Avant-Gardism

In a Poetry magazine review of Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (Second Edition) , Michael Robbins questions the categories of “avant garde” and “mainstream” with respect to poetry. The Norton volume and those anthologies like it are “predicated upon the notion that there is a ‘mainstream,’ an establishment, usually figured as ‘academic,’ against which the anthologized poets are bravely swimming.”

This isn’t accurate: “It is closer to the truth to say that this anthology, and others like it, have created the ‘other traditions’ of ‘postmodern American poetry,’ ‘avant-garde poetry,’ ‘outsider poetry,’ ‘new American poetry,’ and the like. If the avant-garde historically represents a struggle against the institutional forms of cultural domination (in the case of ‘dominant and received modes of poetry,’ these must include the major journals, English and creative writing departments, and publishing houses), what must we conclude about an ‘avant-garde’ that is completely absorbed by and into those very institutions.” If, as Robbins thinks, poetic canons are formed in universities and transmitted through class syllabi, the avant-garde is mainstream as they can get, since their works appear regularly on course syllabi for university courses about contemporary poetry.

In short, “Today’s ‘mainstream’ is a construction of today’s soi-disant ‘avant-garde,’ which is a construction of poets in love with their image of themselves as perennial outsiders.” That self-image can only be maintained through contortions and distortions, which become embarrassing “when you’re granted (or burdened with) the imprimatur of W.W. Norton & Company. Outsider avant-gardist Rae Armantrout won the Pulitzer in 2010, which should raise questions about “what the conferring of Official Verse Culture’s highest honors on the rebel faction should tell you about your categories.”

Robbins cites Peter Burger’s conclusion that while the avant garde failed in its mission to destroy institutionalized art, it did succeed in undermining any notion of “mainstream.” Burger says that the avant-garde “did destroy the possibility that a given school can present itself with the claim to universal validity.” And without such a hegemonic, totalizing “mainstream,” the very idea of an avant-garde becomes nonsensical. Avant-Gardism didn’t destroy art, but rather by its very success made avant-gardism impossible.

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