If I said Wright was as great as Bradman, would that make me un-Australian,
or what?
As Alison says, it is fascinating that Australians tend to diminish
admiration in the arts and increase them in sport (for those on the list who
are unaware, Don Bradman is Australia's 'greatest' cricketer and, some would
argue, the world's).
Cheers,
Jill
on 29/11/00 2:17 PM, [log in to unmask] at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Coral wrote:
>
>> The trouble is the Aussie media often takes up time with poets disputes,
>> when it might be talking about Australian poetry - sometimes not the
>> poets, but simply the art - the poetry. Is that too much to ask?
>
> It seems too much to ask of most arts coverage here. Very little of any
> of it addresses the art at all: publicity always focusses on the "angle"
> (personality, controversy, whatever). Reviews, very depressingly, tend
> to follow suit, especially in the mainstream media. It seems worse in
> poetry coverage, which is already marginalised and minimal; the "trivial
> crap" only confirms prejudices already fairly deeply ingrained in the
> minds of those who think poets are guys in poofy shirts responsible for
> tormenting them at school.
>
> I find the comments on the reluctance to call Wright or Hope "great"
> poets interesting. "Great" is a fairly meaningless term, in a sense; I
> use it myself, to express, well, abiding and inspired enthusiasm for
> particular poets and poems, but you can't exactly call it an _accurate_
> term. But that aside, for me the telling thing about this reluctance to
> give two of our greatest poets their due is how expressive it is of a
> general lack of generous response. A sense that to admire with all your
> being is somehow diminishing; the fact that to admit that you've been
> knocked out by a poem might reflect somehow on you (not having written
> it); a terrible smallness and milling, which cannot admit poetry is a
> living stream, bigger than any of us, which moves and breathes and
> richens us. It's as if reading is a process of somehow dessicating poems
> and neatly categorising them in boxes, rather than EATING them, absorbing
> them into their own being. Are people afraid of appearing foolish? of
> being "wrong"? Do they distrust their own responses so deeply?
>
> I mean, I bet nobody got up at this conference and said: No, I think AD
> Hope is a _terrible_ poet, because... and then was answered by someone
> who said, No, he achieved this and this, how can you say that? And the
> other saying, yes, he did that, but can't can't you see how this implies
> that... I've seen such an argument in a French theatre among the audience
> during a post-play discussion (attended, I might add, by 300 people -
> unheard of here) with various people standing up and shouting Non! Non!
> Apart from being great theatre for those who are present, it's also an
> expression of passionate belief, in the first place, in the art form; and
> secondly, of a serious investment in it by an audience. That is, they
> believe that the art speaks to their personal lives, their social
> environment, their intellectual desires; that it matters and it means.
> Even if they vehemently disagree with the work in question.
>
> So much - not all - of Australian critical life is about shutting down
> responses, not rocking the boat, anxious fence-sitting,
> watching-your-arse and bad faith anti-intellectualism, and as a result so
> much of it functions with a background noise of petty back-biting, bile
> and subterranean feuds. Oh, where's the joy in that?
>
> Best
>
> Alison
>
_________________________________
Jill Jones
50 Ruby Street
Marrickville NSW 2204
AUSTRALIA
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http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
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