> Plays like Waiting for Godot echoed Lear. Lear, a play which prewar had
been
> deemed to be too nihilistic to be performed, suddenly was in vogue


As some of you may know, recently a South African district education
authority has gained a little newsworthy notoriety by banning a surpising
number of books from school use, including works by Nadine Gordimer. Among
the excluded, WS of course makes a bow, my favourite being Hamlet, which
apart from the amazing fact that it is 'Eurocentric' is also unwanted on the
grounds of it being 'insufficiently uplifting'.
You have all been warned.
But the relationship of experience in extremis, the war, and acceptability
within public discourse, performance, that is raised here is interesting.
I'm mindful in poetry, in respect of what is 'avant', of there being a
distinction between what is technically avant and what is avant in extremis,
by which I mean poetry that is technically extreme because of the far edges
of experience or consciousness it reports back from. I'm not thinking of
such as the 'confessional' poets here, but rather those like Celan or
Vallejo or Rosewicz or Mandelstam who write from the edges where the norms
of the civilized have broken down, where indeed tweed suits are in short
supply. This is not, though, to make a cult of destructive experience, what
seems most humdrumly pertinent is that, post war post consumer boom and
slump, post 1960's, the codified 'norms' of middle-class decorum have
collapsed, the Napoleonic Wars have rewritten Jane Austen, and it is no
longer tenable, or imaginatively authentic, to write a poetry from within
the insulation, invoked, assumed or submerged, from within those norms, yet
this is what the 'mainstream', English especially, but too abroad, attempts
to do in its linguistic and formal strategies, even if the subject matter
includes much that was formerly impermissible. I remember here Tim Allen's
contrast of mainsteam 'particularities' with outsider 'peculiarity'.
But for the avant-garde, whether supported by Laotian theorists or not, the
problem has devolved into one where an artistic impetus founded on rebellion
and subversion of norms no longer has a clearly defined, morally negative
norm to subvert. The norm has become nebulous, it is writing itself into
everywhere, now what is thought or would be avant-garde can be presented to
the world by overseers of projects who write in a managerial English that is
indistinguishable from its corporate equivalent, and a professional arts
administrator like Sue Thomas can be on easy terms with her 'powerhouses of
creativity'. Angels and ministers of grace.....
But the norm is a lie, as is cocoa for Kingsley Amis. A few years ago I had
to go round a lot of local geriatric homes to find a place for a
deteriorating relative. They were all private homes, of course, the local
council was selling its service off to enterprise as fast as possible, and
over and over again I saw people whose lives had become as in extremis in
desolation as anything you could find: they were bedbound, unvisited and had
nothing but the tv and the routine of meals to expect from life until death.
They were no longer treated as human. And I asked myself subsequently what
English language writer/s came up with a language that could encompass this
mundane hell, this damnation in the quotidian. And again and again the one
that came to mind was Beckett. This was not in abnormal circumstances, this
was the end of ordinary lives, yet none of the poetry of normality was
adequate to speak of it.
Nor too a poetry that is merely technique, or an application of technology.

david b



---- Original Message -----
From: "jackie.litherland" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 10:08 AM
Subject: Re: news


