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
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