Lecture for an Empty Room

Fragments of a work-in-progress;

“…even if your preferred mode is fragment, you need syntax to love”
Brenda Hillman, “Remembering Form,” Loose Sugar

Is all writing “experimental”? Attempting anything that you haven’t done prior can be said to be an “experiment,” but if the thing being attempted has already been produced, and even better executed, can any new writing in a similar mode be considered an experiment? We know what’s going to happen. What if you combine red and blue? What if I combine red and blue?

Poet and critic Carl Watts via Twitter complained that a publisher’s text for a new poetry title offered it as “avant-garde,” a term wildly (and repeatedly) misapplied to works that clearly aren’t anything of the sort. It’s the same idea, really. There was a poet on Twitter during those early days of the platform who couldn’t speak without uttering the words “avant” and “garde” together, and they eventually published a debut novel that declared itself thusly “avant garde” in the cover copy. As at least one elder experimental writer declared: This book is not experimental. At what point does self-designation become wishful thinking? At what point does self-designation evolve into parody?

Green. You’ll get green.