Elegy for the Avante Garde
Cris is right that the Avante Garde (in the UK) has moved into the
class-room, and it moved into it a while ago. My sense of it is that
this is part of the post-war baby-boomer influence. To me this betrays
the avante garde as an outsider movement - moving into the
institutions it was supposed to oppose. To me this is the betrayal,
and my naieve hopeless romanticism strikes rocks yet again. My heroes
have feet of clay. C'est la vie.
Experimentalism && Mainstream
My sense of it is that now, the experimentalists (I don't find the
label Avante Garde that useful) and the main-stream in academies
mirror each other, but for the orientation of their poetics, and even
that's being cast into doubt by Farley/Lumsden. Each of these
groupings have mentors, each have publishing lists devoted to their
poetries. Students from both camps progress through into books in
remarkably similar fashion. I mean there's usually the awards
nonsense, but I'm sure someone will come up with an award for
experimental country in this country. Each have their attitudes. Each
compete for the title "yah-boo sux we're better than you".
Against this, some in the mainstream see the modernist century as over
and the experimentalists are stuckist - and the latter certainly give
the former ammunition by continuing to flog the dead horse of the
"Poetry Wars" of whenever[1]. Innovation is seen as a label of the
past. They, the mainstream, want to bind us back into "tradition", to
bring back "taste". I think this is plastering over the cracks, a
wilful wishing-away of the state of England, a distinct attempt to
will-in power-structures of "taste-makers". Somewhere at the back of
Farley's article, I can almost smell the corpse of Betjemann, that
forever-wannabe, rubbing it's hands. And in any event, it's not a
"tradition" that I want to join. I wonder if Donaghy - and I met him,
nice guy - actually knew what sort of class-bound, tug-yr-forelock
sort-of monstrosity this tradition was and still is? I don't think he
could have experienced it.
In my more hippy, optimistic moments, I used to think it would be all
right if everyone would just come together in a big circle and talk,
we could all get along. In my more assertive moments, I say this:
"Stop it, both of you. You're hurting poetry in this country."
Best
Roger
[1] Enough already of the poetry wars. No one outside a few know or
really care about it. I don't.
--
http://www.badstep.net/
http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
Suspicion breeds confidence
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