I didn't mean that +I+ think writing poetry is stupid, but that in the eyes
of many it is. I cannot nor would not wish to offer examples of 'stupid'
poetry, that wasn't the point of address, we are in danger in this debate of
getting fixated upon a single word, what I'm talking about, what I think
Muller and Alison are talking about, is a certain inability to take as given
what is thought as given, and too a defiance of social realities.

As you know, neither I nor Ms Croggon are university educated, she has had a
certain amount of success as a writer, but in the hard-nosed reality of
things both we and others like us must be fools for following this art, as
essentially if you haven't got university connections you're up the creek,
no matter how good you are. I live about 500 yards from one of Leicester's
universities, the other is about a mile walk away, do I ever get any help
from the buggers? No I don't. Despite the facts that not only (if I may say
so myself) I'm a fine poet, I edit the best literary magazine in the whole
of the English Midlands, for a decade I have been keeping workshops going
that have brought people to poetry left right and centre, they, and the Arts
Admin people, know perfectly well about me, but unlike me, they're clever,
smart. Prats like me exist as fodder to them.

Meanwhile the seminars go on, the courses continue, the awards are granted,
while this idiot continues in a tiny flat, harassed by x, y and z, just over
the road from it all.

I'm glad I'm stupid, otherwise I could never stand it all.

Best

Dave


David Bircumshaw

Leicester, England

Home Page

A Chide's Alphabet

Painting Without Numbers

www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Candice Ward" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 11:10 PM
Subject: Re: Back on Planet Earth


> Sorry if I misremembered your terms in an earlier post, where you were
> enthusing about poetry with just these qualities (weren't you?). But
that's
> not the same as saying that writing poetry is stupid--or is regarded as
> such--though quixotic would probably be more accurate. And the Eliot quote
> is too equivocal to mean much, it seems to me--a generalization on the
order
> of "poets need to be this AND that." "Stupid" is at least specific, even
if
> it doesn't get us much closer to Muller's meaning without knowing its
> context or what German term he may have used.
>
> What you oppose to "stupidity" here ("the smooth glib surfaces of easy
> intellection," etc.) hardly casts them in diametric opposition, though, so
I
> don't understand why you need the "stupidity" aspect at all. Few smart,
> serious poets would be likely to question your objection to "smooth glib
> surfaces of easy intellection," I'd guess, so you could simply object to
it
> without even mentioning stupidity. Of course, that would leave you with a
> straw man on your hands. How about posting an example of good stupid
poetry?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Candice
>
>
>
>
> >> and the last poetry I'd ever want to read is the dozey-headed, naively
> > stupid kind
> >> championed by David.
> >
> > Sorry, Candice, but when did I do that? I was talking about certain
> > qualities in relation to the +pursuit of writing poetry+, the folly, the
> > stupidity of a love for it, but I wasn't making an aesthetic out of it.
I'd
> > return to the Eliotic reference, the need for poets to be both extremely
> > sophisticated and extremely primitive, I translate this as clever and
dumb
> > simultaneously. I can't see how pursuing an art like poetry can be
anything
> > but stupid in the eyes of many, after all, it don't pay (for most). But
also
> > I think that a stupidity is required in the sense of being resistant to
the
> > smooth glib surfaces of easy intellection, its persuasive small talk of
> > knowing superiority. Too, one must consider the trance like matter
inherent
> > in its creation, the dissolution of the boundaries of self and ego it
> > invokes.
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Dave
>