Stephen, it's so hard to answer your multi-level questions for "I" let
alone "we" - can you lead us in a little more? Is there a
one-size-fits-all way in which you're able to read all poetry? Over the
w/end I read a 6-page draft from Tony Baker, some poems by Anne Stevenson
and Lee Harwood (who were both in town) and the bits of Yeats and Kipling
included in Bunting's lectures on poetry: damned sure I altered my
responses to get the most out of each of these, but didn't feel that to do
so was "double standards". Tell us about your own reading experiences a
bit and I'm sure we'll be able to chip in.
R
On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, pain wrote:
> Ted Hughes or Seamus Heaney --the Hs and compare our reception of a poem by
> these writers and say something by the avant-garde or experimental British
> poets. I mean what is exactly is it that we are criticizing, the poetry or
> the context in which the poetry was produced? I would also like to know if
> double-standards are in operation -- I mean that mainstream poets are soft
> and less controversial targets than poets in our midst or poets who we know
> personally --we have loyalities --do those get in our way of reading poetry?
> Public and private reception of poetry? I was also thinking of the Kavanagh
> thread. Do we make allowances for some poets and not others? Is that why we
> forgive incompetence or less technically competent writing by some, while
> others we castigate? The question of evaluation, criteria etc seems integral
> to answering these questions. Does the evaluation just turn upon politics
> rather than the poem? Do we always play so safe?
>
>
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