Jamie,
Thanks for your understanding of the situation.
Best,
Jeff
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:55:11 +0100, Jamie McKendrick
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Jeff,
> Thanks for that.
>These objections to my line of argument are clear ones, and I'll take
note
>of them if I have more to say in relation to this argument.
>
>It's true that I've objected to your characterization of 200 years of
>British poetry quite frequently, but if you were to look over my
messages I
>think you'd also realize I've been responding to many other things in
the
>flow of the conversation, including a fair amount about Wordsworth
(your
>main topic) and about French and Modernist poetry.
>
> Once again, I can assure you I sympathize with your view that
certain
>areas of closely reasoned criticism are better suited to theses and
articles
>than to list discussions.
>
>Best wishes,
>Jamie
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jeffrey Side" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 5:31 PM
>Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since
Wordsworth?"
>
>
>Jamie,
>
>I apologise for any offence I have caused you in my posts. I am sure
>that when I look back at your posts I will see that their tone is not as
I
>had supposed.
>
>Part of my irritation was because I felt your line of argumentation was
>trying to draw me into a debate about the last sentence of my blog
>alone, rather than into one addressing the main contention of my blog,
>which related to the US and French contribution to modernism, and
>which is more easily defendable in a forum such as this, as opposed to
>the difficulties of mounting a defence for the last sentence of my blog
>in such a forum.
>
>This is why I refrained from doing so in the absence of my thesis
>chapters being read. I am sure you will see if you look again at this
>discussion, that I had more run-ins with you than with others who only
>addressed the main contention of my blog. It was your relentlessness
>(as I saw it) in insisting that the debate not focus on this that caused
>me some pique, and prompted me to say you were quibbling and
>muddying the waters etc.
>
>Also, I was slightly annoyed by what I perceived to be your dismissal
of
>a need to read my chapters in order to refute their content,
>encouraging, instead, a quick-fire forum-based debate that would put
>me at some disadvantage, given the complexity of the argument and
its
>reliance on detailed “evidence” presented within those chapters. As I
>said to Philip, who questioned why I was adamant that my chapters be
>read before I could discuss them: ‘in my thesis I sometimes take
>several pages of heavily referenced material to argue a single point
>about a few lines of poetry. It would be impossible to do that here’.
>
>Best,
>
>Jeff
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