Chris,
Thanks for your patient and cordial welcome after what must have sounded
like a surly way of introducing myself. If I can take your final question
first I'd have to admit I'm not sure what I hoped to find here. But maybe
that doesn't make me that different from some others on the list?
You said "welcome, understanding something of the quizzical brackets
that you place around the hushed word 'innovative'. As if it can't be
applied to almost any creative work. Surely there are innovative
productions of Shakespeare and innovative interpretations of Pindar, as
there are innovative approaches to the translation of Sappho and on it
goes. As if it cannot also be applied to writing and to writing poetry."
(By the way could anyone tell me how you all do that clever thing with
arrows for quoting?)
Which makes me think you have perfectly understood my reservations about
the term 'innovative poetry'and then gone on a bit towards misunderstanding
them. Of course it "can" be applied. Far from objecting to innovation in
poetry or the arts,like everyone else who cares for them, I welcome it
wholeheartedly. It's for that reason I find the epithet redundant.
Of the poets you set up, I take it, in contrast to the core concerns of
the list, I wouldn't deny innovativeness on the level of language to either
Heaney or Hughes. Larkin seems to me less so, but I still enjoy some of his
poems. Does this disqualify me?
Thanks also for the extended reading list and the references, some of
which I'm familiar with and others I'll have a look at.
best
Iain
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