Interesting, Peter. You've posed a near impossible request. However, I've been thinking about this a lot from the initial email that Carrie sent. At the time I read that email I thought, "that again". Are we like the neurotic who continually revisits the incident in childhood in an attempt to make sense of it and then free his or her future? Why do we retread this path, asking what the differences between "mainstream" and "avant-garde" are, trying to more clearly define each? What purpose does the categorising of poetry serve? I am reminded of a story that Kathleen Fraser told about John Ashbery. It was an interview (or perhaps a conversation) and the interviewer asked something about the New York School. Ashbery drawled the comment, "Well, I don't know why they called us the New York School … we all hated each other". 

The revisiting, of course, is about the fact that no satisfactory answer, or definition, in this case, has been reached.

I can't answer your questions, but I can mention things I think are relevant. So I'll go for that. Warning: there will be references, though perhaps not alliances.

First of all, as you know, categories are an academic impulse. They are also used in review work for convenience, descriptive and ideological. Though using categorical terms may give groups of poets a sense of solidarity. But when it comes down to it, nothing in poetry is so cut and dried, because poetry is an individualistic art form. It's appeal lies in the individual writer presenting something that strives to be new. This does not preclude similarities in perception and form; we are after all social beings. So that what we have when all those differences (and similarities) are gathered together is a wide and variable portrait of what it is to perceive and function as a human. Therein, I suppose lies its value (or one of them) on a social level.

Second. What I'm trying to say here is that poetry is a spectrum. And each poetic category is a spectrum. Or group of spectrums. And therefore "fuzzy" or prone to blurring.

Third. Poetry takes place in two distinct realms: content and form. And this complicates things. Further, there may be other realms besides content and form that we haven't become aware of yet. My personal belief – though not an original one – is that those practicing experimental writing like to mess with and make up their own idiosyncratic forms. It's a kind of passion. Experimental poetry's uniqueness occurs in formal terms rather than in content. This brings my discussion to back to the realm of worth. It is satisfying to mess with form. It is the creative aspect of writing; content being more often a mirroring of known ideologies. Finally, form in experimental work often takes on the authority of the "I".

Four. I agree with John that the "I" is useful in all poetry because of its authority, which is the authority of experience rather than that of knowledge, facts, or ideological correctness. And like Sean (I believe it was Sean) the "I" is in the poem implicit whether or not it is stated. In neither case is it objective. Nor is the reader. That is to say: the lyric "I" is not a feature of difference between what you are calling mainstream and avant-garde. The explicit or implicit "I" is enjoyed by all writers. It may be narcissistic, but narcissism is also a spectrum, from a form of self-indulgence to a pathological personality disorder. It moves from harmless to harmful. Even so, creativity is not narcissistic. It is a basic impulse. It has personal value. And of all the many activities that humans perform, poetry, or making art in general, is one of the most benign. We aren't selling weapons here, shooting children, or expanding our stock portfolios at the expense of others. What we are striving for is entirely different. 

Why one chooses specifically avant-garde versus mainstream? Don't know.

I don't call myself an avant-gardiste; that for me is a British term. I do think of myself as an experimental writer. I like that term, despite the fact that Marjorie Perloff (if I remember correctly. Sorry, Marjorie, if not) says she doesn't like it because it suggests failure, or the capacity to fail. All experiments that come to a conclusion give results. They may not be the ones you want but they are useful. They have value, if anything does.

Over and out,

J


___________________________

Jaime Robles




On 3 Dec 2014, at 15:42, Peter Riley wrote:


Re Tim:
"whenever you talk of the avant-garde you limit them to one particular section with which you have had profound disagreements" 

I don't think this is right. (I don't think "Cambridge" was avant-garde at all. Avant-garde or experimental in  those days was stuff like Finlay, Cobbing, Rot, Dada, ... than which not much could be further away.) I'm well aware of the varieties, and endless proliferation. 

Why I'm here is I would like to see a statement from someone willing to be called avant-gardiste, about why she finds it necessary or important, now, to write in this way, and to say this without reference to the dreaded philosophical book-list which John mentioned, or any other authorities on the human condition or on language, and without dragging in politics, and not a purely negative claim based on disdain for "mainstream". Just a straightforward why it is, about being read by people and how they should benefit. Or, why a writing which cannot, and is not allowed to, say. What is wrong with saying? Surely everyone must have thought about this. I'm waiting. 

Pr