Trevor:
At the end of your post you touch on an issue
I've been scratching at myself. As an expression
of exceptionalism, or in the face of the threat
of marginalization by a perceived or actual
dominant culture, or perhaps it's just what
people do, poets tend to place themselves within
national lineages, no matter what other lines of
descent they claim (like you, I see myself as
much an offspring of Europe as of my national
poetries). In the States this may be partially a
matter of provincialism, as well, given the poor
state of education here. It's not surprising that
we see ourselves first as Canadian, or US, or
Australian, Irish or English poets first and
English Language poets second, and we almost
never comment on this phenomenon. Very different
from, for instance, the Rothenberg/Joris
perspective, which sees modernism and its
sequellae as an international movement first
(even across a large array of often unrelated
languages) and only secondarily a series of
national movements. This divide has come into
sharp awareness for me as anoutsider looking at
Latin American poetry. There have been three
latinamerica-wide movements, modernismo,
vanguardismo and neobarroco, that have inspired
anthologies, as well as regional and
ethnic-identified anthologies, but most poetry
and most poets tend to be valued and value
themselves in terms of a national lineage. The
poor state of cross-border book distribution and
the diversity of dialects of course aids this
comoparative exclusivity, but these are fairly
minor factors. So, a Cuban poet is far more
likely to be in dialogue with Lezama, no matter
how unlike his/her practice, than with Neruda.
Standing on the outside, I've done two
anthologies along regional/national lines, but
I'm also contemplating one that would cover the
entire field, as if nationhood didn't exist. The
poets certainly reflect different histories, but
they also reflect in many ways the same or
overlapping histories, and they're all operating
within and upon the same language, broadly
defined. Yet pecking order is primarily national.
At the AWP bookfair, just concluded, I found
myself pushing Jose Kozer as the most important
living Cuban poet, but also as one of the most
important Latin American poets. Even in Latin
America and Spain, in all of which he is
well-published, he's marketed in those terms.
At a recent Cuban poetry symposium at Columbia
University, after all sorts of talk about
cubanidad, one of the profs asked whether Cuba
doesn't act as a brand name, a marketing
category. The question was ducked. It's of course
true--there would otherwise not have been a
symposium. I think this applies also to the
categories English, American, Irish, Australian,
Scottish, Canadian, and within those categories a
whole series of subcategories.
Because of SoundEye and this list I increasingly
see myself in dialogue as a poet with British and
Irish poetry as much as with US poetry (which is
why I'm particularly pleased with offshore
publication), though the space I mostly have to fight for is within the latter.
So the web complicates the picture, by making the
mode of access the language itself.
OK, no conclusions. I throw this out for comment.
Mark
At 10:27 AM 2/5/2008, Trevor Joyce wrote:
>Hello again, David,
>
>About John Goodby’s book: I’ve no reason for complaint about its treatment
>of my own work. His book is of a very particular sort, with an equally
>particular target audience in mind. It’s an extremely high-level synoptic
>survey, drawing largely on Alex Davis’ earlier work on NWP poets and some
>others associated with SoundEye. John’s own addition seems to be largely an
>equally summary map of Irish history, social, political and economic, onto
>which his subjects are pinned, willy nilly. Given all that, I get off pretty
>easy, and I gather it puts my work on various course-lists, and may
>therefore persuade a few solitary souls to read
>the stuff. Not to be sneezed at.
>
>It’s the book’s treatment of NWP and the editorship of Michael Smith to
>which I take exception. For example, “the press was founded for the express
>purpose of publishing Devlin and Coffey“. Wrong. The Press was founded in
>’67, but didn’t publish Devlin and Coffey until several years later; the
>early 70s if I recall correctly.
>
>Further, “Smith’s acceptance of Kavanagh as well as Beckett indicates his
>somewhat vaguely defined aesthetic. . . . The fact that both Kinsella and
>Mahon appeared in The Lace Curtain, however, shows that the vagueness of
>position also made for an openness which served the journal well . . .”. A
>curious interpretation, that NWP and The Lace Curtain achieved a position of
>inclusivity (not entirely dissimilar, perhaps, from what’s being argued for
>in this thread) by virtue of vagueness.
>
>I’ve already taken these points up with John, and I understood him to accept
>my points and to promise correction in a later edition. No such edition has,
>of course, appeared.
>
>In general, I’ve grown increasingly bored with academic criticism over the
>years. It strikes me as an increasingly narrow genre, despite moments of
>luminosity (the work of J.C.C. Mays, for instance, has greatly impressed me
>ever since I first heard him talk about Beckett’s Lessness just a few weeks
>after its publication).
>
>I find it strange that you should consider the Tuma anthology’s inclusion of
>“female mainstream contemporaries” to be,
>perhaps, “a cop-out”. (Note to
>self: beware of too great inclusivity, as it may reveal a weakness of
>character.)
>
>My own attitude has softened with the years, largely due to the example of
>some people I met, or got to know better, via this list. To quote just one
>example, if someone who can write the like of Scales and Arbor Vitae
>confesses to an admiration for Seamus Heaney’s
>work, I can’t see it as other
>than a churlishness in myself to neglect him. Randolph Healy’s Wild Honey
>Press strikes me as exemplary of a generosity we could use more of.
>Similarly, Keith’s anthology got me reading Muldoon again, with interest,
>after many failed attempts.
>
>What seems to me almost a mythological split between “mainstream” and
>“margin”, Kavanagh versus Beckett, can be entertaining for its many
>prat-falls, but can also be damaging. On several occasions when I’ve tried
>to invite supposed mainstreamers to participate in SoundEye, they’ve balked
>at the notion of crossing over into, as they apparently saw it, enemy
>territory. One said the festival struck her as “too political”. I was too
>flabbergasted to inquire further. I gather from conversations elsewhere that
>I’m also a card-carrying member of an anti-Prynne faction. Ah well . . .
>
>It would be good to see more exploration here of what’s obliterated by such
>tediously received ideas. I tend to disagree personally with pretty well
>everyone else about poetry, but I love eavesdropping on informed discussion,
>and even butting in occasionally. Being lazy and incoherent, let me quote
>(by way of suggestion) some comments from my SoundEye co-culprit, Fergal
>Gaynor, who was kibbitzing to me on this conversation:
>
>“Would anyone chance a good definition of poetry that shows awareness of the
>modernist lineage and includes a wide swathe of Irish poets (Kinsella and
>Muldoon could not happen without Joyce, Pound, etc. Heaney coulld) without
>having to drag in clearly ‘reactionary’ (even if talented) poets, thus
>bringing about another loss of focus? Why also are the prog poets always
>associated with the US (Mairéad’s Hartnett as Objectivist, Kavanagh as
>Beat)? Your poetry, for instance, is primarily in a European modernist
>tradition (through Surrealism, Oulipo, etc.), and I, for one, came at prog
>po through European lineages (even if I can appreciate the subsequent
>permeation of those lineages by American poetry, not to mention other
>artforms and philosophy).”
>
>Yup, I’d like that . . .
>
>Cheers, T
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