"I like this too - the back of the Bloodaxe 'Repair' of C.K.Williams
represents him as intellectually the most 'challenging American poet' of his
time. Now Williams C.K.'s ok sort of but if he's a difficult poet I'm
friggin' Martin Heidegger in Chinese translation."
Presumably the 'intellectual challenge' needs to be understood in the
context of (a) other recent Bloodaxe publications and (b) what they know
about American poetry which from memory of their last catalogue is a curious
mixture of Fred Voss, Denise Levertov, James Wright and a lot of low
temperature stuff by, for example, Dave Smith, Stephen Berg and Steven
Dobyns.
Re Walcott: I think we should be careful to distinguish between the fact
that (a) his critical reputation derives from the fact that he is easily
consumable in Brit terms as with Heaney and (b)the fact that some of his
earlier work is certainly worth a look. As to whether one wants to continue
looking after that is, of course, a personal matter.
And, yes, good to see Brathwaite getting some attention here. Let's hope
someone reprints the trilogy together in one book - I seem to remember
X-Self being out from OUP years ago - or did I hallucinate that last bit?
cheers
David
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