Here's a research project: twentieth century Spanish poetry that is [n]ot avant-garde even when critics call it that. Poetry that is radically modernist is in the vast minority here. The wind-through-the-poplars style* is much more prevalent quantitatively. I'm not talking about rescuing it from oblivion or saying that it is unjustly neglected, but of answering the question of why it is so prevalent once you take away the more canonical and avant-garde work. Even in other generations of Spanish poetry that old-fashioned romantic nature poetry is all over the place.
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*I just made that up.
2 comments:
The version of this post in my feed read "poetry that is avant-garde even when critics call it that". The "ot" is whimsical in its own way, but does switch the meaning to the less amusing possibility.
As you've often said, we have flocks of Merwins and Glucks and Olivers who are considered more important than the avant-garde -- they're more reviewed and taken more seriously in the NYRB. But those reviewers don't try to call them avant-garde....
I tried to correct that before anyone saw it, but then I did it so quickly I forgot the n in not. I'm putting it in brackets so your comment will still make sense.
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