Thank you David for your long answer.
I would like to remember the following though:
I have a high regard for much of Pound,
Eliot, Yeats, Stevens, Stein and their kind,
to which yes, we have to add:
but it does matter that
what they represent is kept in sight.
So long, Anny
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 6:42 PM, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hi Anny
>
> In the first place because he said it. Because, too, my teeth have
> been gritting lately at commentators like Perloff who evade the
> question of a work's content, justify their assertions by invocations
> of 'theory', without ever specifying the precise nature of that
> theory, then lament that poetry is not 'Big Business' (her words) like
> visual art and state that she choses the poets she lectures about on
> the basis of (her capitals) VALUE (four of the six poets she names as
> those she choses to teach on are of the far right. Because I've just
> been reading (the other week) Anthony Julius' book 'T.S.Eliot:
> anti-Semitism and literary form' (a sobering book). Because, according
> to the Guardian yesterday, a Conservative shadow minister here exulted
> in the triumph of the far-right Boris Johnson in the London Mayoral
> elections with the phrase 'This is like the March on Rome in 1922'.
> Because I can't tolerate anymore the disjunctions between the literary
> culture the world presents to me and the social realities of that same
> world. Because the attenuation of actuality and language in much of
> Stevens' writing (not that I'm taking pot-shots at blackbirds) does
> reflect the sleight-of-hand in which political content is insinuated
> into his imaginary universes: if Pound is brazenly didactic, Yeats
> hypnotised by the sound of his own voice, Eliot pernicious, Stevens is
> a conjurer from whose entertainments you go away with a rotten egg
> marked 'Viva Il Duce' lodged in your pocket: I've once only met Sean
> O'Brien, he had a drink with some of us after a reading in Leicester,
> at one point the conversation turned to Stevens, whom he greatly
> admires. Now Sean O'Brien is not a right-wing character at all, but he
> would not accept that Stevens' politics had any relation to his
> poetry.
> Well it's the distortions of mind that unquestioning acceptance of
> some facets of our literary culture induce that lead people to such
> contrary states.
> It's not, though, that I'm concerned about people having 'feet of
> clay', pace Roger, we all have those for sure. It's just a matter of
> what any poetry amounts to - I have a high regard for much of Pound,
> Eliot, Yeats, Stevens, Stein and their kind, but it does matter that
> what they represent is kept in sight.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
> 2008/5/4 Anny Ballardini <[log in to unmask]>:
> > Why did you fill it all up with that Mussolini thing?
> >
> > On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:33 AM, David Bircumshaw <
> [log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > Tsk, I left one out:
> > >
> > > The Proverbs of one Wallace Stevens, poet, lawyer and insurance man:
> > >
> > > The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence
> > > which takes its place as life's redemption.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > All poetry is experimental poetry.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > One reads poetry with one's nerves.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > Aristotle is a skeleton.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > Thought tends to collect in pools.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > > One cannot spend one's time in being modern
> > > when there are so many more important things to be.
> > > Personally, I am pro-Mussolini.
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 2008/5/4 andrew burke <[log in to unmask]>:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > 'All poetry is experimental poetry' ... (Who said that? Please
> tell
> > > me, b/c
> > > > > if you like.) Andrew
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > 2008/5/4 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
> > > > The Proverbs of one Wallace Stevens, poet, lawyer and insurance
> man.
> > > >
> > > > The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
> > > >
> > > > After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence
> > > > which takes its place as life's redemption.
> > > >
> > > > All poetry is experimental poetry.
> > > >
> > > > One reads poetry with one's nerves.
> > > >
> > > > A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.
> > > >
> > > > Aristotle is a skeleton.
> > > >
> > > > Thought tends to collect in pools.
> > > >
> > > > Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully.
> > > >
> > > > One cannot spend one's time in being modern
> > > > when there are so many more important things to be.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 2008/5/4 andrew burke <[log in to unmask]>:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > 'All poetry is experimental poetry' ... (Who said that? Please
> tell
> > > me, b/c
> > > > > if you like.) Andrew
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > David Bircumshaw
> > > > Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> > > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> > > > The Animal Subsides
> http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> > > > Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > David Bircumshaw
> > > Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> > > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> > > The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> > > Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Anny Ballardini
> > http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
> > http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> > http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
> > I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
> > star!
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
--
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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