Dan Tessitore writes:

‘To Chris’ assertion that it is possible to muster equal enjoyment for a wide “spectrum” of poets and poetry - I really would love to agree, and “in theory” I suppose I do, but it hasn’t been my experience.’

Really, my analogy is about one’s affections, not about poetry. Does poetry lie along a spectrum? Well, I think that is one way to look at it. There is a presumption there that everything that is being called poetry in these discussions really does belong to the same set. I’m not sure this is necessarily a shared assumption when I read some comments, but since those commenting continue to talk about poets, poetry, and poetics, I will assume that all of the items being talked about are fairly labelled poetry, and with that assumption I think a spectrum is a fair analogy.

At issue is how the different schools of poetry are aligned to one another. Are they akin to the range of music within a particular type, like varieties of jazz, or are they much further apart than that but still part of the same general group (the John Zorn to Dolly Parton range, which was not meant to denigrate Parton, incidentally, just to posit two musicians with radically different projects)? I personally think that a proper parallel between the post-avant and the School of Quietude would be that of the contemporary jazz avant-garde and contemporary straight-ahead. Some musicians and listeners are divided, finding their loyalties solely encompassed within one camp or another, but many listeners find appealing examples of both. However, I’m not aware of any musical arguments that these schools of music do not actually derive from the same sources in the way that Silliman posits schools of poetry do.

But my own hobby horse is about our affection for poetry, which is an overlay on that spectrum like the lines of absorption spectra that identify a chemical element. There may be clusters where we have a heavy emphasis, but I think our aesthetic appreciation is almost necessarily discontinous.

Of course this is convenient because it lets me pick and choose what I like– but I submit that is exactly what we are all doing anyway.

So I’m left to wonder, given Dan’s comments and the vociferousness with which some argue for the post-avant, if I am really that unique in my appreciation for authors from both schools. Or perhaps my standards just aren’t high enough. Or maybe I need to let feelings about the political stranglehold of academia influence my aesthetic decision-making. Or maybe the deepest divisions really are ideological in nature, as I most suspect.

There is actually much more to the parallels of poetry and jazz to be explored. And I don’t mean in the sense of artistic execution, but in the larger “meta” issues. The politics of the old school, the progress of the avant-garde, the divided audience, the place of jazz in the constellation of musical styles, the declining audience, the plague of smooth jazz (if I carry this too far I might become a post-avant spokesman myself), etc.