Hi Wystan. How are things in New Zealand today?
Mairead, I think your comment to Wystan was very funny.
Henry I'm sorry if I came across as someone scoffing. In fact I think you
make an excellent point by mentioning the "less cool" audience of
non-writing readers. Someone mentioned The Whipping Boy, Billy Collins,
recently in regards to his wide extra-academic appeal, the very much
poo-poo'd man, who reminds me slighly of Les Murray actually.
But uhh I'd have to disagree with you Henry about that "world of readers at
large", at least in Americker is not terribly well read when it comes to
work that's post 1970 in my expeience. The poetry reading community is
probably abot the same size, maybe slightly larger, than the writing
community. At least that's been my experience at my semi-extensive
knowledge of communities at 5 universities thus far. Even MFA students or
students at the MA level who're interested in contemp lit and are going on
to a PHD don't really read much in the way of current writers or even
recently dead writers. These are not in your terms an "active reading
culture," at lest in my experience. Reading cultures are incredibly small
and fragile, probably more fragile than writing cultures in America maybe.
For instance, I've started (along with Mairead in the most recent one)
writing programs in two prisons (Mairead and I started the one in
Mississippi) and I can tell you that it's going to be probably much easier
to start a writing class than a reading class. Why? Because the former
contains both activities. Reading cultures are strongest most active and
vibrant and daring where there are writing cultures. Emerson said
tessentially this in "The AMerican Scholar" (where there is creative
writing, I paraphrase, we must have creative reading)....
gabe
At 08:11 PM 9/5/2002 -0400, Henry Gould wrote:
>Nothing more old hat than the old know-it-all shrug. What new insight
>every came from that attitude, eh Wystan?
>
>Gabriel, you think I'm being naive, reiterating very simple ideas about
>individual literary reception. But I think it worthwhile to take those
>positions further. It IS something of a distortion to picture reading &
>judgement as a completely isolated, a-social phenomenon. But rather than
>assume "the community" is an existing network of writers, as you seem to
>do, I would argue that the community, the matrix of literature, is the
>world of readers at large, fostered by good schooling, which encourages
>generous, sustained, individual and communal encounters with classic and
>current works. It is that active reading culture which should be the
>productive background of new work, its context and measure. Writing which
>emerges from a heightened awareness of that context will be less subject
>to the mechanical workings of CW careerism, or the cliches & manufactured
>melodrama of "rebel to classic" scenarios, etc. It will be evaluated
>within a broader social context, both for how i!
>t reflects on past efforts, and for how it responds to current universal &
>immediate social realities, demands.
>
>It's interesting to hear so many people scoff at the most basic notions of
>creative or critical reading/response. It's as if the individual reader
>automatically surrenders authority to the mechanisms of literary
>"professionalism". It's a surrender of the whole joy and purpose of
>responding to poetry - the surrender of individual judgement and encounter.
>
>Henry
> >
> > From: "Wystan Curnow (FOA ENG)" <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: 2002/09/06 Fri AM 10:52:10 EDT
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: academic poetry (& thanks to Mairead Byrne)
> >
> > Welcome to the living archive! The Kent/Henry/Gabe twitch action.
> > Trigger words include 'Silliman', which instantly change the subject
> > that old archive-chesnut-thread :ACADEMIC POETRY. What I don't know
> > are the trigger words to shut it off.
> > Wystan (PhD)
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