Lots to chew on tonight, hence the title of the e-mail which refers to the
brand of chewing baccy my American friends introduced me to on a roadtrip
through the Deep South earlier this year. Possibly un-p.c. d'ya think?
nonetheless. I'm on wine and claim diminished responsibility.
Candice: thank you for the greeting, and I very much like your point about
the excitement that these programs can generate. I think I would have
stopped writing in 1995 if it hadn't been for the arrival of David Morley
at Warwick Uni in the UK. There's no doubt that positive encounters can
take place and can entirely change your direction.
HOWEVER
Henry and Mark:
great to be in conversation with you both again. But Henry - I don't know
your position as well as Mark does and I'm surprised to hear you talk in
these terms. What I've noticed over the last year or two on various lists
where we've both been is a deeply felt engagement with several writers but
most of all Mandelstam. Now your engagement clearly goes beyond the
fascination that surface effects can have, so why do you find it so
difficult to understand qualms about the co-option of stylistics from other
poets? I know or suspect that you are _less than enamoured_ of langpo
(please forgive limey understatement, it gets me into trouble all the time
but I love it) but this goes beyond camp politics doesn't it? or am I
smoking crack?
Mark, the story you tell about Jane Flanders and 'decorative surfaces' is a
wonderful encapsulation of what continues to frustrate me about much recent
poetry. And yet I love decorative surfaces. This seems to me to be another
area where a simultaneous having and eating of the cake might be the
ultimate target of contemporary writing.
The point being - I STILL think that what tends to get overlooked in
discussions _I've_ had in writing program circles is the _grounding_ of
writing. I'm not saying that it's ever something that could or indeed
_should_ get established, inasfar as this can be as debilitating as the
encouragement towards diminished ambition that literary influence in the UK
seems to have concentrated on for the last 50 years. But an acknowledgement
of _groundlessness_ is in itself productive, no? that your writing choices
are thereafter considered as contingent on the other ongoing fluctuations
and whims you make in your life, ethical, perceptional [is this a word?],
humorous, POLITICAL (woops), formal... or in your refusal of any or all of
the above categories. You'd still have to reflect on them, or ignore them
to an extent not normally permitted by the social inheritance scheme we
silently and continually acknowledge, which confers unconscious privileging
of one option whilst seeking to convince us of our freedom of choice. I
guess having had experience with workshops and writing classes what
frustrates me is the sense that none of these questions are remotely
interesting to the prematurely aged watercolourists with whom I've shared
precious, now irretrievable time. And yet a sense of certain decisions
having been made re: these very points seems to mark out the poetry I
_continue_ to read having glance at it. The GROUNDS of persuasion to keep
reading, as it were and to drive the point home in a shabby Ford Escort,
maybe one of the old ones with its arse (boot / trunk) sticking out.
Time to sleep.
Best,
Malcolm
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