This is GREAT

"...Alot of younger writers followed suit and started using the actual word "language" too much in their poems or, like Silliman, used the word "syntax" too much..."

Though, where it is stated that "[Contemporary Poetry] closes it them [sic] off from general audiences and starts talking to itself (talking to itself in an institution… contemporary poetry is mentally handicapped)", I'm suspicious of this as a flippant pejorative. Why is being analogous to non-normative psychological function necessarily bad? I would argue that part of the function of poetry is to explore/investigate/interrogate alternative epistemologies/ontologies/modes of perception/production (I'm thinking here of Alice Notley, Ron Johnson, Lara Glenum...), and the Schizo-positive thought experiment of Deleuze and Guattari provides a good opening for this (whether or not it succeeds or fails - and is the failure of an experiment such a bad thing anyway?).

In the discussion of "schools", "cliques" etc, I see another thing that, through discussions with Jared Wells (generally involving a large quantity of beer), I have come to believe is flawed - the idea that, when writing poetry, appealing to a small audience is essentially elitist (though this, in the post in question, is implied rather than stated - it may not be there, but there is a general feeling that this is true in the wider poetic community - Kenneth Goldsmith implies simmilar things about populism and accessibility here, paragraphs 10 & 11). To expect everybody to like your work is preposterous (even if you are Billy Colllins or Seamus Heaney), and I feel that writing, for instance, aeleotory works drawing from obscure 17th Century arcana is no different in principle from writing, say fan fiction based on a b-grade 80s sci-fi series, or playing Goth-Rock. If I just get on with it, and some people like, and maybe publish or buy my work, then that's great.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Post what now?

"This is my argument with the post-avant in poetry: the (alleged) “edge” is not singular, nor a platonic form or an oversoul, but that there are many “edges” displacing and reharmonizing, bleeding into each other and tangling, spilling over the very concepts of themselves. “edge,” to those of the post-avant (neo-avant) in poetry, is a new disjunct, a re-territorialization, whereas to my view (which you can call postcolonial or postmodern if it helps you, though I call it “pre-nothing”) is one of deterritorialization, reharmonization, and breaking the edges and linearity."

I'm really sorry for posting nothing but links recently, but have been busy drowning in a sea of various writings and projects. New stuff in the works. Will be here soon.