School of Quietude

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The School of Quietude (SoQ) is a rhetorical label first used by the Language poet Ron Silliman on his blog^[1]. This label has been adopted by many other writers of the poetry blogosphere to describe a certain thread or tradition they perceive in the poetry of The United States.

Arguably SoQ is used in a strictly pejorative sense because generally the critics who employ it do so in order to describe poets whose poetics they consider overtly conservative. Silliman has stated repeatedly that he adopted the term from a phrase once used by Edgar Allan Poe to describe some of his contemporaries whose ideas about poetry were a throwback to the literature of Great Britain or were overly British in their writing style. Silliman's contention is that the present day School of Quietude in American poetry are the spiritual heirs of those same Anglophile 19th century poets.

Silliman contrasts the School of Quietude with what he calls Post-Avant poetry. Silliman's dichotomy has been criticized by poets and critics such as Pierre Joris, Mark Scroggins, K. Silem Mohammad, Robert Archambeau, Joshua Corey, and Tony Tost as misleading or overly simplistic or dismissive ^[2]. .

[edit] References

1. ^ Silliman's Blog: A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics
2. ^ For one example of criticism, see Tony Tost's comments to Silliman's post for July 17, 2007 as Tost discusses his position vis-a-vis Silliman's appellation and what would appear to be a violent disagreement with a School of Quietude ethos.

[edit] External links

• Silliman's Blog
• K. Silem Mohammad on the School of Quietude vs. Post-Avant distinction
• Robert Archambeau on the School of Quietude
• Joshua Corey on the School of Quietude examines a specific context of the so-called SoQ.