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
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