Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

And every single one of the G1s who were politically active (not just through
our poetry) dealt with these issues repeatedly.
>What I don’t understand is why this hard-won utopian intelligence (or
> say: set of reading practices) is not brought to bear on the New Coast.
I disagree that this is what’s goin’ on. Here the claim in Apex about
"iconoclasts and not innovators" rings much truer to my ear. What I want to
know is what the social content of that might be.
>If you can read Rae Armantrout as "positioned critique" can’t you do
> the same for Robert Kocik?
Yes, absolutely. I’m interested in examining the nature of each position. I’m
not especially making the argument for my g-g-g-generation.
> I suppose that at some point, Ron, names will have to be mentioned to
> go along with generalizations
Oh, I still do believe in Lenin’s idea that the move toward "abstraction" is
toward the truer layer of the concrete.
> I’m honestly not sure what’s at stake for you in such remarks.
I thought (still do) that if I prod a little, I’d get some interesting feedback from
poet(s) in G2 (maybe even G3) who would further articulate the landscape, so
that the "prospective" (i.e. inchoate) nature posed by O-b 12 might give greater
rise to a new shared vision of a broader terrain. Frankly, I’d like to see less
reactive criticism and more manifestos a la Apex (and from a broad range of
positions). I find it interesting (very ambiguous word here, and deliberately so)
that the most detailed response has come from somebody who positions himself
as a critic and not as a poet, as such.
> On the question of "average ages" of NC and NAP, it seems clear to me
> that biological age doesn’t equal "age" in terms of the poetic field.
Huh?