scholarly journals Avant-Garde Tradition and Individual Talent: The Case of Language Poetry

2005 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Perloff
boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Yi Feng

Abstract As a prominent representative figure of American Language poetry, Charles Bernstein has incorporated many themes concerning “nothingness” into his poetry. Contrary to the traditional Western philosophy that defines the concept of “nothingness” as meaninglessness and agnosticism, “nothingness” in Bernstein's poetics is endowed with profound poetic and aesthetic implications. Bernstein studied the works of Zen-Taoist philosophy in his early years. Understanding the Zen-Taoist connotations of “nothingness” is an important new dimension in interpreting Bernstein's echopoetics. Bernstein integrates the anti-traditional ideas in Zen-Taoist philosophy and aesthetics with the experiment of American avant-garde poetry. “The transformation between Xu (emptiness) and Shi (Being),” the beauty of “speechlessness,” and the expression of “defamiliarization” show the “epiphany” of language and the “nature” of language. The Chinese traditional Zen-Taoist philosophy is an important part of Bernstein's echopoetics.


2018 ◽  
pp. 159-192
Author(s):  
Calum Gardner

The methodology of the book means that writers’ engagement with Barthes is what is studied, but this risks erasing writers who shy away from him. This chapter considers why some poets, particularly those who are people of colour and/or queer, reject Barthes aesthetically and politically. This issue is positioned in relationship to contemporary discussions of avant-garde poetry and whiteness, and these concerns are illustrated with a more in-depth reading of the work of John Yau. This is followed by a discussion of queer objections to the Barthes of language poetry and a consideration of his work in the context of the New Narrative. The chapter concludes by considering why Kathy Acker rejects Barthes in favour of Bataille.


Author(s):  
Oren Izenberg

This book explores a set of interdependent problems in the history, theory, and politics of recent Anglo-American poetry while offering a challenge and an alternative to a nearly unanimous literary–historical consensus that divides poetry into two warring camps—post-Romantic and postmodern; symbolist and constructivist; traditionalist and avant-garde. The book advocates a shift of emphasis, from “poems” as objects or occasions for experience to “poetry” as an occasion for reestablishing or revealing the most basic unit of social life and for securing the most fundamental object of moral regard. The book considers Language poetry as well as the work of William Butler Yeats, George Oppen, and Frank O'Hara—poets who seek ways to make their poetic thinking yield accounts of personhood that are at once minimal and universal.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
S. P. Gudkova ◽  
◽  
A. V. Khozyajkina ◽  

Introduction: the article is devoted to the study of the development of books of poems as a major genre form in modern Russian-language poetry of Mordovia and fits into the complex of Russian literary studies concerning the peculiarities of the development of the Finno-Ugric literary process. In the course of the research, the typological features of a thematic and «final» book of poems are revealed; the poetological features of this genre in the works of the poets of Mordovia belonging to the «traditional» and «avant-garde» paradigm are analyzed. Objective: to analyze the main trends of the development of a book of poems in the literary process of Mordovia. Research materials: the poetry books by A. M. Sharonov «The Monologues» and S. Yu. Senichev «Grapes in Chocolate, or Compounding». Results and novelty of the research: the analysis of the modern Russian-language poetry of Mordovia has shown that today there are two ideological and artistic paradigms: «traditional» paradigm based on the experience of classical Russian poetry and «avant-garde» paradigm developing with the support of postmodern experiments. The diversity of poetic practices makes it possible to determine the ways of development of a book of poems in the poetic process of the republic. In the creative works of the poets of Mordovia two genre-specific forms, such as thematic and «final», are developing. Moreover, the traditional poets most often comprehend the problems concerning the preservation of the national identity of the Mordovian people. They poetically sum up the plots and images of national mythology and folklore. The genre form of a «final» book of poems allows the most representative to convey the scale of significant historical and sociocultural events of the era, as well as to present the author’s biography against the background of these events. The avant-garde poets, on the contrary, move away from national attributes. The associative and metaphorical principle of constructing a book of poems becomes more important for them, where along with the lyrical understanding of the world there is a philological game, intertextuality, and allusiveness. Through the techniques of literary play authors often express nostalgia for lost values. The analysis of the poetic of the books of poems by A. M. Sharonov and S. Yu. Senichev will allow not only to determine the features of their creative manner, but also to trace the ways and character of the development of modern Russianlanguage poetry in Mordovia as a whole.


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