(something went severely amiss with the formating of this reply to Sheena
Pugh on first posting so I'm re-sending it, restored, for the convenience of
anyone interested and the delete button of anyone not - david bircumshaw)

----- Original Message -----
From: david.bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics, r <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2000 6:44 PM
Subject: Re: re foxes


> > So start an interesting thread on poetry, then. The
> > last one was "reviewing", and it was pretty good but
> > the change of mail server interrrupted and killed it.
>
> Oddly enough I did notice. And it wasn't the change of mail server killed
> it.
>
> Here's a review from the net-based 'Spike' magazine of the Ian Sinclair
> Conductors of Chaos anthology. I'm puting it up because the interest seems
> that of a viewpoint that is opposed to the Chaos baton-wavers but not from
> the usual neo-conservative angle: the 'mainstream' gets short shrift too.
I
> don't necessarily endorse the viewpoint, just thought it might be worth
> comment:
>
>
> Iain Sinclair: Conductors of Chaos
>
>
>       Conduct Unbecoming
>       Chris Mitchell has a problem with Conductors of Chaos,
>       the poetry anthology from Picador edited by Iain Sinclair
>
>       Got an opinion or a question about this article?
>       Come and talk about it in the spike forum
>       email Chris at [log in to unmask]
>
>
>Poetry, far more than fiction, is a difficult one to discuss. One reader's
revulsion is another's revelation. So at first sight I thought Conductors of
Chaos would be right up SPIKE's alley (as it were) due to Picador billing it
as the collection which Faber & Faber dare not publish.  Cool! I thought.
Instead of the cosy banality of Wendy Cope or the  unfathomable
tediousness of Seamus Heaney, here comes something which restores poetry as
a dangerous, subversive, underground force, breaking from the mainstream,
doing it for the kids, saying something...
>       Wrong. It cannot be denied that the majority of the thirty-plus
poets featured in Conductors of Chaos have broken from the mainstream, but
to such an extent that "poetry" seems to be something of a dubious label. It
was that crusty old modernist T.S. Eliot who asserted that for a poet to
successfully employ vers libre, they must first be fully conversant with the
discipline  and structure of "traditional" poetry. The truth of his dictum
is glaringly apparent here: these poets have certainly been libres with
their vers, and the result is nearly 500 pages of pure frustration. The
attempt to be avant-garde abounds; clarity is avoided like the crabs. It
appears to be a disease of the late twentieth century that artists, in
whatever medium, seem to continually equate obscurity with profundity.
Editor Iain Sinclair confirms as much when he states " if these things are
difficult,  they have earned that right. You don't need to read them, just
feel  the sticky heat creep up through your fingers." Whether Sinclair is
referring to the pleasure of warming yourself over a burning copy of this
anthology remains unclear; but from the rest of his introduction, it is
obvious that we are in the territory of those Who Take Themselves Very
Seriously.
       Sinclair declares " Why should they be easy?...If it comes too
sweetly, somebody is trying to sell you something." This is perhaps the most
tired, overused rhetoric in the history of writing. Sinclair is basically
stating  that if it's popular, then it's trash and if it's obscure it must a
priori be worthwhile. Sinclair's bravado is all the more laughable
considering that Conductors of Chaos is a blatant bid for collective
commercial success via Picador's publishing power. These people are trying
to sell us       their subjectivity and simultaneously pretend that they
remain aloof  from the vagaries of the market.  This "holier-than-thou"
judgemental attitude pervades much of the work included here. Most of the
writers featured write autobiographically in the first person, presuming
that their lives and their observations are of  sufficient interest to
sustain a poem. This is always the most  dangerous assertion in any form of
writing. It takes an incredible amount of skill to transform the intimately
subjective into something which can be empathised with. Much of the writing
in Conductors of Chaos merely reinforces rather than rejects the prejudice
that poetry is the preoccupation of over-privileged self-obsessed bores.
Take, for example, this horribly self righteous and clumsy section from
Grace Lake's "on challenges, positive attitudes and 'les peintres cubistes'"
(the title
alone being just cause to summon the Pretension Police):
