Kent:
> On a separate point-- Robin, I had mentioned that Lind's comments on the
> Agrarians were among the most interesting in the article for precisely the
> apparent contradiction you note. I can only surmise that what peeves him
is
> that the Agrarians/New Critics (most of them at least as politically
> reactionary as the editors of Prospect magazine!) were, in fact,
> tough-minded theorists, and it's exactly an absence of
> intellectual/theoretical rigour that binds the MFA/AWP "free-verse"
traditon
> with the so-called "New Formalists".
Yes, there's that odd overlap between the Fugitives (is that the correct
name? They weren't called Agrarians at the time, were they?) and the New
Criticism. (Ransom coined the term, though he didn't see himself as one.)
I would have assumed that a New Formalist (and I'd be grateful for an
explanation of what exactly this means in contemporary American terms: some
things haven't crossed the Pond, or at least haven't reached my ears across
the divide) would utterly dote on the tenets of the New Criticism.
(There's, as an aside, the odd link between the group, in the shape of Laura
(Riding) Jackson and that English formal dinosaur Robert Graves, who rated
Ransom very highly.)
> (Oh, and also, it's Zukofsky, with an "f"-- the "f" for Form, you might
say,
> as Zukofsky as prosodist does to Dana Gioia and posse what the young
martial
> arts master girl does to the gang of thugs in Crouching Tiger, Hidden
> Dragon.
My apologies for miscalling the man, and I only wish I could plead a slip of
the typing finger. But surely behind Zukovfsky lies the Final Master,
Pound? (I've just been trying to read myself to sleep with Guy Davenport's
essays on him, which is probably why I'm now wide awake). How do American
poets negotiate the different formalisms (structures, metrics, poetics) of
Pound and Williams? (Not to mention Stevens -- how do the New Formalists
regard him? Or doesn't blank verse count as form?)
I'd agree with Kent that it would be ... interesting ... to get Lind to
address the group. But what about the practicalities -- how to get hold of
him, etc.?
My apologies for any incoherence in the above -- I'm still reeling from the
discovery, about two in the morning, that the reference to a cockerel's
stone in _Romeo and Juliet_ +isn't+ a reference to a fowl's testicle, as is
usually assumed. An unnerving thing to realise at any time, leave alone in
the hours just after midnight.
Robin
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