-----Original Message-----
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Nov 19, 2014 12:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The avant garde v. the lyrical

There is nothing in the notion of the lyric that precludes it from being used experimentally, nor is there any necessity 

in permanently aligning the lyric with a narcissistic personalism. I do agree that the so called "mainstream" tends in that direction,

but in my mind these are poets who have not set themselves the task of moving past who they were when they began.

In other words, one must make a conscious decision as a human being to move beyond the innate preciousness that inevitably comes with childhood

and feeds one's original impulses in the arts.This means hard personal work over decades-- work that is not likely to be supported by prizes or an endowed chair.

 

That most people do not do take this on is not the fault of any form or approach to art. it simply shows up in the limitations of their work.

I have always been suspicious of any claim that a theoretical stance can overcome or do an end-around the hydra of the artist's ego. 

In fact such claims strike me as the exact opposite of that-- a means of hiding one's ambition behind a noble sentiment.

David 

http://www.kulchurweb.com/fairytales.html

On Nov 19, 2014, at 1:57 PM, 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

 

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