> my main point was to question whether politics, good
> or bad, was a distinguishing feature of avant-garde poetry.
I'd say so, almost by definition: if its nature is to define itself
against a dominant discourse, which is surely one of its major
characteristics, then avant garde poetry (I kind of shrink using the
term, but anyway, it's a handle) is inevitably political, and often -
not always - overtly so. I'm having trouble thinking of exceptions. It
will always be called on its politics though, because it dissents:
writers like Arnold seldom are, however racist or extreme their
politics, because they are presumed to have (and often claim) an
apolitical or neutral stance, which simply means that their politics
aligns with current power structures and so is invisible. But you see
this mechanism all the time in political discourse.
xA
On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Jamie McKendrick
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Yes, you're right. I confess I've barely read more than the odd passage of
> Arnold's Culture and Anarchy. I'd always hoped he was a closet anarchist.
>
> Although there's no point in a contest between various repugnances, you
> could compare any of a number of Pound's anti-semitic rants with Arnold:
> "it is a time to Hellenise, and to praise knowing; for we have Hebraised too
> much, and have over-valued doing. But the habits and discipline received
> from Hebraism remain for our race an eternal possession; and, as far as
> humanity is constituted, one must never assign them the second rank to-day,
> without being prepared to restore them to the first rank tomorrow..."
> Which doesn't sound that appealing either, but beside Pound speaking into
> the microphone with all of the Fascist Axis's power at his shoulders,
> relatively humane.
> And Eliot as much as Arnold had a culture's power at his shoulders when, an
> immigrant himself, he presumed to declare:
> "and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of
> free-thinking Jews undesirable..."
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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