This talk will focus on poets Alison Knowles (founding member of Fluxus) and Kenneth Goldsmith (Conceptual Writing figurehead) and their inclusion in the 2011 White House Poetry Jam. Specifically, thinking about Knowles and Goldsmith as “avant-garde” figures: whether there can be an avant-garde that is current and representative, and how that impulse affects/is affected by an institutional context such as the White House. Panelists include: Rod Smith, Sandra Simonds, and Steven Zultanski.