>         & here are too many words which tend to order
>         the rights and wrongs of feeling sorry for someone or other
>         who turned out to be hidebound by racist and economic intelligence
>         theories.
>
 Similarly, Jeremy Reed's "The Deconstruction Co." tries to be
self-glamourising and ironic but sounds merely self-pitying and envious:
>         "...You seem to have no friends
>         in publishing, and not to be a parasite,
>         and this will never do. You're exclusive
>         and have too much mystique, what do you do,
>         to write such censored off-beat books
>         that have reviewers chop off your hands and feet,
>         and yes, we're told you wear leopardskin boots
>         and that's outrageous..."
>
 If that weren't enough, there is also the excruciatingly Gandalfesque
pastoral whimsy of John James' "Song (after Friedrich and Goethe)."
>         on Pen y Fan a
>         thousand times I stand
>         reclining on my staff
>         & gazing down the valley
>
 I could go on, but I'll spare you. To term the poetry collected in
Conductors of Chaos as "diverse, eclectic and electrifying" is simply wrong.
There is little here that has any immediacy, only scatterings of words
across the page which arrogantly demand to be diciphered. Life is short.
Perhaps the failure of Conductors Of Chaos is best embodied by Stewart
Home's work, the self-styled Neoist and plagarist  extrordinaire. He
prefaces his own selection by stating "Our most pressing task is to  bury
this 'culture' of mediocrity because, like the still-born 'New   Poetry', it
is already dead." Stirring words which are followed by
some of  the most mediocre poetry in the whole collection.  There are
literally a couple of saving graces. Barry McSweeney employs  that greatest
of taboos, humour, in "Hellhound Memos," a random travelogue  interspersed
with different characters and voices to great effect:
>         ...I'm the only jackpot chancer on the job, estate joy-rider
>         extrordinaire. Bored in the listless
>         summer, when the boys in blue are in Marbella on the piss
>         I waft in or rev as is my nature, contrary to
>         council or ecclesiastical denial, and open up these
>         stolen microwaves. I turn them on and breathe
>         I don't care what the damage is. Or the waste.
>         I enjoy the flames. I can scorch a line, a beautiful
>         blue and true line, through the hull of your lives...
>         ...I don't erect headstones, Hosanna those
>         sky-blue heaven in the fairy tales. I deliver.
>         Into a permanent darkness for the rest of your days.
>         I come down like slate-grey rain. That's all. No God available."
  Significantly, Aaron Williamson's selection is the last to appear in
Conductors Of Chaos. His darkly evocative work exploits an intimacy with
language which is made all the more acute by his profound deafness. The
sheer sound of the syllables read from the page produces a whole labyrinth
of associations and allusions. Williamson's work is quite literally
out-of-body - there is no authorial 'I', only a howling, shrieking voice,
conjuring up visions of Beckett's Not I, where only a mouth is visible on
a blacked out stage. Williamson's work is the apotheosis of radical
 poetry - it explores classic forms in new directions, being different
enough  to  create an immediate impact but deep enough to repay continual
returns to  its pages. Williamson's experimentation has even extended to
having his own webpage.
       Picador would probably have produced a far better anthology if they
had   asked for contributions from new poets, published or unpublished.
Looking towards the established poetry underground has proven to be no
guarantee of quality writing and it is a great shame that such a brave move
commercially by a major publishing house has been rendered so
drastically impotent.


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Sheenagh Pugh <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2000 6:10 PM
> Subject: re foxes
>
>
> > David Bircumshaw:
> >
> > "Excuse me, is this a poetry discussion list?
> >
> > Whoops, sorry, wrong room"
> >
> > So start an interesting thread on poetry, then. The
> > last one was "reviewing", and it was pretty good but
> > the change of mail server interrrupted and killed it.
> > Ever since then, things have gone dead. I'd rather
> > read something-interesting-but-non-poetry than skim
> > through the digest and hit the delete button again.
> >
> >
> > =====
> > Sheenagh Pugh
> > http://www.geocities.com/sheenaghpugh
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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