Post-Avant and Epiphany

In someone's comment stream, I do not remember whose, I was accused (by name) of telling poets that they cannot talk about epiphanies. This is a misrepresentation, but not a gross one. Epiphany, among experimentalists, has gotten quite a bad name, and though I have not made such an all-encompassing gesture as I have been accused of, the relationship between post-avant and epiphany will need to be looked into to avoid further confusion. Mainstream poets have a way of using epiphany to create a specific type of effect- usually, as a way of taking a run-of-the-mill poem and universalizing it. The standard move is to take a poem based on the first person singular, the "I," and attempting, by force, to make it speak for "us." It is like a stranger forcing a hug, and has become so formulaic as to be laughable (at least for those of us on this side of the fence.) Yet "epiphany," as such, does not necessarily mean this, and has a broader signification, one that can, in fact, be useful in the development of post-avant and the discourses around it. What constitutes a post-avant epiphany? I would say that the best way post-avant could incorporate epiphany would be as a realization of terror or irony, a sort of negative epiphany. Another possibility would be epiphany as a kind of sexual and/or affective climax, that brings together the complex strains of an imaginatively edgy poem. The third possibility would be epiphany as a revelation of Otherness, an "I" moving towards a "You," rather than trying to become a "we." All these formulations would take post-avant epiphany away from the significations it has in the context of mainstream poetry. Once this has been established, it will become clear that post-avant is capacious enough to encompass its own brand and manner of epiphany, and that no one need complain that I am trying to stop them from expressing the epiphanic in poems. "Epiphany" is a kind of misnomer; what experimentalists really reject out of hand is universalized epiphany. To further illustrate these points, I will present two poems, to demonstrate how these two different types of epiphany function, what the differences are and how they are expressed.

I have alluded, in an earlier post, to William Stafford's Traveling Through the Dark, which has become an archetypal mainstream American poem. It is popular enough for none less than Rae Armantrout to publicly satirize it. For those who may be wondering what Ron Silliman means when he speaks of Quietude, look no further. Look, especially, at the way epiphany is expressed in the final two lines:

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all- my only swerving-,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

The funniest thing about this poem for me is that it could almost be post-avant. It has many elements that would align it with post-avant, as I have defined it- darkness, death, solitude, rough edges. The problem is all in the penultimate line- when Stafford says he thought hard for us all, we know we are being bombarded (out of nowhere, in this context), with heavy-duty schmaltz, with ersatz profundity and portentous meaning. Yes, William, all of us are going to die, and it is terrible. It is necessary for you to stand on this edge of life and death and make sure that everyone is accounted for. Considering how (nearly) post-avant the rest of the poem is, the handling of the epiphanic here is incredibly clumsy, like it has been pasted in. What could have happened in this line other than a rote, clumsy, universalizing epiphany? What if Frank Booth from Blue Velvet showed up and they huffed nitrous together? Or Aaron Belz could show up in his nylon jacket or Todd Swift's protagonist stalking his school-girl. Anything at all would have been better than this, because the cheesiness of the line (for me, at least) decimates the rest of the poem. The echoes of Robert Frost (who, believe it or not, has his own post-avant streak), the vividness of the scene sketched, the immediacy of the language- the epiphanic moment here sends it all down the tubes. Yet mainstream poets pull moves like this over and over again, simply because they believe that this is the way poems have to be written. If mainstream poets in America are the "Academy Poets," post-avantists are certainly the "Impressionists," not because we write in an impressionistic way, but simply because we are cutting against the grain of established tradition, the way that the Language poets did before us. This particular tradition, not of epiphany but of universalized epiphany, of "I" speaking for "us," is one that needs to be thrown overboard, and replaced with new possibilities around this word.

To illustrate this new manner and form of epiphany, I would like to bring in a poem by a younger Australian poet, David Prater. This poem, A Veteran of the Club Scene, is from his book, We Will Disappear:

panic on the streets of south
yarra geez they shut us down
when i'm peaking it's a rip-off
shit's been cut with something
maybe brain juices? not mine
got the tip-off said get rid of
'em ages ago i loved to dance
though don't seem to have the
energy anymore i'm still here
propping up a legendary club
foot & nose patches stop the
bleeding bring on peace man
& another buggered recovery
whatever that means i forgot
my own name monday what a
bore youse young freaks just
don't understand we all need
a little helping hand to the
hot water dispensers if only
they'd mix it with cordial ah
those good old halcyon nites
hiya girls! ok sure hop in its
back to mine just let me say
you are you are a wonderful
repeat wonderful person yeah

I think urban and rural settings are equally efficacious as back-drops for post-avant poems. Here, we have the urban substituted for Stafford's rural dark. It is also worth noting that the opening line of the poem ("panic on the streets of...") is taken from a song by The Smiths, and that this demonstrates the polyglot quality that good post-avant poetry has. This poem is thoroughly edgy- the intimations of drug abuse and the club setting make it a somewhat queasy ride. What is most important to this particular discussion are the moves Prater pulls in the final four lines. It can certainly be taken as a realization of irony. The ostensible scenario is simple- guy goes to a club, picks up some girls and takes them home. However, the manner in which Prater presents this data raises unanswered questions not dissimilar to the ones that Todd Swift's poems raised. The repetition of lines ("you are you are a wonderful/ repeat wonderful person") could be interpreted as deliberately smarmy and/or ironic; this is the narrator expressing contempt for girls he is about to (we assume) hook up with, or try to hook up with. Yet, the lines are presented with a straight face; Prater could be in earnest, too. It is difficult to tell. Yet it is certainly epiphanic, cutting through the confused muddle of the rest of the poem and giving it focus, direction, and movement. This is an epiphany with an edge, and that edge is expressed in deliberate ambiguity. The reader has to decide for him or herself whether Prater is being flip or whether he is expressing disgust or contempt. In this moment, what Prater must do becomes clear; that is the "what"; it is the "why" that becomes the sticking point. He could be staving off nudges from his own conscience; we do not know. But compare Prater's epiphany with Stafford's, which holds absolutely no ambiguity and no edge. To bring the thing roundabout, I would never say that poets cannot talk about epiphanies. I would say this: if you are interested in post-avant, speak truthfully about yourself, and do not deign to speak for anyone else. That is Stafford's key crime (and Prater's strength,) what turns his epiphany into an aesthetic nightmare.