Over at his blog on Harriet, Reginald Shepherd offers a characteristically insightful post about “post-” poets (post-modern, post-avant, etc.). Here’s an excerpt:
Post-avant writers tend to eschew the standard and standardized autobiographical or pseudo-autobiographical anecdote which predominates in what’s called (usually pejoratively) “mainstream” poetry. Indeed, they frequently problematize and question the notions of self and of personal experience. But they don’t just discard the self as an ideological illusion. As well, they tend to avoid or at least seriously complicate narrative of any variety. They incorporate fracture and disjunction without enthroning it as a ruling principle. They are interested in exploring, interrogating, and sometimes exploding language, identity, and society, without giving up on the pleasures, challenges, and resources of the traditional lyric. Their work combines the lyric’s creative impulse with the critical impulse of Language poetry. Theirs is a magpie-like eclecticism, that draws from whatever materials, traditions and techniques are of interest and of use, however seemingly incompatible, however ideologically opposed historically. They don’t try to destroy the past for the sake of the future, or trumpet teleological notions (let alone grand narratives) of artistic “progress” or “advance,” though they are fascinated with the processes of poetic construction.
This is the most cogent description I’ve found of what Shepherd calls a “third space” in American poetry. Let me add that his post is lengthy and offers a wealth of details for anyone who wants to fine-tune their sense of where American poetry is headed at the moment.