> Alison,
>
> On Sun, 3 Aug 2003 07:05:52 -0700, you wrote:
>
> >Peter's statement about contemporary British poetry
> >was pretty much what I thought until I lucked on this list and
> >redirected my reading. I thought British poetry was going through a
> >direly uninspired period post 1940. Anthologies like the New Penguin
> >Book of English Poetry confirm this idea amply -
>
> Would this be The Armitage and Crawford 'Penguin Book of Poetry from
> Britain and Ireland since 1945'? Whatever its omissions and failings as an
> anthology, its inclusion of MacDiarmid, Bunting, Kavanagh, MacNeice,
Auden,
> Graham, Morgan, Larkin, Hughes, Crichton Smith, Heaney, Ni Chuilleanain,
> Riley, Paulin, Muldoon etc. then merely confirmed you in your opinion of
> this "direly uninspired period"? Or were you just referring to the English
> ones?
>
> Best
> Iain
Oh, I LIKE this -- and there was I thinking I was the only person whose jaw
dropped opening a mainstream anthology that begins with
Muir/MacDiarmid/Jones/Graves ... now THAT'S telling them.
There are problems, of course -- it's a bit schitz over the Gealtacht (which
presumably was Rob Crawford's territory), and Stevie Smith ...
But as the ever-living lord wept, this has to be one of the few mainstream
anthologies that ever slipped passed the censor ...
Does nobody else find this anthology just so screamingly FUNNY?
"Youz ignorant shits, so go read Robert Garrioch."
Robin
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