On the avant-garde question: I feel like I am not thinking even as well as I used to think about this, it used to be more "nuanced" in the many discussions. One of the things I used to think was that individual practice & experiment partakes of whatever virtues "avant-garde" is supposed to represent, in that it really breaks new ground for the practitioner & develops technique & insight, and in that sense the weirder the better. But when it becomes a group category or social phenomenon it is becoming something else, like the way the Beats became a public phenomenon. So Gabriel's question about where's the avant-garde now? is maybe impossible to answer in that it is not a real phenomenon. Although others here seem to think such categories as "post-av-" actually mean something, perhaps they are right.
As to blogs: yes, it's a new mode of pampered pamphleteering. I love it because it combines easy access (for the time being) to publication with the means to accumulate or focus the subject-matter, providing me a solution to the lonely disequilibrium between the amount of time & effort I've put into my work & the tiny almost non-existent audience it reaches. Now there's developing a homemade "Guide to Henry" which might actually be helpful to anyone interested in the poetry per se, maybe it will be a book someday. I don't feel part of a bourgeoisie, as Kent put it; the other bloggers ignore me for the most part, I think I probably scare them or something, or they just realize I'm happy doodling along with my imaginary friends on my own. I think Kent is always biased against "property" or accumulation, it's just where he's coming from & is not going to change, he is a terrific prose stylist.
Henry
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