Liz has raised an interesting question, for me at least.

I write in a non-formal way and feel an exile from formalism, so you
will have to forgive me or excuse me as I have to ask rather naive
questions, as a stranger would be required to do in a strange land. The
questions are: on what grounds and in what way is it possible to say
what is considered good poetic language and by obvious implication what
is not poetic language and hence bad poetry? On what formal grounds is
good and bad poetry judged or decided? I also need to ask how and why is
Carol Ann Duffy, because of the formal qualities of her writing, able to
be placed in a category under the heading of Larkin? What formal
decisions allow this to happen?

Kate Jennings in _Mother I'm Rooted_ (1975) wrote:
I don't know any longer what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. I have been
trained to know, in a patriarchal university, on a diet of male writers.

In the introduction to _The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets_  by
Susan Hampton and Kate Llewellyn, in the which the above is quoted, a
very compelling argument is made that formalism and the decisions and
judgments made using the various formal methods are political. From this
it can be said that form is political even if claiming to be apolitical
and in so doing proclaiming it's own dishonesty. So, can formalism ever
be honest even if it claims to be honest criticism?

Another quote from the above introduction, this time by a male poetry
critic and editor who has come to question his own formal methods and
judgments:
I have begun to think that I might have been quite wrong in many of my
suggestions, quite blind in my rejection of poems that, because they did
not conform in sufficient respects to what I had come to believe were
the fundamentals of good poetry, I thought were poor or inept or somehow
simply misconceived... if I was doing that, and in some small way
helping to repress a way of saying that I did not understand or for
which I could not see the necessity, how many others must have been
doing likewise, and for how long? (David Brooks, 1985)

I believe the above introductory essay and collection of poems to be
important not just in an Australian sense but on an international scale.
I say this not because I am a sensitive male but based on my
concrete lived experiences and I look to this book as a much needed and
essential friend. The list of formal tricks Susan and Kate make in this
introduction which are used to deny women poets the right to speak echo
my own experiences as a militant gay writer.  How often have I seen
formal claims of bad writing, usually hostile even if cloaked in a
defensive form as a defence of poetry (more dishonesty) or rejections or
even worst calls for others to judge and write on our behalf,  such as
professors in universities or other writers and which is another way of
denying the right to speak. Their writing is bad, they need help...
cringe and cringe again. I feel for the indignity of those who have been
asked to write and judge as such and hold no bad feelings and admire the
courage of those who have turned in friendship instead of doing what is
implicitly expected of them.

I can give an example: _PINK INK, anthology of recent lesbian and gay
writers in Australia_. This was formally judged as bad writing, even the
worst of writing, not literature, not worthy of publication. How was
this book made? By a loose collective of gay men and lesbians who put
out a call for manuscripts. We met often, read all the material
submitted and because we could not include all that we received in one
300 page volume made selections simply on what resonated instinctively
in some way, and quite often we did not understand the writing, but it
went in anyway. We decided the order the writers were to appear in the
book by writing the names of all the writers on small pieces of paper
and placing them in a hat and without looking drawing the pieces of
paper out one by one. That decided the order by chance, not what we
thought should be assigned the privileged positions in the book. (I
assume people know about the traditional form of anthologies and how and
where writers are to be positioned in collections with the first two and
last entry being the priviledged positions, for example.) It took us
several years to find a publisher. We were rejected by all the majors,
except one, who wanted formal changes made to way we edited, which we
refused to do. Most didn't even want to talk to a collective of dykes
and fags and replied with snide homophobic remarks about the collective.
We did eventually find a publisher, Wicked Women Publications,
publishers of a lesbian S&M magazine.

While I say I write outside form in a non-formal way I still greatly
admire the ways in which poets have found to work in and break form. I
cannot do this, given the hostililities and defensiveness of formalism I
experience. This would be too much to live with and far too much
sadness. This may be difficult for many to understand. I am amongst the
last still living of my networks of friends, lovers and ex-lovers who
have died in horrible ways; murders, suicides, heroin overdoses and the
slow deaths of HIV/AIDS. I know few in liberal democratic countries like
Australia have experienced losing so many at such a young age and in
such circumstances and this I can understand and I can therefore
understand why it would be diffcult to see why I need to work outside
form. My questions still stand and are honest questions. Questions from
a naive stranger.

Perhaps it could be said that there is no poetry without formalism. The
only way I can think to respond to this is to renounce poetry since I
cannot recant. To cry out a slogan: down with poetry! All poetry is cliche.

To echo Maurice Blanchot:
A poem? No. No poetry, never again.


My questions are still the honest questions of a stranger. I do really
want to know about formalism.

best wishes and many good vibes

Chris Jones.






Liz Kirby wrote:

      >I am not sure if you are attacking Carol Ann for her language or her
content
      >Dave.  Guns firing on all fronts it seems!
      >
      >She has a right to work with whatever content she wants - and you
have a
      >right to disagree with her views.....  I think you misrepresent
her pov
      >about language though.  She is commenting out of a drive to
democratise
      >poetry and to write in a language that people will recognise.  There
is a
      >long history for that drive (Lyrical Ballads for instance).  It is
from this
      >position that she has no patience with 'interesting' or 'poetic'
words.  I
      >admire her effort to make 'ordinary' language reverberate and
resonate.  And
      >she often does it very well, and musically.  She comes out of a long
      >silenced tradition of lesbian writing in this country and deserves an
      >honoured place as a poet who has managed to establish a public
voice for
      >words that had not been heard before.
      >
      >I find I have an ambivilant relation to these arguments.  I
understand the
      >position about the obsolete elitism of 'literary' language, but I am
wary of
      >the rather common-sensical limits that tend to be imposed in its
place.  I
      >find I always want to work with the simplist lexis possible, but to
make it
      >layer and fold as intensely as I can, when I write.
      >
      >from 'Steam'
      >
      >Quite recently, if one of us sat up,
      >or stood, or stretched, naked,
      >
      >a nude pose in soft pencil
      >behind tissue paper
      >
      >appeared, rubbed itself out, slow,
      >with a smoky cloth.
      >
      >Say a matter on months.  This hand reaching
      >through the steam
      >
      >to touch the real thing shockingly there,
      >not a ghost at at all.
      >
      >Carol Ann Duffy
      >from Mean Time
      >(which I think is her best book)
      >
      >PS: Short sentences with no main verb?  sat
      >up/stood/stretched/appeared/rubbed/reaching???
      >
      >
      >
      >