> the predictable progress of contemporary arts from banality to
> sentimentality -
I like that, Ali, it's very _tart_.
I've just finished reading a full-length study, published by Bloodaxe, of
the UK poet Peter Reading. Now Reading is an inventive metrist, has a
distinct if very Latinate diction, is a clever mimic and a lively parodist,
BUT, and this does angle into the Page/Olson oblique at a further oblique,
underneath his urban grotesque , neo-Spenglerian jeremiads on Western ( and
human)Civilization and seemingly endless fascination with banality and the
contents of newspaper crime reports, it seems to me that underneath there
lies a sentimentality every bit as twee as that which wants to climb
Chomolungma. A sentimentality which, very Britishly, and in homage to
Larkinalia, poses as bluff-guy attitudinizing and grand, negative noises.
His all is black seems the complementary pole to the snow-capped
altitudinous white Page.
david b
----- Original Message -----
From: ALI ALIZADEH <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2001 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: breath & ear - line &syllable
> Well, coincindent or not, they just had a doco on Merce Cunningham on the
tele which
> ties in nicely with projective verse. Cunningham with dance, Cage with
music and to
> a lesser degree Pollack with paiting, alongside Olson, provided a much
needed
> obstacle to the predictable progress of contemporary arts from banality to
> sentimentality - the P. K. Page poem is a vivid example of what the
majority of
> today's poetry would be like without people like Olson. Anyway,
Cunningham - who was
> brought to the Black Mountain College with Olson's help (I think) - says
something
> to the effect of: "I don't want the dancers doing a dance, I want them to
become the
> dance". To him, I think, the first physical step on the stage is an
equivilant of
> Olson's first line on the page - an outward movement, like starting an
engine. Where
> the Beats got stuck was after starting the engine they had no idea how to
change the
> damn gears from PARK to DRIVE. 'Howl' is like a hot engine with a lot of
smoke and
> noise withoiut wheels. I heard someone read out Corso's 'Marriage' at the
pub
> yesterday, and despite a very articulate reading and the occaision of the
whole
> thing (ten minutes later someone read out, you guessed it,'Howl') no one
including
> the reader himself could deny that Corso's poem was very dated and, well,
plain
> boring. Something about Olson's 'Distances', or Cunningham's choreography,
just
> doesn't age.
>
> Ali Alizadeh
>
> ---- Original Message ----
> From: =?iso-8859-1?q?neville=20attkins?=
> Date: Thu 2/1/01 7:01
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: breath & ear - line &syllable
>
> I've not had the pleasure of Olson's manifesto, but I
> am sure that someone will say that it is limiting and
> that this is a problem, they always do, imagining
> presumably that there is someway of writing verse that
> isn't limited, it is words not pure thoughts but it is
> this very limit that is expressive. How meaningless to
> complain for example a way of doing art is limited:
> oil paintings are flat: good,, if they weren't no one
> would have had to invent perspective... and how much
> fun was had making them describe the third and fourth
> dimensions. I like very much the propsition that
> poetry is only syllabuls how marvelously playful to
> have to worry about those left out little sylabuls,
> personally the letter is the thing, take care of them
> and and the rest takes care of itself.
>
> more power to your larynx Ali
>
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