I am very thankful to what David and Douglas wrote. I have taken a short
siesta so to speak --to review the so-called strong criticism levelled at
me. I read the poems in John Tranter's Jacket volume 10 which as a sample
are quite representative of contemporary Anglo-American-Aussie poetics. I
found that most on the page use forms that are modernist or earlier, and
that many in tone and diction write in a style that made me think of the
Eighteenth century. The poise, the distance, the urbanity, is all what you
would expect to find in the Gentleman's magazine of the 1730's. Would you
care for examples? They also have an overwhelming concern with langage
itself. All seem to me to be very decorative, insular, some precious, have
very little engagement with issues --are written in a pedestrian style and
do not for one moment seem postmodern or remotely challenging. They are
products of leisure -- I wonder if it depends upon the reading -- the
presentation, the packaging, is that the difference? That has been my point,
in the 1970's there was a radical imput, activism, and a danger in language,
now it is a toy thing, a bauble, an accessory. Many of the efforts of
writers who are working in the new media are just repackaging 18th century
conservatism and elitism. even one's sexual predilection or identity is
arch, elevated, the preponderance to use Latin or French to raise it above
the banal. I then wonder why they are publish and then realised that people
interview people who interview them, write about people who publish people
who write about them -- Cantor would have fun with the sets. Is there an
equivalent to the infamous Hollywood couch? I'll get you a pint...
beer mat notes:
Joe Amato - two poems
from
36 theory bananas
(>>Wallace Stevens --Blackbird variation<<
>>diction ---language<<
Stephen Burt
from
" The Whiskery Towns"
>>William Carlos Williams
Eighteenth century phrasing and language self-flexivity<<
Denise Duhamel
Ai
Marianne Moore
poetry is the subject
Ulli Freer
Fragmento
reminds one of Amy Lowell and her penchant for baubles and Latinated words
John Kinsella
Visiting Wittgenstein's Grave in Winter, 1999
for Candice Ward
Stevens again --and in style sometime that could have been produced in 1940
even 1930
Kate Lilley
Starry Messenger
note the elevation and use subigatrix, novelette, oeuvre, fricatrice --what
was it Oscar Wilde said about impaling one on local colour?
Peter Minter
Unperturbed
this is written in the Year 2000 --only buzzwords reminds us that it is so.
For Coventry Patmore
by Lytle Shaw --the diction --is 18thC
Dale Smith : Obit Sonnets --very 18thc
Pete Spence
poems
writing about the inconsequential --the leisure to do so:
the style and interest is no different from the amateur historian in the
Gentleman's Magazine:
Nathaniel Tarn two pieces from «Architextures»
I thought was about farting, but I was proved wrong --it has a lot to do
with language reflexivity.
Geoff Ward Trapped Wind
Charles Harper Webb --the now in a pedestrian form
What We Believe
finally
Marjorie Welish
Weeping Branch--has nearly every feature I mentioned above
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