hg poetics reminds me to look at {lime tree} … and this piece by k. silem mohammad … Notes on (Dis)quietude and the “Post-Avant” … on what i take to be the longstanding effort to find the best term(s) for the kind(s) of poetry writing that’s been going on for the last (what?) quarter century … and a dissatisfaction with the terms set by ron silliman ( “School of Quietude” (SoQ) and “Post-Avant”) … if yr interested in such stuff, read the whole brief essay … i don’t much like ripping key sentences away from their carefully posed context, but here are some bits by kasey that i’d like to keep in easy reach for a little while …

a question: What kinds of conceptual violence have to be committed in order to make, say, Adrienne Rich fit into a quietudist pigeonhole, or in order to think of Jorie Graham as post-avant in Ron’s sense?

on SoQ: The trait shared by these writers is a generally conservative attitude toward versification and language in general as it is manifested in poetry.

[I]t is undeniable that some poems favor an aesthetic of tranquility while others favor more confrontational and discordant effects. One way of conceiving this distinction is as between a poetics of palliation and a poetics of catharsis.

Poetry must at a rudimentary level comprehend the demand of the human senses for a composed stillness, just as it must also comprehend their demand for derangement.

Poetry can never be only about beauty, nor can it be only about the absence of beauty.