I have no use in our context for "revolutionary," but this is a pretty thorough misunderstanding of "experimental" as I use the word, and as I work as a poet. It's also at odds with the dictionary. Real simple. I don't think most of us of any stripe are out to epater anyone at this point. An experimental poem as I understand it is a playing out of Creeley's take on form and content. The form, and the content, discovered in the act. In terms of practice this really is a boundary marker, selon moi, although the boundary is necessarily porous. And there really are different kinds of things in the world worthy of a nametag for convenience in discussion.
Best,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeremy F Green <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Aug 27, 2015 3:13 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: a good horsewhipping (was "delusions of whiteness", etc.)
>
>I'd never heard of the poet Peter mentions, so I found my way to his blog,
>read a (frankly, rather trite) poem about football, failed to discover any
>Martians or Martianism, but did come across a passage from a Michael
>Donaghy interview which suggests that there are all sorts of phantoms
>floating around the putative divide. I don't find this any more helpful
>than frustratingly vague accounts of a supposed 'mainstream':
>
>"But look at those sexy words used all too frequently to describe
>contemporary art and literature, 'experimental' and 'revolutionary'. The
>first is a metaphor filched from science - experimental art doesn't have a
>control group, doesn't collate and publish its findings. And
>'revolutionary' properly describes a brick thrown at a police cordon, not
>a poem in Parataxis. Among the most cherished illusions of the avant-garde
>is the idea that bourgeois art consoles, pleases and mollifies with
>received notions of beauty, whereas avant-garde art shocks and challenges
>and doesn't seek to please. I'm always dismayed by this kind of
>self-delusion. The audience for avant-garde art is a middle-class audience
>that pays to be shocked, bored or insulted, much in the same way that
>Mistress Wanda's clients pay to be horsewhipped. It's an audience that
>knows what it wants and is comfortable with its rituals and cliches.
>Whether it's a urinal on a pedestal in 1910 or a poem composed entirely of
>semi-colons in 1997 ('everything changes but the avant-garde', said
>Auden), the audience expects to retreat from a direct and complex
>experience of the craftsmanship, to ideas about art.
>
>
>The most common of these ideas can be phrased as 'Justify your instinctive
>reaction that this is not a work of art.' In other words, the burden of
>proof is placed with the audience, where in former ages it belonged to the
>artist. Whatever the quality of your work, if it strikes the critical
>powers-that-be as 'anti-poetic', it is de facto worth talking about. Fine.
>I enjoy avant-garde work from Duchamp to Damien Hirst, to poets like Clark
>Coolidge, but let's not delude ourselves with the naive and sentimental
>notion that such art is 'progressive'. I'm angry about that pretence.
>Capitalism long ago defeated the avant-garde by accepting it as another
>style. Yet artists continue to present themselves as an offence to the
>establishment even as they accept fat cheques from the Saatchi Gallery or
>attend academic conferences on 'oppositional' poetries."
>
>From www.benwilkinson.org
>
>
>
>
>
>On 8/27/15 8:00 AM, "British & Irish poets on behalf of Peter Riley"
><[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]>
>wrote:
>
>>Don't get the dreads, Tim, the dog may catch them. I wasn't expecting
>>you to answer all those questions,, just to consider they may be more
>>interesting than senses of usurpation (which I've knows myself quite
>>well in my time and there is, somewhere, some kind of justification,
>>or used to be). (The king supreme of the brand of resentment involved
>>is Anthony Barnett). (Listening to a young poet called Ben Wilkinson
>>recently I had to conclude that Martianism is not dead).
>>P
>>
>>On 27 Aug 2015, at 14:07, Tim Allen wrote:
>>
>>Good lord Jamie, too much for this lovely day. The bits I feel I can
>>respond to I will in separate posts if I can (but it might be
>>tomorrow), but some of below I just don't know enough about to be able
>>to judge its relevance. Also had a reply from Peter where the prospect
>>of trying to answer fills me with dread. Hi Peter. So patience. I'd
>>love it if some folk out there could chip in and help but I think the
>>list's ten million lurkers are all on holiday.
>>
>>Cheers
>>
>>Tim
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