On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 8:03 PM, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> No Alison,
> I am simply saying that the READING and critical response to a poem is going
> to be conditioned - to some degree or other - by such things as the iffy
> area where poetics meets literary power politics. I honestly don't see a way
> out of this.
I guess I agree with you, Tim. To a degree, in any case. I have
sometimes wondered how differently my own work might be read, were I a
man. Sometimes the most startling readings are filtered through
gender, which oddly seldom gets a mention in discussions like these.
But then literary power politics are really so dull (and almost always
so male, certainly in this instance) and it's hard not read them as
the politics of a dog pack (or perhaps rival packs). They're not so
difficult to understand. "Corrective" readings of poems themselves
might perhaps have some chance of being interesting? David Llloyd's
notorious essay on Heaney being a case in point.
> Don't take too much notice of the word 'schools' - it was Kit's word, not
> mine, and I think we both know what she means by it.
> And I do not 'grudge' Heaney's popular success, as you have inferred. In
> fact I haven't made any such comment at all. I think I made it quite plain
> where I stand in my opinion of Heaney and 'grudge' never came into it. I am
> not speaking for others though.
Fair cop. I was responding to the generality of the conversation. Part
of Jeffrey's beef is certainly that Heaney is a popular poet. It's
hard to see how the problem of Heaney's popularity - or "influence" -
is going to be addressed by a snarky argument between poets, unless
they decide they will be popular poets too (part of which might be a
question of addressing that normative question Jeffrey raised in the
first place - eg Shakespeare is popular but not necessarily normative
in that way at all). But that's probably harder than it looks,
literary politics or no.
And for all the sturm and drang, those who read Heaney will keep
reading him, blithely unaware of what poets they've never heard of are
saying, and those who don't will keep not reading him. Ho hum.
I didn't mean to poke my nose in here. Back to my own work.
xA
>
> Cheers
> Tim
>
> On 11 Apr 2009, at 00:09, Alison Croggon wrote:
>
>> Tim - are you really saying that the writing of poetry is entirely
>> conditioned by which school or group one supposedly belongs to? And
>> that a state of "innocence" (?) is not possible? Unless you mean that
>> it's impossible to discuss poetry without tracing literary genealogies
>> or ideas, which is a little different to discussing contemporary
>> social power relationships. I personally don't and have never given a
>> rat's arse about "schools", since on close inspection they generally
>> seem singularly useless as descriptive groupings, and I do think
>> individual poets do - if they're interested in poetry at all - retain
>> a certain innocence, a certain incorrigible belief in poetry itself,
>> aside from the so-called "world" it inhabits as industrial practice.
>> Otherwise, why bother? You might as well be working in an office,
>> vying for the eye of the various corporate bosses.
>>
>> For my part, I think Heaney has his moments (I admire Glanmore
>> Sonnets, for example). I remember years ago Peter R supplied the
>> adjective "senatorial", which strikes me as an accurate description of
>> a tone which I personally find less than exciting. Yes, Heaney's a
>> popular poet. His poems can mean something to people who don't
>> necessarily read a lot of poetry. Why grudge that? I'm just puzzled
>> that he generates such spleen.
>>
>> xA
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Kit,
>>>
>>> Part of the problem here is that if you start with the poems you have to
>>> kind of pretend that all the other stuff about 'schools and groups and
>>> influence and power-politics' doesn't exist, as if you were coming to the
>>> things in a state of innocence, which of course we're not. In my
>>> experience
>>> the pretense cannot deal with the pressure - you end up pulling the poems
>>> apart but in a vacuum, without anything to back up your opinions.
>>>
>>> I like your description of the 'swotty sensibility' - that tone that runs
>>> through his work is a real turn-off for me, true. There are plenty of
>>> postmod writers too who have a 'swotty sensibility', but they don't have
>>> that suffocating sense of possessing earthy wisdom, something else that
>>> rubs
>>> me up the wrong way. Your comment about him being offputting for people
>>> under a pensionable age and those over who came out of the 60's is very
>>> funny.
>>>
>>> Happy Easter
>>>
>>> Tim A.
>>>
>>> On 10 Apr 2009, at 10:34, Kit Fryatt wrote:
>>>
>>>> Fair enough, if you're just not interested. And I can see that the
>>>> Establishment-logroll-Festschrifty side of Heaney is a powerful
>>>> disincentive
>>>> to interest. & even when he's not writing in offeeshal mode he can be
>>>> "literary" in a sort of earnest 11+, matriculatory way that is
>>>> offputting
>>>> and alien to a) people under pensionable age b) people over that age who
>>>> to
>>>> some extent bought into the complex of thought and general stuff we
>>>> sometimes vaguely refer to as "the 60s" c) so just about everyone,
>>>> really.
>>>> I think Heaney's fans generally ignore this stuff, but it occurs in
>>>> worrying
>>>> volume from _Field Work_ on. Is this sort of swotty sensibility what
>>>> people
>>>> mean when they call Heaney a Georgian, I wonder? Because the poetry
>>>> isn't;
>>>> but there is something sort of dominie about the intelligence behind the
>>>> worst of it.
>>>>
>>>> But the thing that struck me and dismayed me about the Jacket debate was
>>>> just how little poetry got discussed. It was all schools and groups and
>>>> influence and power-politics. I'm not saying those things don't matter,
>>>> or
>>>> that poetry takes place somehow transcendentally above or apart from
>>>> them,
>>>> but if you want to make a point about a poet, it seems to me the poems
>>>> are
>>>> the best place to start, better even (especially) than interview
>>>> material.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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