 |
 |
Submitted with love and esteem for Henry: Henry's Modus Ippydandy: 1. Choose ancient text and/or writer (usually writer) 2. And/Or Choose canonical text and/or writer (usually writer) 3. Create hazy term for unspecified quality 4. Attribute hazy term for unspecified quality to canonical and/or ancient writer and/or text (usually writer) 5. Pretend to define hazy term for unspecified quality 6. Belittle current writers for not possessing unspecified quality Gabe At 10:49 PM 1/14/2003 -0500, Henry Gould wrote: >Geraldine Monk published some fairy tales in Nedge # 9 because I solicited >them. This is the sort of aleatoric event which avaunt-po-biz would try >to anthologize, if it cared about Nedge, which it doesn't. Snubbery >reigns in the posed avunc-god. > >The notion of avant-garde serves the literary wannabees in exactly the >same shibboleth-fashion that "freedom" serves George Double-You Shrub. > >Gudd asks, where is the avant-garde of now? I would suggest reading the >Hebrew prophets. They are rank amateurs when it comes to poetics but they >have the gift of utterance. So did Auden & Brodksy sometimes. What is >utterance? Utterance is the dialectical opposite of postmodern >mannerism. It is the political expression of virtu or character or vicy >versy, it is the politic expression of eccentric personality. Blake was >an utterer. It is often the real substance of poetry - something not seen >in America for several decades. > >It is the poet expressing the form & pressure of the time in public >language as under duress. It is the odd situation of the Everyperson >being asked while constructing an outhouse her opinion on the forgiveness >of debt. It is Langland being interviewed while starving to death. > >It is the point of conjunction between the necessary and the beautiful - >the obsession of Simone Weil, the eternal avant-gardiste, dying of hunger >in London, Paris, and hovels in between. > >Henry Gabriel Gudding Department of English Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 office 309.438.5284 home 309.828.8377 http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html