> Many political (left) avant garde poets see (or profess to see) their poetry as an instrument of change.

This could be less  crazy than it sounds. How speculative is Das Kapital? I remember, having read a few of continental works, most notably Humanism and Terror and A Thousand Plateaus, as an undergraduate, and momentarily scaring a slightly obnoxious lecturer to death by answering one of their questions. I mean, I still wonder if that's what much of this sort of work was written for, small imperceptible victories, etc..

All the best,
Luke



On 23 January 2018 at 13:56, GILES GOODLAND <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Many political (left) avant garde poets see (or profess to see) their poetry as an instrument of change. Hence not a pure art form. But the whole 'purify the language' idea is also instrumental. In fact I suspect few poets see poetry as a pure art form in the way they might see music or painting.




Tim Allan wrote:

I have always considered poetry to be an artform and if anything my problem in the past has been with people who did not see it as an 'artform' as such but as something essentially else - a therapy, a means of communication etc. So of course avant-garde poetry (or whatever term you want to use) is an artform. I don't see what the problem is. If any avant poets do not consider it an artform I really would like to know what they think it is.