I'm really NOT in the camp which wants to keep picking over these
particular rather sour tasting bones, UNLESS we can do it in such a
way as to redirect attention to the work (which is what I was trying
to do in my last posting by picking the Finch poem - hope it's evident
that I'd be prepared to issue similar defences of all the other ones
trashed by JXC). So often these exchanges seem to dribble down into
genralisation matches, which was very much NOT the intent in producing
OTHER. But here's a few quick answers to David before it's my ovaltine
time. 

On Thu, 6 Jul 2000 18:43:05 +0100, David wrote:

>1. Was
>the intention to be representative or did Ric and Peter give themselves the
>freedom to choose work they personally liked?

- neither. We certainly dropped any pretence at being "representative"
early on - there just wasn't room! Much of the format of the book came
to us from the publishers (including the demand for a lengthy intro)
and it was apparent from the outset that we couldn't cover as much as
we'd want. And by the same token, we certainly weren't free to choose
what we personally liked (though I think we'd both say that we ended
up liking what we included, though this ain't the same thing). 

>2. Speaking as a young fogey, I would have expected to see more work
>included by writers born post-1960 - I counted only 3 - so would like to
>know the reason for this gap.

- I too regret this gap; if I were doing it now it would be less
evident. Other gaps, however, would be even more evident. See my
earlier comments on discussion re omissions. 

>3. When Andrew Duncan reviewed The New Poetry in Angel Exhaust he said
>something to the effect that the critical vocabularies used to discuss
>mainstream and non-mainstream work were becoming virtually
>indistinguishable. Much as I'm loathe to agree with anything he says -
>basically because most of the time I can't follow what he's on about - there
>do seem to be similarities between the two introductions. What do people
>make of this? Is Duncan right or is it just coincidence?

- there are indeed congruencies of argument in the intros to TNP and
OTHER, as one might expect. As David knows, given such congruencies, I
was as disappointed by omissions in his anth as he is by, etc etc.
There were also, as I recall, some fairly striking differences in
emphasis. 

I don't really buy the line that we should thank JXC for bringing all
this stuff up again - as I recall, we've done most of it already.
Whilst I'm happy to let him have his own rather restrictive likes and
dislikes, I would expect, as I said in my initial post, that an
academic critic would be prepared to ARGUE them better than that -
without flipping back to the apallingly presented piece again, his
dismissal of most of the individual poets was very much as per Finch -
peremptory and ill-supported (certainly his biff at Catherine Walsh
was so). As I've said, hey, he's an off-the-peg academic, there's
nothing new there, why should I expect otherwise? But, I keep
hoping... 

Night night
R


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