If the School of Phlogiston has a boogie-man, it's Dana Gioia, and he seems to give most of the rest of what's left of the avant garde willies as well. Let me count the ways:
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He was appointed chair of the National Endowment for the Arts by George 43, thus exposing his true nature to anyone who hadn't yet realized he's just a flunky for the monkey.
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He betrayed his immigrant, working-class origins by becoming a Vice President at General Foods, thus revealing his false consciousness.
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He works for George Bush's administration, thus proving that he's fascist.
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He is one of the most prominent figures to have questioned the value of MFA programs, thus demonstrating his anti-intellectual stance.
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He's been seen in public with Laura Bush, thus showing himself to be a running dog lackey of imperialism.
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He said approving things in print about rap prosody before they did, thus establishing he's a hypocrite.
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He didn't contribute a poem to Sam Hamill's Poets Against the War, thus leaving no doubt he's a war-monger.
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He's a co-founder of the West Chester Poetry Conference, thus exhibiting that he's stuck in the seventeenth century, in the school of Herrick because Donne's too hard.
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He has argued that too much poetry is too academically centered, thus demonstrating once again his anti-intellectual stance and his hypocritical populism which is, of course, only a disguise for fascism.
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His tenure at the NEA has been focused on enabling audiences rather than on supporting individual artists, thus verifying his hostility to real art.
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He's probably shaken hands with Dick Cheney, thus confirming his soulless opportunism.
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He's praised, in print, poets like James Tate and Jack Spicer, thus documenting a cunning which substitutes for genuine taste.
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Besides having terrible friends, he writes terrible poetry because he has such terrible friends.
Christ, I've seen it seriously argued that Pound — who broadcast for Mussolini during WWII! — could have seen foreseen the popularity of right wing radio and (therefore?) the emptiness of the the exclusively popular poetry supposedly championed by Gioia.
I have no idea who in Gioia's generation (mine) may one day be considered a great poet. But Gioia is a very good poet, and in the next little while I'll be looking from time to time at some of the poems on which I base that judgment.
And by the way — how very odd that the avant garde has become an almost exclusively academic movement. Not that it moves. And not that the people involved don't do some very good work — it's just that there ain't no scouting nor skirmishing with the unknown going on.
7:44:59 PM 
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