I went searching for the earliest reference to the phrase “School of Quietude” on Ron Silliman’s blog. Silliman is, of course, the person who coined the phrase.

Interestingly, Silliman started his blog on August 29, 2002. The first mention of the School of Quietude was on September 2, 2002, but only as a label, or a tag, and not within the blog post itself. This makes me think that maybe he went back later and added that label to that post after having written other posts about the SofQ.

Silliman has been criticized for his delineations between the School of Quietude and Post-Avant poets. Criticisms have largely centered around these distinctions being too simplistic and that the pejorative only describes poetry as it existed some time ago (in the past). These are words Silliman himself articulated in his September 2, 2007 post, characterizations that he says his critics are correct on. So he has adopted another path, which he calls the “third way.” I’m not sure what that is.

Essentially, Silliman’s descriptions are divided by the level of experimentation that exists in one’s poetry. It is obvious that the SofQ poets are descendant of Henry David Thoreau. Everyone else, Walt Whitman. But that’s a rather odd distinction seeing as how Thoreau was a contemporary of Edgar Allan Poe, from whom Silliman borrows his quietude phrase. Brian Campbell succinctly states my thoughts on that with these words:

Yet if we look at Poe in comparison with Whitman (the real post-avant prototype), he definitely comes across as British-accented, narrow, conservative, even like — curse the thought — a Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes. I think by Silliman’s definition, Poe would be a hard-core SoQ’er. He definitely doesn’t seem very post-avant to me.

It seems to me that the SofQ and Post Avant poetics breakdown is an arbitrary political (not poetic) distinction. It fits in conveniently with Silliman’s collectivist thinking as he can lump anyone with an individualist politic or poetic into the SofQ category. That would be me, a libertarian politically and an individualist in every way, characteristics which would put me in the same category as Walt Whitman, the consummate individualist poet who self-published his own work. Admittedly, I have no use for Thoreau (and he deserves the moniker “quietist” as much as anyone), but Poe was my very first literary influence and to this day still is an idol of mine.

So who would fit into the School of Quietude today? I suppose virtually anyone who is an establishment-type poet, a darling of the NEA, an MFA grad with a small press badge of honor, or anyone who isn’t taking great risks with language and form. That’s almost everyone who writes poetry, but it isn’t the Language Poets, which would include Silliman and his friends, and it isn’t anyone who belongs to any of the other obscure schools of poetry that won’t get noticed by the first type of poet who is centered on the connectedness of the academy.

But what about the modern heirs of Poe? Well, there aren’t any really. At least, not in poetry. They’re all writing detective mysteries and science fiction novels. But not poetry.

Poetics is less about distinctions that divide and more about nuances that define. I see these distinctions as somewhat helpful, but only if they can be drawn upon to make definitions as to what is important and what is not. Is nature poetry, for instance, bad? Well, some of it is actually. But some of it is quite good. How do we know which is which? We can know, but we will never get to the bottom of it if we splinter poets off into groups – OK, you guys over there, no, no, further to the right; now you langpos, to the left; everyone else, in the middle. Sorry, that’s an un-nuanced way of leading us to the dance floor.

What would be helpful is a discussion on method. Not just some rigid set of rules such that you might find among the New Formalists. And not some vague generalizations that you might find in an experimental journal. But I mean a real discussion on method, technique, poetic renditions.

Discussions of poetics quite often descend into nothing but bland diatribes against someone else’s poetic philosophy or amusement for the sake of amusement. But a true discussion of poetics would help everyone get a better grasp of what is possible, permissible, and praiseworthy. Disagreement is good, but vague distinctions that serve no purpose other than to categorize those we don’t like isn’t helpful. And whatever emerges from the armpit of the fire can take the helm into the 21st century. If it be quietitude¹ then let the silence reign.

1 Quiet + Attitude, not quietude.