I mean this question seriously. Why are 'we' - I have caught this word from
Mr Paterson - needing to talk so much about this article when they are so
many others to discuss? Because Peter made it available I have read it.
There is a grandiose petulance, several flashes of real interest that would
be worth a conversation, not a single line of poetry actually cited (despite
what is invoked on behalf of 'poetry's' alleged powers of invocation), and a
number of confusions, not least no recogntion of a difference between
mnemonic devices and memory. Mnemonic technologies change, I'd say, and with
each change also what gets forgotten. Poems are just as much machines for
forgetting as for remembering, I'd say. Different poetics, different
forgetting.
For someone who speaks so stridently against "poetics" (safely encased in
speech marks), at least he gives it a go. Poetics, I mean. I'm glad he
didn't write it in professional verse.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: British & Irish poets [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Peter Philpott
Sent: 07 November 2004 19:48
To: John Hall
Subject: FW: 'On Lionel Kearns' and 'What About Poetry'
Paul
>Here is a new piece I've just finished that I've been working on for a few
>months. It's called 'On Lionel Kearns': http://vispo.com/kearns .
- It's great. Go there! It will bring sunshine into a grey November, and
make you think of possibilities and potentials.
However, should you need a downer afterwards - I've uploaded the
Guardian text of Paterson's TS Eliot Lecture:
http://www.greatworks.org/poems/dp.html
I think we have the moral right to for all of us to read a text that is
in some ways, one might suspect, directed at us. So I've made it
immediately available to BritPo listmembers.
It is a strange mixture of insight, narrow-minded prejudice, and
personal obsessions and obscurities - the stuff on Horse Whispering
(applicable to Horses, Women, and, "with mind-numbing dullness", Poems)
is breath-taking.
"Poets are people with an unusual gift for the composition of verses".
Verses!
Back to VisPo at once!
--
Peter Philpott
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