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

JEFFREY SIDE: It seems you have misunderstood the argument of the Argotist feature. It is not about Penn being a
conspicuous non-degree-granting avant-garde outpost but about the exclusion from study of the types of avantgarde
poetry Grumman has listed.
SETH ABRAMSON: A greater issue is this new coinage, “academic avant-garde poetry”, which bears the same ills of
easy misinterpretation (or even meaninglessness) as does its originary term “academisation”. What does it mean for
an “avant-garde poetry” to be “academic”? Again, the discourse of these fellows is designed to create the appearance
of a mutual understanding of terms when in fact no such consensus does-or could-exist.
JEFFREY SIDE: For an “avant-garde poetry” to be “academic” it has to be studied, taught and disseminated by
academics who specialise in writing about avant-garde poetry.
MY INTRODUCTION: Consequently, one could say that the term “avant-garde” has now, essentially, been
appropriated by the Academy, and, as such, has become associated with the sort of poetic writing practices that
could be fairly said to represent “establishment” poetry, to the extent that the historical resonances of the term
“avant-garde” have become meaningless. In contrast, Bob Grumman’s term, “otherstream”, which Berry uses in his
essay to describe poetry that is marginalised by the Academy, can be seen as a more apt replacement for the term
“avant-garde”, which has now become obsolete as an appropriate description for poetry that isn’t anecdotal,
descriptive or prose-like.
SETH ABRAMSON: We see here that the author’s use of the term “Academy” has suddenly switched; as ‘poetic
writing practices’ are being discussed now, we must assume we’ve now returned to “creative writing” spaces within
the academy, and literary studies scholars-all of them; their entire institutional history-have suddenly been
divorced from any working definition of “the Academy”.
JEFFREY SIDE: You seem obsessed with introducing creative writing into the discussion, when what I am referring
to are “poetic writing practices”. The two are not necessarily the same discipline. The latter is a theory-led practice,
the former about acquiring poetic skill-sets.
SETH ABRAMSON: … (For surely we could not include those scholars, else we be forced to admit that the avantgarde
was ‘appropriated by the Academy’ just as soon as prominent avant-garde poets started storming the
academy-via the acceptance of teaching positions-in the 1980s. Indeed, we might then be forced to note, too, 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-
JEFFREY SIDE: It seems you have misunderstood the argument of the Argotist feature. It is not about literary studies
scholarship adopting the avant-garde during the 1980s but about the exclusion from study of the types of avantgarde
poetry Grumman has listed.
SETH ABRAMSON: … 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.
JEFFREY SIDE: Again, you seem obsessed with referencing creative writing in your arguments.
SETH ABRAMSON: In any case, if ‘the historical resonances’ of the term “avant-garde” have become meaninglessper
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.
JEFFREY SIDE: That is why I placed the word “establishment” in quotation marks in my Introduction. I’m well
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