Hmm. Am I a trollish boffin? Here's my two cents - these "lines" being
drawn don't make a lot of sense. Eg: some early Prynne seems to me most
lyrical in an Elizabethan kind of way; and anyone who heard Michael Haslam
read at the Cambridge Poetry Summit earlier this year could hardly forget
that poetry is a sonic art written by people obsessed with the musical
possibilities of language. And Ms Geraldine Monk is a most decided roller of
poetry on the tongue. A lot of the problem I have with the poetry of, say,
Motion, is precisely the lack of attention it pays to the sensuous
properties of language, in favour of some ideology of "meaning". Etc etc.
I'm not denying that there are different genealogies that might be broadly
traced; I am saying that the genealogies drawn up here with such brisk
certainty seem to dissolve into all sorts of uncertainties and complexities
when you look at them more closely.
And anyway, I hate this gauntletish boy stuff.
Ought I to take offence, as a Salt poet, at this? ("Publishers like Salt are
churning out 50 books a year, mainly featuring poetry no one wants to read
by poets no one has ever heard of - poetry devoid of wit, feeling, or
relevance.") It scarcely seems worth it. Or could it be - grasping at
straws - that I qualify as a "fusion poet", and thus might be said to
possess a mort of wit? And feeling? And even "relevance", whatever that is?
Hope springs eternal...
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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