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

How so? All I was doing was pressing you on the difference between non-opaque avant-garde poetry and nonopaque
mainstream poetry, which both hold content as the a feature.
2) ‘It’s pretty dull to try and argue using such ludicrously vague terms’.
But you do this yourself when you say ‘both “avant” and “mainstream” poetries are so wildly various it’s impossible
to make some kind of hard and fast distinction’.
Either we know what avant-garde poetry is or we don’t.
3) ‘Whatever, opacity certainly doesn’t cut it as a distinction’.
But what does, then? That’s all I’m asking.
4) ‘Anyway, your whole point about a politicised avant-garde is basically wrong because (1) it imagines that any
text’s political efficacy can only be measured by its transparency, and that a political writer must write clearly and
simply, which would have been news to Marx, for one’,
How can any political idea or message be conveyed, then? Marx didn’t write political avant-garde poetry as far as I
know.
5) ‘and (2) it seems to think that all poets do is write poems, and ignores the possibility that poets who try and write
politically may be also engaged in actual political work that in its turn will inform their writing’.
If they are engaged in actual political work then that is not relevant to the political efficacy of their poetry. They are
separate issues. But I’m not talking about poets in general who may write clearly and have a penchant for activism.
I’m talking about avant-garde poetry claiming to achieve what activism can.
Sean Bonney
Sorry Jeffrey, looks like you just misread or misunderstood everything I was trying to say. Never mind.
Ian Davidson
Poetry and politics do seem inextricably and sometimes inexplicably intertwined. The best political poetry, to me,
seems to be that that doesn’t try to persuade me of anything, that abandons rhetoric as quickly as it can use it, and
that undercuts its own position.
So Prynne in Refuse Collection (on the barque website) is against war but never allows the poem the comfort of an
anti war position. And Sean Bonney in Commons (available on the web) is similarly restless, (Commons is a great
poem and if you haven’t already read it, read it). Andrea Brady’s ‘Wildfire’, also up on the web, has been mentioned.
And then almost from another tack Lee Harwood’s constant sliding off from a position as a judgement on the
illusionary quality of clarity. Those lapses into silence.
And Pound, sure, but what about Muriel Rukeyser’s work from the 1930s, or Aime Cesaire’s Notebook, or Langston
Hughes’ Montage to see that modernist experimentation wasn’t necessarily right wing, or male or white. And Frank
O’Hara’s work is deeply political and concerned not just with politics of sexuality but also of race and power.
It’s early, the sun is up and there must be something else to do.
Tim Allen
Jeffrey, I really do admire your stubbornness. You get yourself into some right corners and dig deeper and deeper
into those corners. I’m not being sarcastic either. You go into such detail, especially when responding to others, that
most of the time I get lost and I don’t know what I think about it any more. Take this oblique issue, as a difference
between mainstream and avant-garde. One moment I think you have got it wrong, as I pointed out, following on from
something Sean said, then I think that yes, from a certain angle you could be right-the trouble is it all depends on
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