventions. (Calvin Bedient,
>writing in these pages, recently dubbed it the "soft avant-garde.")
>One image leads to another in associative or nonsequiturial
>cascades. Sequences of sentence fragments are interrupted by
>bursts of conventional syntax. The page is manipulated as a visual
>space to the extent most word processors allow, with varied
>patterns of indentation and spacing. Descriptions reflect distraction
>and fragmentation, and are often accompanied by philosophical
>inquiries into the nature of perception. The poems explore (or
>ransack) personal and historical archives and document these
>explorations through cut-and-paste procedures. And throughout
>this accumulation and disjuncture, they dutifully rehearse the
>postmodern axiom that the natural, the personal, and the social are
>linguistically constructed."


I wish poets/critics/etc. would stop using the phrase avant garde. There is
no avant garde. The last avant garde no longer rebel. Most have been
co-opted by the academy and the 'realities' of paying their bills and
surviving in this world. One's experiments does not make them 'avant
garde.' Avant garde requires a movement, an organized, mobilizing movement.
I haven't seen any lately. Has anyone else?

Other than that quibble, I cannot argue too too much with paragraph.

The parataxical experiment has become cliche. And, I think much of what is
unsaid in the introductory paragraph is that contemporary poets are using
these 'techniques' because they have nothing to say. They make parataxical
statements about an empty hole. Draw a circle and draw tangents off each
point on its circumferance: that's what many poets are doing today. The
issue(s)? There's nothing inside the circle. Charles Wright, I've read,
says that there's very little subject matter any more, so it's just form
that we can deal with. I disagree. There's so much subject matter today,
but poets disregard it and teachers in MFA programs tell people to stay
away from it. I just finished an MFA at Bennington, and by the end of the
two years, if the poet was not going for a laugh, they were seen as
failing. I failed.

What is interesting about the two poets mentioned above is that Forest
actually engages science and philosophy. However, at least from my reading,
he takes science for what it is. He does not question the epistemology or
the methodology. There is no checks and balances with science. Sure,
someone will say that a scientist makes a discovery and s/he publishes in
Nature. The 'discovery' gets debated in all the journals. But, what's not
checked is methodology. Scientific method has become dogma. If one
challenges, like Paul Feyerabend or Imre Lakatos they are crazy or just
cooks. I've been thinking that poets have to engage the idea of science and
the basis for science. If not, then who? Carlo Parcelli's work does just
that. But, everyone thinks the Carlo is mad. Nope. He's right on the
target, but people/poets/scientists have little use for the actual poetry
of epistemology. To tackle science through an epistemological and
phenomenological lens, I think there's only one form that will allow one
the freedom to achieve a deeply resonant articulation, and I find that can
only be satisfied by poetry. However, we're talking about an incredible
immersion, but it's just like Ezra's schooling, Ezuversity. But, people
write him off and a crack, too. Nope. Weinberger talks about it in the
interview he did with you, KJ. He put himself through the Ezuversity
curriculum of deep immersion, and that's why I think EW's work resonates.
There's weight to it. But, it's not that poets are not scholars. I just
think that many occupy themselves with things that carry no weight. I'll
quiet up now because I'm sure my comments are none too favorable.

love and kisses.

Anastasios