It’s All In A Name
Lang Po and its descendents are the poetic equivalent of the Progressive, Jazz/Rock fusion music of the 1970’s. They are the Emerson Lake and Palmer of the poetry world. The Mahuvishnu Orchestra of the poetry world. The Yes, Genesis and Gentle Giant of the poetry world. The Strawbs of the poetry world. The Chick Correa and Return to Forever of the poetry world.
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LangPo and its descendents are self-consciously experimental. One of the things that has occasionally hung up the younger generation of this group is the need to re-label the movement. Post Modern, a phrase coined by Charles Olson in 1951(“any POST-MODERN is born with the ancient confidence that he does belong†(letter of 20 August 1951 in the Olson-Creeley Correspondence, vol. 7 p. 115)), is hopelessly old, but it leaves no place to go, even less so than Modernism. Attempts have been as weary and transparent as those to replace ‘Liberal’. Radicals have always scoffed at ‘liberal’ anyway, because they take ‘liberal’ in its primary, 19th century sense of
NAKED CAPITALIST as opposed to Romantic Aristocrat. Now, ironically, Liberals have been tarred as the romantic aristocrats of our day. Eliot Spitzer was giving the term new life, that is until he failed to take his socks off (a Barefoot Contessa is better than a Hosed one). Avant Pop has been proposed (and used ironically and opportunistically in this blogh) as well as experimental (like the functional liberal replacement progressive), Post LangPo, InnovativePoetics. I propose to my straw dog paper tigers The Former Post Modernism, Post Mortemism, or finally (and this I think rings most true to our age), The Modernism Formerly Known as Post. What these Noms de l’Age lack are the boosters of the stature of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, ad-men who could take a phrase and make a movement out of it like so much roughage.
