[New-Poetry] failed avant-garde monuments

[Alexander Dickow]

"And  surely there must be 
poorly-executed & 
failed avant garde practice in  their midst or
recognized 
retrospectively?"

I nominate the Wasteland. Booooooring. Next to how I
feel about the Wasteland, I just *love* Robert Frost.

I agree, James: many of the poets I like are the ones
engaged in a big conversation (which obviously would
include Pound and Eliot, tho I'm not a fan), whatever
their status as "innovators". The question is, though:
which poets do contemporary poets talk to? In my
experience, the same ones over and over and over again
(Pound and Eliot, culprits once again -- but also
Stevens, Frost, Stein and a very few others. In
France, it's the Rimbaud/Mallarme/Baudelaire
triumvirate, almost exclusively it seems, bleeccch).
Personally, I like to talk to poets a lot of
contemporaries don't seem to think about much: Wyatt,
Charles d'Orleans, Skelton, Rutebeuf (lots of Medieval
stuff, absolutely). Tradition isn't monolithic. 
There's so much to choose from. I think people tend to
stick to chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, even when
they say otherwise. All that stuff about critiquing
the canon's always just been talk, anyhow.
Amicalement,
Alex

www.alexdickow.net/blog/
   
  les mots! ah quel désert à la fin
  merveilleux. -- Henri Droguet