[Quincy Lehr]

You all do realize that there's something of a tradition in avant-garde art to make grandiose statements, in part, because they're funny, right? I suspect there's a certain sly hyperbole in many of the formulations used, a "Let's see if the normals get the joke. Hehehe."

[Janice D. Soderling]

Quincy, at Eratosphere there are no normals.

BTW, I just read a cool article and have forgotten where or I would quote it, but something to the effect that avant garde is passé nomenclature, to such extent that anyone who still uses it, isn't.

[Stephen Collington]

¡Abajo el vanguardismo! ¡Viva el shamguardismo!

[Roger Slater]

Shopping lists? Woody Allen already did laundry lists.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Good one, Roger. And wasn't it Rossini who said: Give me your laundry list and I'll write an opera. Still nothing new under the sun.

[Rick Mullin]

"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry"--Richard Wilbur

[Rose Kelleher]

Nemo and Bill have a point that it's a big sandbox. I wonder, though, if Kenneth Goldsmith shares that view, and is equally magnanimous when he encounters the work of others outside his corner of the box. I don't know the man, but I bet he would feel perfectly free to dismiss, say, Nemo and Bill as backward-looking formalist hacks - whether in reviews, or in other ways having to do with publication, prizes and grants. Same with whatsisname who got all huffy here a while back and called everyone a bunch of nobodies because they had never appeared in the New Yorker. He didn't feel any particular need to open his mind to alternative points of view; in his mind, there was his way of doing it, and the wrong way.

I don't remember seeing a bunch of formalists in the issue of BAP that was edited by Lyn Hejinian, nor would it be reasonable to expect that. Artists are partisan. Eratosphere's membership is hardly unique in this regard. Yet when we behave the way most artists do, we are seen as narrow-minded bigots, whereas Lyn Hejinian is just doing her job. How nice it must be to belong to the group that's considered broad-minded by default, whether they really are or not.

I tend to like the "big sandbox" idea, personally, because I'm a coward, and I'd rather hear "not my cup of tea" than something that might really hurt my feelings. But not everyone takes the big sandbox view; those who most benefit from it, perhaps least of all.

And is the sandbox really all that big? Wasn't this thread originally about arts funding or lack thereof?

I'm also suspicious of this idea that someone can prove by logical argument, or by showing his credentials, that my aesthetic is wrong. That seems a bloodless view of art. Or maybe a Catholic view, as opposed to the Protestant "every man is his own priest." I am suspicious of these highly trained poetry priests - mostly male, of course - who want to stand between me and poetry, administering sacraments and granting indulgences.