>I mean, does -anyone-
here agree with me?
I certainly do, in some level of principle -- Of course we want poetry to
reach for the Zodiac, of course it is futile to devote such a developed art
to the delineation of the little life, such as the self-surface display
which dominates British success-poetry at present, the poet-consciousness
which views the world from its own elected centre, the fetish of the "good
poem" only knowable by instinct or promotional response.
But it immediately gets so exclusive, anti-democratic, ecclesiastical etc.,
that I sadly find myself disaffected and mystified --- not to mention the
hidden agenda, attempts to broach which have been repulsed, concerning
"difficulty".
The allegiance you demand (otherwise no discussion) is altogether too
cut-and-dried. It is simply not necessary to despise the individual in
order to reach the largest sense, these are not alternatives. If you go
around shouting Down with Individualism like some 1930s Communist all
you're promoting is some kind of conformism, which is already intensely
promoted by the bureaucracy of this society and increasingly. Naturally
people are worried that you're setting up a programme for poetry based on
extra-poetical criteria with all attached mechanisms of promotion and
suppression.
I mean what on earth makes you think that people other than a certain line
of poets don't "think about the totality of relations"? Surely most people
deploy the self as a thinking medium onto the worlds and most modern poetry
evinces that process and its immense variety, in versions from feeble and
useless to dazzling? To impute a self-centrality onto the most open and
honest account of experience from a singular viewpoint begs a lot of
questions about the alternatives. If you read such a book as The View
from Nowhere by Thomas Nagel you see what a complex and fraught thing the
quest for an extensive objectivity is, and how it cannot be gained by
simply casting aside, or seeming to step out of, the subjective.
For what is irritating about most personal poetryFrom [log in to unmask] Thu Jun 22 13:44:00 2000
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Subject: Re: News
From: "Geraldine Monk" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Peter Riley" <[log in to unmask]>
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Peter,
According to my paper we get NYDP Blue and Ally McBeal
at this time.
Something after this at II.50 called 'Asylum' with no details of what
it is. Could that be it? Would hate to miss it. Tomorrow night
maybe?
G.
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, June 22, 2000 01:16
Subject: News
>
>On Channel 4 at ten to midnight today there will be a film by Chris Petit
>and Iain Sinclair which involves Ed Dorn and other characters.
>
>Also, a postcard from Ben Watson tells me that the latest issue of Modern
>Painters contains four pages of "Prynnolatry" from himself, most of the
>rest of the magazine being the usual contempArt "offend the fogeys" stuff.
>
>/PR
>
>
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