I went to a Secondary Modern. We were meant to be good with our hands.
No anthologies for us. No, I'm not kidding. Hence the mimeographs. I
also only had two English teachers the whole of my early academic
life.

I think there's a mismatch of experience here. I've never taken an
English degree, I have no idea what Anthologies EngLit students read.
I did plough my way through Norton Post Modern American Poetry book
which is a mandated book? Or the nearest I could get to it. The poems
therein occasionally seemed to have no interest in being part of their
gathering. Was the Norton book "destructive"?  Not for me. I picked up
things I would not have done elsewhere.

I guess the books I dislike are the ones I used to see in Browns of
Cambridge, the ones for students, the ones that used to scream: "Read
this book, and you'll understand POETRY." One such book was coloured
red, it had a nice heft, the sort you could use for a door-stopper. I
guess for some, for those who had to take a liberal arts module, it
was fine.  Get in, write an essay, get out again. It's OK if you want
that sort of thing. I think they verged on the edge of destructiveness
for those who wanted a more rounded experience.

Roger
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 11:51 AM, judy prince <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Wonderful, Roger, that you've chosen to embrace this issue---and from your
> own poetry-awakenings---rather than peck at a convenient stiff edge or two.
> My first knowing of poems was from my sis's (me 11, she 16) homemade 3-ring
> binder filled with carefully-typewritten poems.  She'd, as had your English
> teacher, and then you, given herself the luxury of Her Own Collection,
> culled from those at school and on our regular visits to the library.  For
> quite awhile I assumed they were her own poems! <g>   Later, I just enjoyed
> flipping thru the binder and memorizing bits, comforted by their
> familiarity.
>
>  Again I say that my prob is less (if at all) with the Selecting than it is
> with the imposing and sanctioning of "standards" for poetry, as presented in
> the Perfect Wholes of edu-anthologies.  For me, my sister's collection meant
> I could do the same:  I could (at most) write my own collection, or (at
> least) choose poems I preferred.  But the glossy, fat, annotated, annointed
> school anthologies made me doubtful, glaze-eyed, and suspicious.  I'd been
> +distanced+ from poems, poets, and the possibility of my own creatings.  My
> model had been my sister.  Now it was Somebody/ies that I never was and
> never could be.  "Models" are profoundly important, esp for females and
> "minorities"---as well as many males and most of the "majority" who feel
> weirdly outside the mainframe.
>
>  And to the lesser prob of Selection.  Though it seems the obvious problem,
> I think it's largely a false issue.  Rather, anthologies conveniently, and I
> think, disastrously, preclude the ways folk can know poetry.   Let's just
> take one way as an example---the one that most affected you.  If each of
> your teachers, eschewing anthologies, had mimeo-ed poems they admired &
> loved---and from that private-made-public joy had lit debates in class (the
> inimitable "stick" of peer opinions goaded to gather resources)-----would
> you, honestly, have suffered the lack of anthologies?  You mite've had a
> different patchwork of poems, but would it have been an "inferior",
> less-igniting collection?  I suspect, from your telling, that it would have
> opened more of the poetry world as well as your confident participation in
> it.
>
>  It may turn on WHO does the selecting, the evaluating, the default-deciding
> of what is ("good") poetry.
>
>  Judy


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