For his anthology, Paul Hoover uses the term “postmodern” –
instead of “experimental” or “avant-garde” – for exactly this reason: it is an
open term which allowed him to group together all the different poets included
in the book. And indeed they are very different, there are Beats and Black
Mountain Poets, performance poets, New York Schoolers, Projectivists, language
poets and those who probably belong to several or none of these categories and
schools. Some of them are united in their tendencies towards the vernacular,
the personal, the mundane – away from the formal and impersonal regime of
modernist poetry. These poets create a poetics of the everyday where spoken
language plays a central role. But others seem to go in the opposite direction,
removing the author almost entirely from the poetic work and focusing on the
words on the page rather than spoken language.
I really like Paul Hoover’s definition of postmodernism in
his introduction where he describes it as “an ongoing process of resistance to
mainstream ideology.” He says, it “decentres authority and embraces pluralism.”
In this sense, the 103 poets brought together in the 700
pages of this volume are united in their passionate fight – against the
mainstream, against established authority, towards pluralism. On the page and
in performances and readings they are fighting for it. And I would dearly like
to join them because to me it sounds like the fight for a better world on the
whole.
Hoover claims that one thing which unites these postmodernist
poets is their preference of “writing-as-process” instead of “writing-as-product”
– and maybe that is also what this blog is about: The struggle with and through
language, the development and exploration rather than the solution.
I am following these great writers in their footsteps and there
is no way of knowing where it will lead me. I invite my readers to follow me –
for one year.
No comments:
Post a Comment