Jamie, I think your post below widens the debate too quickly. While I, as you know, because we've argued about it before, agree with Duncan and Mellors (though I think Duncan's is more an observation than an internalised view), the position of 'lyric', within that argument, is by no means clear, and neither is the position of lyric in relation to 'personality'. If, as Ian suggested, there is such a thing as 'experimental lyric', and I would tentatively say that yes, there does seem to be such a thing, then the relevance of the mainstream/modernist polarity to it might not be so vital. But, as you've already sent it down that road...

One criticism of the mainstream (and I can see an argument such as this coming from certain quarters) could be that there is a lack of genuine lyricism there, especially with some of its more high profile names. There is often a flatness of language and lack of cadence, and when lyricism does pop up it often sounds forced and unconvincing. In Duffy's case it comes across as almost embarrassing. I realise I'm opening myself to the usual come-back here, but it is what I think. If this does have relevance then it definitely complicates the opposition posited by Carrie's student, but there again, the American mainstream IS currently more inclined to be lyrical than the Brit one.

I mentioned Sheila E. Murphy and Peter Dent as poets who it could be said use lyric in a way which is both non-mainstream and non-traditional. Another name that bubbled up when I thought about it was my friend Scott Thurston. I would think also that a quick perusal of names published by Peter Hughes' Oystercatcher Press would throw up more examples.

Cheers

Tim
   
    
On 19 Nov 2014, at 13:57, Jamie McKendrick wrote:

 
Hi Carrie,
That student’s notion of an opposition to the ‘lyric’ mode, as Tim’s reply suggests, probably has to do with a perceived hostility on the part of the avant-garde towards the personal.
As Andrew Duncan baldly states it in a review of Conductors of Chaos:
           “Much of the politics of contemporary poetry is the struggle around the importance of the personality. Anthony Mellors, editor of fragmente, has drawn attention to: "what I see as a general 
            and abiding epistemological division between the largely anti-modernist mainstream trend in poetry publication/attention and the continuing tradition of experimental work inspired by modernism
            and the objectivists in particular."..... I would prefer to qualify the word epistemology: the knowledge in question is not so much of the outside world as of the processes of consciousness,
            especially as governing relations between the self and other selves. The mainstream approach is to take feelings, and awareness generally, as sacrosanct, merely unquestionable: a great swathe of
            the radical and experimental wing is pursuing a project of criticizing the immediate data of awareness, so as to find out the truth, and so become less selfish and more authentic in behaviour towards
            others.”
(I find the basic premise of Mellors and Duncan very questionable, and the conclusion that avant-garde practitioners are somehow working to become “less selfish and more authentic” even more so, but it’s useful to have the dogma so bravely and baldly expressed.)

   

Your sense of ‘intensely lyrical’ poets within that tradition may be looking at other ‘lyrical’ effects, acoustic, descriptive, etc.? In other words there are a range of qualities associated with the word ‘lyrical’ that inevitably create confusion. But also the field is so huge that there are always going to be counter-tendencies and reactions.

Jamie

 
In a postgraduate student's work, I've recently seen "avant-garde aesthetics" posited in opposition to poems that are "intensely lyrical" in contemporary American poetry and would be glad to hear others' thoughts. My own first response was the recollection of numerous "intensely lyrical" poets among Britain's "avant garde," if it can be so called. What say you?

Yours,
Carrie