> Dear cris,
>
> My observation: the avant-garde has to know the garde to be avant. I was
> very impressed with your observations here: the postwar impulse was a
> retreat from the heights. The heights after all know the depths. The
> theatrical histrionics of fascism had revealed depths of horror. Hence the
> post-war trek into depression and silence, nihilism and absurdity, the
> ordinary as opposed to the extraordinary which suddenly seemed suspect.
> Plays like Waiting for Godot echoed Lear. Lear, a play which prewar had
been
> deemed to be too nihilistic to be performed, suddenly was in vogue. Yes,
> you're right, this was the European backcloth against which the English
> response was absurdist comedy (The Goons, and before the Goons of course,
> during the war, Itma) and celebration of the decent in the Orwellian mode.
> On the English stage we had Ionesco as well as N.F. Simpson. I suppose
there
> was a hatred (not too large a word) of all that shouting.
>
> So the postwar revolt was on different fronts - a class revolt of a truly
> remarkable kind under the Atlee government, a mocking of the grandiose and
a
> treasuring of the mundane. The Movement fits into this picture. It's no
good
> complaining that Movement poetry didn't tackle great themes and didn't
sing.
> It was fed up with great themes and fed up with songs. Of course Larkin
uses
> rhetoric, he's a poet. Incidentally, I'm not a huge fan of Larkin's. Maybe
> not even a fan, although I think he has written some good poems, one or
two
> very good poems indeed, but his influence and nuances were huge, some of
> them good, some bad. His imitators lose by imitation the sense of his
epoch.
> But I do think that the avant-garde should know the work. Ted Hughes was
in
> rebellion against all of this small voice stuff. (But still displays
> influences).
>
> A rapprochement is desirous between the avant-garde and the mainstream,
not
> just for the poetry's sake, but for the sake of readers of poetry too. In
> the new copy of Poetry Review, Don Paterson makes a similar point and says
> that the avant-garde and performance poets have been neglected and why
> shouldn't poets share the same platform for readings. He proposed Denise
> Riley and Jean "Binta" Breeze as an example. (By the way, we've been
mixing
> seasons, if not readings, at Durham Colpitts Poetry for a long time. Maybe
> the moment has come to mix the platforms too.)
>
> As for epoetry, it sounds mad and wonderfully exciting. Out of it a new
> medium seem to be coming. But it won't replace the "old" books. Why should
> it? But the influence must be felt. I feel myself itching to write a
"links"
> poem myself (just from your descriptions).
>
> Jackie
>
>
> on 26/4/01 9:38 pm, cris cheek at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > We might look too at Frank O'Hara's 'Memorial Day 1950' and then buckle
> > such chronologies further through the work of Kenneth Fearing. But I
> > digress. What is being raised here, very properly, are the norms ad the
> > acceptable forms of artifice and concealment involved in the making of
> > work, being it writing or otherwise. We are talking about transparent
> > controls within a matrix of acceptable behaviours (dominant concensual
> > reality) in fierce distinction with less palatable realities. We are
> > talking about the veneers of civilised norms being given a decent spit
and
> > polish in the wake of appaling and barbaric atrocities. It's
understandable
> > that people might desire a bit of rest and apparent simplicity and the
> > comforts of the hum drum inflected through controlled (distanced) ironic
> > commentary. We are talking about the desirable shake outs from
infrastratic
> > classmix that had their own all too soon mobilised agendas of
> > reterritorialisation. Larkin and Amis and the like fulfilled a certain
> > ideology of 'humanity' and 'decency' despite later-circulated
biographical
> > shorts to the contrary. A quasi-mystical matter-of-fact blackbird's song
in
> > the evening light down at the allotments of partial self-sufficiency. A
> > foregrounding for lives of modest, honest toil (whatever darknesses
might
> > have been in denial). A role model relative humility, of a symbolically
> > regional librarian (so different from the librarian in Eco's "Name of
the
> > Rose') with a peculiarly English intelligence and an historically
measured
> > sweep through a wishful invocation of the concealed continuities within
> > demotic vernacular. Or something like that blimey!
> >
> > The kind of dialectic that interests me in all of this is that between
say
> > the Movement poets and say The Goons; the social realist reason
apparently
> > brought to rites of passage, a bit of plain speaking gravitas, the
veneer
> > on the rail provided in times of trauma, in conversation with the
anarchic
> > absurdities of quotidian observation. A microcosmic mirror of the stand
off
> > between US Abstract Expressionism and Soviet Social Realism perhaps?
> > Another version of 'the great game'? I know i know this is floating the
net
> > from specifity into grand gesture.
> >
> > Let's look at the 2nd edition 'The Pengion Book of Contemporary Verse'
> > (edited Kenneth Allott and published in  revised edition,
1962).Introduing
> > Amis, Allott writes:
> >
> > 'In 1953 Mr Amis wrote that the great deficiency of the younger poets
was
> > "meagreness and triviality of subject-matter".
> >
> > ". . . nobody wants any more poems on the grander themes for a few
years,
> > but at the same time nobody wants any more poems about philosophers or
> > paintings or novelists or art galleries or mythology or foreign cities
or
> > other poems. At least I hope nobody wants them."
> >
> > Which leaves, of course, the kind of poems written by Mr Larkin and M
Amis.
> > The attitude is sympathetic even if one recognizes that
proscription-lists
> > are absurd. If Mr Amis is wrong about 'cosmopolitanism' and 'poems about
> > foreign cities', he is wrong for the right reason.'
>
> Dear cris,
>
> My observation: the avant-garde has to know the garde to be avant. I was
> very impressed with your observations here: the postwar impulse was a
> retreat from the heights. The heights after all know the depths. The
> theatrical histrionics of fascism had revealed depths of horror. Hence the
> post-war trek into depression and silence, nihilism and absurdity, the
> ordinary as opposed to the extraordinary which suddenly seemed suspect.
> Plays like Waiting for Godot echoed Lear. Lear, a play which prewar had
been
> deemed to be too nihilistic to be performed, suddenly was in vogue. Yes,
> you're right, this was the European backcloth against which the English
> response was absurdist comedy (The Goons, and before the Goons of course,
> during the war, Itma) and celebration of the decent in the Orwellian mode.
> On the English stage we had Ionesco as well as N.F. Simpson. I suppose
there
> was a hatred (not too large a word) of all that shouting.
>
> So the postwar revolt was on different fronts - a class revolt of a truly
> remarkable kind under the Atlee government, a mocking of the grandiose and
a
> treasuring of the mundane. The Movement fits into this picture. It's no
good
> complaining that Movement poetry didn't tackle great themes and didn't
sing.
> It was fed up with great themes and fed up with songs. Of course Larkin
uses
> rhetoric, he's a poet. Incidentally, I'm not a huge fan of Larkin's. Maybe
> not even a fan, although I think he has written some good poems, one or
two
> very good poems indeed, but his influence and nuances were huge, some of
> them good, some bad. His imitators lose by imitation the sense of his
epoch.
> But I do think that the avant-garde should know the work. Ted Hughes was
in
> rebellion against all of this small voice stuff. (But still displays
> influences).
>
> A rapprochement is desirous between the avant-garde and the mainstream,
not
> just for the poetry's sake, but for the sake of readers of poetry too. In
> the new copy of Poetry Review, Don Paterson makes a similar point and says
> that the avant-garde and performance poets have been neglected and why
> shouldn't poets share the same platform for readings. He proposed Denise
> Riley and Jean "Binta" Breeze as an example. (By the way, we've been
mixing
> seasons, if not readings, at Durham Colpitts Poetry for a long time. Maybe
> the moment has come to mix the platforms too.)
>
> As for epoetry, it sounds mad and wonderfully exciting. Out of it a new
> medium seem to be coming. But it won't replace the "old" books. Why should
> it? But the influence must be felt. I feel myself itching to write a
"links"
> poem myself (just from your description).
>
> Jackie
>