Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

that literary studies scholarship adopted the avant-garde during that very same period, meaning that “creative
writing” spaces in the academy are now - assuming the author’s claim of ‘appropriation’ is true - either
experiencing a generative “bleeding-over” of their peers’ work in literary studies-a phenomenon which would be
worthy of study, if identifiable-or else that the avant-garde has found its way into “creative writing” via other
means-which might suggest, to the horror of all these fellows, that there is something inherent in “creative writing”
that is amenable to, susceptible to, conducive to the introduction of avant-garde poetries and poetics).
In any case, if ‘the historical resonances’ of the term “avant-garde” have become meaningless-per this author’s
contention-we would need to say, also, that the term “establishment” (used by this author) has likewise been
rendered meaningless, as the avant-garde historically used the term to denote the hegemony of the New Criticism,
then once the New Criticism was gone it used it (per Bernstein) to denote Official Verse Culture (which the data now
suggest did not originate in the academy), and now . . . well, now we’ve simply no idea what the term
“establishment” means to these guys. Except to say that it’s a murky term all of whose myriad valences we’re
presumed to disapprove of instantly.
I’m no New Critic, but I’ll note also how generally shabby a job of “close reading” avant-garde critics often do when
they choose to avail themselves of the tools of their oppressors. The fellow writing the above paragraph defines
“establishment”/”Academy” poetry-produced by whom, and where, and when, we don’t entirely know, but surely
somewhere on some kind of campus at some time by somebody-as ‘anecdotal, descriptive or prose-like’. These
three terms historically have nothing in common. “Anecdotal” poetry could well be used to describe the highly-social
“walking-around” poetries of the New York School, or the literary tradition of the Black Arts Movement, unless the
author means “epiphanic” poetry, in which case we’re speaking of those same Romantics “mainstream” poetry has
lionised and the avant-garde has merely adopted wholesale as to their theories of “creative genius”.
As an anti-descriptive poet-I almost never use metaphors or similes or “describe” anything in my work, which is
quite intentional (I read rather a lot of Dorn in Iowa City)-I know that those who feel otherwise could as easily
claim the avant-garde Imagists as their direct predecessors as anyone else. And “prose poetry” was, of course, an
avant-garde creation entirely. So the aesthetic engagement of the essay-introduction above is minimal; we might
even say it’s only gestural. Which would be less of a problem if the article weren’t entirely grounded in a study of
aesthetics.
[Quoting from Jeffrey Sid’s Introduction to The Argotist Online feature on ‘The Academisation of Avant-
Garde Poetry’] ‘This Argotist Online feature presents Berry’s essay, the responses to it from poets and
academics it was first shown to, and an interview with Berry where he addresses some of the criticisms
voiced in these responses. Many poets and academics (including those most famously associated with
Language Poetry) were approached for their responses but declined. Other poets and academics that
had initially agreed to respond ultimately declined. I mention this not as criticism but merely to explain
the absence of people who one would normally expect to have responded and taken part in such a
discussion’.
Here we encounter the old “poets and academics” canard. You know, those “academics”-the ones every other
paragraph implies work in creative writing programs and are themselves working poets and not academics. Or does
“the Academy” now mean only literary studies programs, and we ought to presume that no one in a literary studies
course could possibly be a working poet-even though almost every creative writing MFA and definitely every
creative writing MA and definitely every creative writing doctoral program requires literary studies coursework from
its working poets? (The last form of program even requires, too, the same preliminary examinations as English
Literature doctoral candidates take.)
The point I’m making is hopefully an obvious one: Discourse in the avant-garde community has become so sloppy in
part because there’s been no one pushing at it from the other side, as Ron Silliman has long noted. That is, scholars of
“creative writing”-whether or not they write in that alleged vein or rather an avant-garde one-are needed, men
and women who know that their brethren in the avant-garde community have gradually lost all definition of their
terms. And if those conversations held between and amongst members of the nominal “avant-garde” are to have any
meaning or resonance or relevance to anyone else, those terms have to be defined.
Anyone who uses the phrase ‘poets and academics’ has absolutely no handle on what’s happened in American
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