I like Tom Raworth's stuff, he's so late 60s, early 70s. Cool, man.
The times went really out of joint thereafter though, pun intended,
the psychologically primitive personae in Peter Reading are very much
the new brutality of Thatcher's England, as Tom Paulin spotted. then
with the 90s we get the New Consumer, like Armitage or Duffy, very
jokey in a strangely humourless way. Nature poetry's back again here,
environmentally, as in Alice Oswald. I have noticed though how much
Larkin still gets about: I keep finding high-cultural-status pundits,
like Ian MacEwan or Clive James, quoting him reverentially while
pondering on law and society and the role of Islam in Britain etc. I
guess that Larkin remains The Voice for the upper administrative types
of a certain disposition.
Lots of quarrelsome dissenters arguing among themselves to no avail of
course (like me!) rather in the manner of a decades long meeting of
the Socialist Workers Party that still hasn't fully absorbed the fact
that it's no longer 1974 outside.
Thinking back to 1970, does anyone know much about Paul Evans' poetry
after then till his untimely death? I liked his early stuff a lot but
have never seen the 3 or so books I think he produced thereafter.
Best
dave
Best
Dave
2008/6/4 Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]>:
> Without looking up on my shelf, there is a Tom Raworth title, Tottering States. The defininition here of a Totter is so appropriate for Tom's technique of picking up all matter of refuse (and refusal) to build a 'tottering state". (Of course, the title is also a pun on the condition of 'states' (political and/or personal) in general, that they be 'tottering' - that be barelay balanced, and about to fall.
>
> "Tattle Tale" - I wonder with out going OED - if that is a story told by a Tot (a young kid) snitching on an older sibling?? (McClellan on Bush et al, as well?)
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
> The =
> For TOTTER n2, the OED simply has, "See TOT n5.
>
> TOT n5
>
> [Origin unascertained: cf. TAT n.5, v.3]
>
> A dust-heap picker's name for a bone; whence by extension, anything
> worth picking from a refuse-heap or elsewhere. Hence totter, a
> rag-and-bone
> collector; totting, dust-heap picking.
>
> 1873 Slang Dict. s.v., 'Tot' is a bone, but chiffoniers and
> cinder-hunters
> generally are called Tot-pickers nowadays. Totting also has its
> votaries on
> the banks of the Thames, where all kinds of flotsam and jetsam, from
> coals
> to carrion, are known as tots. 1880 Law Rep., 5 Q.B.D. 369 The contents
> of
> the dust-bins consisted chiefly of cinders and ashes and the sweepings
> of
> the houses, but they also contained a number of articles thrown into
> them as
> refuse by the occupiers of the houses, and known as 'tots'. 1891 Daily
> News
> 11 Mar. 3/3 Costermongers, wood-cutters, and 'totters', men who lounged
> about areas in the hope of getting old bottles and things from
> servants.
> 1910 Lond. City Mission Mag. May 85/2 The Totters. Up betimes, these
> queer
> people set out by the dozen, with sack or barrow, in quest of rags and
> bones, rubber, and bottles, scrap iron and cast-off clothing. Ibid.,
> When
> all else fails, and one can stoop so low, a day's totting is bound to
> yield
> the cost of a night's lodging.
>
>
>
>
>
--
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
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