The turn, or volta, is at the heart not only of the sonnet tradition but it is employed in a whole host of popular mainstream poems. (Billy Collins loves the turn–it’s no wonder that Poetry 180 is subtitled A Turning back to Poetry.) However, the turn also is vital in a number of post-avant poems and for a number of post-avant poets. Jorie Graham has made significant reference to the turn, and Hank Lazer’s essay (“Lyricisim of the Swerve”) on Rae Armantrout focuses on the turn in Armantrout’s poetry.

The turn won’t magically decipher the post-avant, but I do think that knowing more about the turn helps to make the post-avant more accessible–it’s one door.

Every “school” or whatchmacallit has diversity within itself. We/they might argue the relative size of the section that is called mainstream, but certainly there is diversity within it.

One way I think of the world of poetry is as a kind of spectrum. On one far end is classical and traditional on the other end the avant-garde (in function, not the particularly named movement of the past… I don’t think the post-avant is actually post- anything because I don’t consider the avant garde to be a bounded movement as “modernism” is usually considered). Somewhere in the middle, whether covering a little to the left or right or in total pushed a bit to one side or another, depending on one’s definition, is what I consider mainstream. Within it is a diverse range of poetry, but the entire range of mainstream isn’t necessarily even a majority of the entire spectrum.

And, in practice, what appears on the avant garde side filters down, eventually and in a filtered kind of form, into the mainstream and over time becomes part of the traditional. At heart of the post-avant argument is their contention that what I consider mainstream is really just a rehash of the traditional rather than, as I see it, a fluid, porous space.

Generosity is something I am learning, in part because I have spent a significant amount of effort interacting with post-avant poets in different ways. I can’t maintain my earlier feelings that they are generally pranksters or suffering from a mass delusion or simply taking advantage of a system where they can find a social and cultural reward through taking on appearances. It doesn’t mean I have to love or even like most of it. But I have to believe– based on all of my other aesthetic experiences– that where I am missing something, a good part of the “fault” lies with me.

Really, that large groups of people can come to any aesthetic agreement at all is a kind of miracle, all things considered… I can’t ignore the number of smart people “over there” just because I don’t get (much of) it.

My one disagreement is with the sentence, “Despite the diversity, my own tastes remain largely mainstream.” which suggests that the “mainstream” contains little if any diversity.

This minor disagreement, of course, may hinge upon one’s definition of “mainstream”.