Ah yes but.
What Mark's saying (I think) is that he can't read conservative poetry. I
can. I find some of it very beautiful. Does that make me a conservative --
person or poet? No, it doesn't. Not at all. It *may* be different in USA,
a culture I understand less and less, but from what I can see that
dichotomy just isn't a categorical reality -- not just that there are fuzzy
edges but that the whole thing doesn't correspond to what is being created,
except at the far extremes, which are boring places, and which get
prioritized by these dialectics.
But I'm puzzled about Mark's "past masters" whose names are not even known
to the authorities of the "other camp" (always those military metaphors!).
Who are they? I'm more aware of significant father-figures of the poetical
left being taken up wholesale and uncritically by both the academy and the
journalism of success-poetry -- from Pound onwards including most of the
American modernists, the Dadaists, O'Hara, etc etc. Most of the badly
ignored dead poets I can think of are highly skilled and imaginative
writers of a distinctly traditional flavour, like Housman. So who are
these lost ancestors?
/PR
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