Dear Robin and David,

Sorry to take so long to pick up on this, I was in Wolverhampton.

I think even Modesty Don would admit that we merely follow in MacGonagall's
shabby coat-tails. Hamish Henderson of course characterised him as a local
bard in the Irish mode whose locality unfortunately didn't understand this
and turned against him. I consider it one of the many small bourgeois
triumphs: that they taught ordinary Dundonians how to despise poetry. And
won't have a word said against the auld Ur-rapmeister: his Tay Whale is the
Moby Dick of estuarine verse, his Tay Bridge poem prefigures Hart Crane, his
addresses to the Queen know no rival till the late laureate's mythokittical
effusions. And he clearly established that the duende enters the body
through the left foot, something Lorca, though a good Catholic boy, never
thought to point out.

As for MacD, MC Grieve, Synthetic Pop of Scotopia (check out yr Chambers):
his and his publishers' marked reluctance to actually collect his 30s work
into its proper units means that the two key works of that period, the
Willie Wordsworthian Clann Albann and the Ezraic Mature Art, remain
unacknowledged as substantial achievements. _Stony Limits_, however, once
you include the texts Gollancz omitted at the advice of the lawyers, remains
the best model of the whole art, bringing the languages and the forms
together in, I think, one of the most meaningful dialogues of the 30s. (I go
on about these issues in language hilariously free of jargon in my OUP
bestseller _To Circumcise MacD_, a snip at £30 odd in h/back).

The point about his late last poems must remain that these are one of the
largest scale attempts to manipulate collage and prose tones in modern
poetry -- it opened up territories unvisited till the Language Poets, but
familiar to generations of Scottish poets; and the intense visionary element
which binds these poems together is precisely the thing you get in Kenneth
White.

Best,

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 12 March 2000 21:20
Subject: Re: No doubt about it enfin


>From: "david bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>>>sampler of poets who could write supremely badly:
>> >
>> > > Christopher Murray Grieve
>
>> > oi bain't no scholard of the chronology of the Great MacWhiskey's
>> creations but i have a fuzzy impression that the old devil re-surfaced
>> intermittently post-General Strike.
>
>Well, there would be two separate things here -- a (generally) political
>point as to why EngLit generally avoids the General Strike (HMacD deals
>with it in +Drunk Man+ in 1926 [but not thereafter?] and LGG in the second
>volume of +Scots Quair+.  Maybe it's because it's only two generations
>away.  My grandfather (rest his soul) blacklegged as a bus conductor, which
>still embarrasses me.
>
>A more specifically literary point would be that after the
>Sangshaw/Pennywheep/Drunk Man run, concluding in 1926, there isn't anything
>as sustainedly achieved thereafter -- despite occasional pieces like the
>three hymns to Lenin and pace Edwin Morgan's opinion -- but maybe bill
>herbert would care to join in on this one?
>
>And about CMG's prose, the least said (perhaps) the better, given the
>Little Sparta connection -- I have it on authority (i.e. I can't for the
>life of me remember where I heard it) that CMG blacklisted Ian Hamilton
>Finlay from +Scottish Poetry One+ (and thereafter?).
>
>> and even the stone-set Old William did write those Prelude lines on
>Newton
>> late in life. as well as the Extempore Effusion.
>
>OK, I revise my statement -- Billy W. died in 1805.
>
>> as for Dundee's finest (apologies to bill herbert or don paterson or
>anyone
>> else) well he's a sub-set of literature all by himself, rather like
>> Finnegans Wake in that, and an interesting pairing. Compare!Contrast!
>> And the Holy Name should'st not be mentined in vain.
>
>Well, partly what prompted me to raise this is that McGonagall has been
>defended in much the same terms (we do things differently in the Gaeltacht)
>as was deployed in defence of Kavanagh.
>
>Who, incidentally, I don't see is in need of defending, scholarly or
>otherwise.  I'd die to have written +The Great Hunger+, and who hasn't
>written badly in their time?
>
>> Why doesn't Douglas watch the football in the pub? Or Crufts or the new
>> version of the Magic Roundabout or . . . . I'm lost on this.
>
>Having just watched Crufts, I'd say "Come back, Dougal -- all is forgiven!"
>Too many whippets and Thin Middle Eastern Curs for my taste, and hardly a
>shaggy dog in sight.
>
>Robin Hamilton
>
>PS:
>
>OK, I withdraw my Totally Unwarranted Allegation -- IHF has one poem tucked
>away right at the bottom of the Very Last Page of +SP1+.  And Little Sparta
>wasn't yet so-called when MacDiarmid was conducting his anti-IHF campaign.
>
>RS.
>



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%