Dear Maria
I find your comments intriguing, to be sure, but I'm not sure just who you
are dismissing with that line: >far away from the current entrenched and
expected
>cringe that becomes a stock response from contemporary poets, generally
>educated in creative writing classes.
>
>There is a true need in Australia for debate on the urbane and inwardly
>reflective nature of much contemporary poetry - and, perhaps the
>motivation of poets for looking beyond the Australian landscape - it is
>a debate I am trying to have in my own writing, and I am more and more
>often having to look to the past for inspirational, philosophical or
>truly honest and passionate writing.
Certainly some of the 'urbane' (& urban) Australian poets I read neither
lose themselves simply in the landscape nor 'cringe.' Take list member John
Tranter, for example, not to mention Alison, Jill, & others. Or, with both
his terrific sense of a particular place, & also of the potential power of
the present world worlding, Robert Adamson. Or switching back & forth,
crisscrossing genres & types, John Kinsella. Or, given the amazing ghazals
of her late career, Judith Wright.
So I'm just not sure what (or who) you're resisting here...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
I fear this war
will be long and painful
and who
pursue
it
Lorine Niedecker
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