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

poetry over the past 125 years, because the myriad forms and methods of juxtaposing those two roles-most of
which forms and methods were invented from whole cloth by the avant-garde itself-are such that a dramatic
realignment of terminology is needed before we even have the conversations alluded to above.
One reason I’ve engaged in this research is because I believe (as I’ve written in the next essay shortly forthcoming on
this site) that this research benefits everyone: literary studies scholars, “creative writing” students and faculty, neo-
New Critics, avant-garde poets and scholars, even the “Otherstream” folks discussed in the essay-introduction above.
Jeffrey Side’s response published in The Argotist Online in July 2012
The following is my response to Seth Abramson’s critique of my Introduction to The Argotist Online feature ‘The
Academisation of Avant-Garde Poetry’. I have included, here, my Introduction, Abramson’s critique of it point-bypoint
and my response to Abramson point-by-point.
MY INTRODUCTION: Jake Berry’s essay, ‘Poetry Wide Open: The Otherstream (Fragments In Motion’) deals with
the issue of certain types of avant-garde poetry as not yet having found favour within the Academy, or with poetry
publishers of academically “sanctioned” avant-garde poetry. The damaging aspects of this exclusion, and the concept
of an “approved” versus an “unapproved” avant-garde poetry, are also examined in the essay. And these things could
well be described as “the academisation of avant-garde poetry”.
SETH ABRAMSON: This is a good example of the increasing incoherence of avant-garde literary criticism. In the
paragraph above, “Academy” is used as a catch-all to include both literary studies and “creative writing”.
JEFFREY SIDE: I don’t think the term “Academy” is being used in the way you claim it is. If you read the paragraph
you will see that what it is saying is simply mentions ‘certain types of avant-garde poetry as not yet having found
favour within the Academy’. Creative writing is not mentioned.
SETH ABRAMSON: … two forces that have been at war for approximately 75 years, that generally have sanctioned
and promoted entirely different poetries, and that are now administratively segregated at most colleges and
universities due to the decline and fall of the academics-oriented creative writing MA (and the subsequent rise of
creative writing MFA). So when the above author speaks of ‘types of avant-garde poetry . . . not yet having found
favour within the Academy’, no one reading that phrase could possibly have any idea what’s being discussed.
JEFFREY SIDE: Yes they would, if they read Bob Grumman’s response to Berry’s essay that listed these types:
Such a list would include […] visual poetry, sound poetry, performance poetry, contragenteel poetry,
mathematical poetry, infra-verbal and grammar-centred poetry (the two main schools of genuine
language poetry), cryptographic poetry, cyber poetry and others I’ve forgotten about or missed.
This seems fairly clear to me.
SETH ABRAMSON: Are we speaking of passive receipt-and translation into scholarship-of avant-garde literary
material by literary studies professors, most of whom are now suffused in literary theory, but a few of whom are
historicists or New Historicists or (even fewer still) neo-New Critics? Or are we speaking of whether or not these
‘types of avant-garde poetry’ are being taught by working writers in creative writing workshops-most of whose
faculty and students have minimal to no familiarity with or interest in literary theory, historicism (or the New
Historicism), or even (though they may have had some “training” in it in high school) the New Criticism?
JEFFREY SIDE: I would say we are speaking of passive receipt, translation into scholarship, and these types of avantgarde
poetry not being taught by working writers in creative writing workshops.
SETH ABRAMSON: In other words, precisely who is excluding whom? And from where? Who is doing all this
“sanctioning”-of what, and where, and when, and how? Who is doing the “approving”-and of what, and where,
and when, and how? Nobody in these discussions amongst avant-garde poets and critics really knows.
JEFFREY SIDE: Well in the UK, two of the academic “gatekeepers” are the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at
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