I just ordered the complete Basil Bunting. I've only read/heard a little of Briggflatts. I am excited to sit down with him.
Also ordered Watchfulness by Peter O'Leary and John Taggart's Pastorelles.
It's nice to get this perk with teaching. Books from large publishers (norton, penguin etc.) which I can trade for store credit.
I am hoping to turn in two more Penguins and get enough store credit to get the criterion Stan Brakhage.
Just got The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book in the mail yesterday.
I am almost finished with Peter Burger's Theory of the Avant-Garde. Two points have stuck in my mind:
"the neo-avant-garde institutionalizes the avant-garde as art and thus negates genuinely avant garde intentions."
"It is the status of their products, not the consciousness artists have of their activities, that defines the social effect of works."
A while back I pondered the idea of the avant garde relying on a knowledge of traditional/canonical literature (you have to be familiar with what the avant garde is reacting to in order to understand their various projects). Burger argues the avant garde is now a tradition largely autonomous from mainstream art. In other words, an alternate canon? An alternative tradition?
Science as an institution cannot really be as fundamentalist as religion as an institution because it allows for self-critique, scientific method etc. (this is very debatable of course)
Avant garde institutions allow for more cannibalism than more mainstream practices.
The cross-overs may often be surface level cross-overs (i.e. a personal "style")?
These are all questions. Not thesis statements.