A while ago an American poet told me that, as far as he could see, Britain had never had an avant-garde. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know whether this might be a reasonable thing to say or not, but it did get me thinking about how we categorize poetry now.
Firstly, I wondered why we’d divide up poetry at all. I suppose the most obvious reason is that it tells a reader what assumptions they should bring to a poem – their reading kit. It must help readers choose what to read in the first place. If we can place poems in certain traditions, it might allow us to make connections which help explain how they have come about and which other writers and ideas they are talking to. Lastly, like political parties – or the idea of them – categories might allow us to have meaningful debates without having to reiterate our premises and beliefs all the time.
Since vers libre appeared there has been a seemingly straightforward way to divide all poetry up: metred and unmetred (assuming that as the least controversial definition of never-quite-totally-free verse). This, though, is a rather limited binary, since it only describes one aspect of the verse (even if we include other formal properties in the metred category). And description always seems to slip into evaluation. For many on one side, metred means conservative; for many on the other, free verse means unthoughtful, too easy even. Poets seem consciously or unconsciously to be aligning themselves with others when they write with or without certain structuring devices – but this seems often not the best indicator of the most important things about a poem or poet.
Recently I’ve come across a couple of lineage poems – one by WS Merwin (in The River Sound) listing poets that have meant a lot to him who have died in his lifetime, the other by Seamus Heaney (in Landing Light). Both place the poet in relation to a range of poets across the formal divide. This literary kinship, as a friend put it, seems to be the way many poets think about what they are doing. They think of themselves as participating in a conversation or shared endeavour with others from theirs and other ages. The exact nature of what is kindred here only comes through from triangulation between writers, and probably never very easy to pin down. But it is often, I sense, more to do with the impulse rather than the line breaks.
Another large basis for categorisation I can see is theme. As someone – I forget who, if I ever knew – said: ‘a poem is about something as a cat is about a house’. They’re usually shifty and diffuse, not expository. Having said that, with the necessary caveats we can, I think, usefully say certain poems and poets have similar concerns. This gets mixed in with characterization by certain common gestures and movements: the anecdote-leading-into-statement poem, the chain-of-linked-images poem, the free-association poem, the updating-mythical-figure poem. (These off the top of my head; I wonder if you recognise them as types – and what others you might add?)
Finally, there are the categories which usually only come retrospectively, although occasionally they are defined by practitioners in manifestoes (often more hopefully than accurately). These are the schools. I wonder which, if any, of these, are still alive. I’ve heard several poets suggest that in both the US and US, there is no solid and coherent enough living tradition in poetry for an avant-garde to define itself in opposition or at a tangent to.
Can we talk about a Cambridge school; martianists; post-postmodernists; new-new formalists; an avant-garde; others? Would we want to?
i think you said it best with the choice introduction of a living creature as somewhat representative of a poem or more ideally a poets attempt to make a poem of a solid and everyday unforgiving familiaraity, such as a house or indeed the constructs of a language which is necesarily both living and dead. The cat moves in its own way. Perhaps the questions are lost on the cat, although no doubt the only identifiable reason for characterisation or category in this respect is to know that the cat is not a dog. Abstractly speaking, we use our words as part of an unwritten agreement, relative to image or in fact to the self, we are only capable to communicate as far as our nature is allowed to impress upon its home.
In respect to the understanding of avante garde, perhaps thats not actually a cat at all.. perhaps its a way of describing a cat… small, sometimes shifty and very often lean but at times fattened to the point of gross uncatlikeness. But perhaps also, in the same way that a fluffy hat might appear easier to understand and apply the rules of the house to, the avant garde is dead long before the language which seeks to revive it.
i hope this helps more so than hinders
Thanks Darren…I get a little lost in the metaphors there. But are you saying that the avant garde can only exist when it isn’t the avant garde – like ‘unspoilt’ tourist beaches…?