Thanks for this Tim
"A programme of the avant garde." Did I miss this programme? University and
community courses in the UK are packed with creative writing programmes that
instruct
participants in the writing of sonnets, sestinas, etcetera - the route to
writing poetry through specific forms. At the same time
much 'live literature' is formula driven. While Heaney doesn't employ the
"pastry cutter" of form, the literature industry in the UK is such a pastry
cutter.
My analogy is with the teaching of art: post war rebellion at the Royal
Academy finally ended the practice of drawing from plaster casts as if
emulating life drawing. Then contending practices thrived. Since the late
1980s
(the high point of reaction to the 1960s) GCSE students have to endlessly
reproduce Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' as a compromise between history and
practice, while fine art courses are incresingly driven by project-learning
as opposed to craft-learning.
What was wrong with the 'contending' ground between craft and
experimentation?
Heaney is a great poet but there's an absolute contradiction in his
interview - his remark about stepping off the cliff into air. It doesn't
square with his writing. It is a desire. Strangely the desire of an avant
garde poet?
Rupert x
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Allen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 10:42 AM
Subject: Re: SH interview
> Dennis O'Driscoll asks Heaney, "How important is experiment to you?"
> To which Heaney replies, "Each poem is an experiment. The experimental
> poetry thing is not my thing. It's a programme of the avant garde;
> basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write."
>
> The idea that every poem is an experiment is a cliche, almost
> meaningless, but that aside, what about this notion of Heaney's that the
> avant garde is founded on a refusal to write the kind of poetry he
> writes? Is this true? Now if he said that such a refusal was a byproduct
> of an avant garde programme, that would make more sense.
>
> This whole thing is very strange. I've never really been interested in
> writing the way Heaney does. I read him and I admire, but it doesn't
> enthuse, it doesn't make me want to be creative. I still don't understand
> this: how can he be so good and yet fail to interest me much? I used to
> think this was all down to me, some sort of personal lack, until I
> realised that there were others out there who felt the same way - a
> minority, of course, but a minority with a label.
>
> This is not an attack or criticism of Heaney. It is just a question. I
> do, kind of, know some of the answer, but I want to know what others on
> this list think.
>
> Tim A.
>
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