Blogging to Think
Ron Sillman writes this in Silliman's Blog:
One of the values of blogging for poets is that it can deepen the degree of critical thinking poets themselves do, more so I suspect than the scatter of listserv discussions. If there is a bias hidden in the blogging form, it's toward poets who think critically, but that by no means ensures that said poets will be post-avant, let alone any particular flavor thereof.
No telling what he means by "post-avant" but his point about using the blog to think critically points to why I'm working my way into blogging: I just want a way to push my thinking about reading, writing, and publishing poetry. It's easy to say writing assists thinking but it's hard to get into the habit of writing to think. A blog seems to be a technology that help us all get into the writing to think habit.
But where to start with "post avant." Almost sounds like savant.
Clark has it right: post-avant garde. The reality is that the avant garde is its own tradition (stretching back at least to the 1850s) & that tradition has value, but the militarist implications of the concept have long since been jettisoned. It is, at least when I use the phrase, a much broader term than, say, language poetry, NY school, etc.
Post-avant. Here are some possibilities . . .
Post-avant garde. As in postmodern.
Post avant. As in posting a forward-thinking idea.
Post avant. As in a forward outpost (of opinion or perception).
My personal dilemma is what to do with all those journals I've been keeping for the last 24 years, not to mention the habits they have formed in me.