Edited by author 08-13-2003 08:27 AM
The Emperor's New Words
Web Del Sol says avant-garde poetry is "indistinguishable from the early stages of dementia." Check out the other links on the page for a long diatribe against contemporary American poetry.

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I, for one, am a big fan of Joan Houlihan's polemics. Along with Dana Gioia and Tom Disch, I think she is one of the best commentators on the contemporary American scene, both for the content of her message and the healthy dose of vitriol with which it is delivered. Keep kickin' ass, Joan!

I get the feeling that the comment about dementia is something that a lot of avant-garde writers will relish. Could even be something they work into the jargon of their private discourse: dementism.

Yeah, that's one of the things I love about that essay; Houlihan can play the avant-garde game as well as any of its members.

É 2, Christičnne le Bök?

Merde! 'C fou! (LOL* PFW)



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One Man Avant-garde Jam

The cymbals go between the knees.

Johnson was, if you like, Britain's one-man literary avant-garde of the 1960s. Yes, of course there were other avant-garde writers around at the time, but they were not as famous as he was, they were not as good at putting their names about, they did not appear on television as often as he did, they did not argue their case as passionately or fight their corner as toughly as he did, and there is not - as far as I can see, anyway - the same stubborn residue of public interest in their lives and work, at the time of my writing this, some 30 or 40 years after the event. Johnson was different. Johnson was special.



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Discussion Has Been Slow...

So in hopes of drawing out some new discussants, and maybe drawing back a few old-timers (Killer, Zed, Silas, Sopwith, Claude, Thin Girl, Fish Fish, Mads, Twinks, where are you?), I give you this quote (from a longer review that I don't care much about):

When the poet David Lehman chose to title his book about the New York School of Poets "The Last Avant-Garde," he had a point; the point being that an avant-garde needs a mainstream tradition to be "avant" of and that the canonical New York School grouping of John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler had not only pushed the limits of language as far they could be pushed, but had pushed the project of pushing into the mainstream itself. It is, at this point, no longer possible to establish one's poetic legitimacy by being more experimental or irreverent toward the tradition than your predecessors; you can't go further than those guys have already gone. Ezra Pound's command that poets must "make it new!" was itself, once, a new idea. But by now, all the new ideas are really kind of old.

What do you think? Please: (discuss) (From Shanna)



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I fucked up
And you followed.

There is nothing
New under the sun.

I stole that.
Make it old.

"It is, at this point, no longer possible to establish one's poetic legitimacy by being more experimental or irreverent toward the tradition than your predecessors"

to establish one's poetic legitimacy?
when did that become the goal?

"Poetry, Pound said famously, is news that stays news."
That's from near the end of the Jollimore review.
Maybe Ezra's command should've been
"make it news!"

Silliman also quotes from this review in the May 31 blog entry
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

Oulipo, the Blog

Your worst nightmare or your dream site? You all come here, so I must only cross your mind when you're awake. I find it intensely interesting and a fantastic example of what focused blogging can do. An education conducted in public. (From Languagehat)



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Wondered over here from somewhere, and lo and behold you mentioned my site. Thanks for the kind words.

Digital Dada Library
The University of Iowa has an online collection of Dada-era publications. Neat little site if you're into that gang of hooligans.

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Return of the living dead

For those of you who, like me, missed it: Alienated.net is back online... in blog form. I've spent months just clicking refresh and waiting for something to come up.


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File under: now there's something you don't see every day...

The Oulipo movement getting coverage from a major American broadcast network. (From Lit Saloon, where, they point out, quite a few Oulipo works are under review.)



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A novel without words

Christian Bok slams his hand on the table and curses into the night. A flock of birds lifts from the rooftops of Calgary and flies toward the moon. Exeunt. (From Moby)


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Now there's something you don't see every day...

An introduction to 'pataphysics in a major newspaper.


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