Tim,
or should I call you Mr Allen? It seems like I'm not the only one "getting a
little cross now". My own knowledge is far from encyclopaedic, and I'm as
capable of howlers as the next person, but at least I don't try to pretend
they "strengthen my overall position". I don't think I have been "so
antagonistic and sarcastic" - I confess to some sarcasm in my first mail,
but thereafter there's not a trace. I disagreed with a great deal of Jeff's
argument and I gave my reasons for that. 'Interest' is perhaps a hard thing
to define, but if you're going to wheel in a poet like Baudelaire (or
Rimbaud and Verlaine) as part of a larger argument that attacks a group of
poets, or rather two centuries of British poetry, I think the least you can
do is to familiarize yourself with the basic facts. I think the "height of
arrogance" would attach itself far more to that than anything I've written.
My annoyance however was not with the mistake, but with the way of shrugging
it off; as well, I admit, with the way Jeff has replied to me personally.
Unless you want to escalate the antagonisms, and give what you call "our
overseas buddies" an even worse view of British poetry, I think it would be
worth trying to discuss, without hostility, some of the points you raise in
the second part of your mail.
In the meantime, your next mail has arrived:
>You might not like it jamie, but for as long as the mediocre and dull are
>held up by the broadsheet hacks and current Poetry Review critics as being
>the best of British while treating the names on cris's list as some kind
>of eccentric anomaly, a bit exotic and interesting but not really 'it',
>then names like Whitman and Dickinson are going to be shunted around thus.
>The antipathetic relationship between mainstream British poetry and the
>modernisms and post-modernisms is a fact, so stop trying to pretend
>otherwise. This antagonism seems to be something particular to the English
>speaking world, or far more pronounced and stubborn at least. Why?
Maybe we could start there. I can't promise to come up with any satisfactory
answers but I'll try to be honest. First, though, I'm only too aware of the
"antipathetic relationship between (what you call) mainstream ...and the
modernisms and post-modernisms". So why ask me to"stop trying to pretend
otherwise"? Has anything I've written lead you to suppose this?
I rather doubt that peace is going to break out between these opposed
camps but there could be a way of avoiding senseless and futile antagonism.
In my responses to Jeff's blog I mentioned a number of C19th poets (from
Whitman and Dickinson to Hopkins) - poets I've read, and like countless
others, admired since I was at school. My interest in other poets I've
mentioned (such as Bunting) dates from a few years later. What I fail to see
is why this history of poetry should be fenced in as the preserve of only
one group of poets - if I've understood your point about "names like Whitman
and Dickinson are going to be shunted around thus". Perhaps I haven't
(understood it).
I didn't take up Chris's invitation to discuss C20th British poets (nor
did anyone else) but I'm quite willing to. I suspect my tastes will diverge
quite radically from your own and from his - though I can see a number of
overlaps. There may even be a number of elements of 'mainstream' practice
that bore me quite as much as they bore you.
Still, since no-one else is going to do it, let me make an attempt to
suggest why I think Jeff's idea of the maintream's irredeemable
"parochialism" is seriously misinformed or prejudiced. I believe you
yourself, somewhere recently, have depicted the mainstream's shrunken
perspectives regarding foreign language poetry in a similar light. Correct
me if I'm wrong.
My impression is that there are a number of figures you would associate
with that grouping who have done a great deal more than many of their
detractors have to counter and challenge any British parochialism – just a
small list to start (let’s keep it to the last 20 years but mainly the more
recent) – sorry, no accents here - with Fleur Adcock’s translations of the
Romanian poet Grete Tartler, George Szirtes’s of the Hungarian poets Zsusa
Rakovsky and Otto Orban and many others, Clive Wilmer’s of Miklos Radnoti,
David Harsent’s of the Sarajevan Goran Simic, Michael Hoffmann’s Durs
Grunbein [and, forthcoming, Gunter Eich], Stephen Rohmer’s anthology
translations of many French poets including Valerie Rouzeau, a volume of
whose has now been translated by Susan Wicks for Bloodaxe. Robertson’s
Transtromer. Paterson’s Antonio Machado and Rilke. Sasha Dugdale’s Elena
Schvarts. Tom Paulin’s Road to Inver (which ranges from Apollinaire and
Pessoa to Walid Khazendar). This list is just (save two) what I have on the
bookshelf behind me and there are undoubtedly a large number of others to
add to it. On the organizational level, Sarah Maguire founded and directs
the British Translation Centre which has focused on translations from South
America, Mexico, India, North Africa and the Middle East by a number of
poets commissioned to work with language experts; David Constantine is one
of the editors of Modern Poetry in Translation. I could go on. The picture
for poetry in translation is often dispiriting - there is far more that
should be done. It has to struggle with a general disinterest. Commercially
(unless it's a well known dead poet) there's not likely to be any financial
reward for the press that undertakes it, and even less for the translator.
This is getting too long. So just briefly on what you call 'Jeff's
Wordsworth thing'
>Wordsworth, with regard to the turn he gave to English romanticism, might
>possibly have some relation to this thing.
>i realise that 'this thing' has never been a problem for you, lucky man!
If I've understood you, you're right Wordsworth has never been a problem for
me, and in this respect I welcome and endorse the clarity of Peter Riley's
post which I've just read. I think it helps not to turn poets into weapons.
But perhaps you mean I've been 'lucky' to avoid a proper investigation of
my own writing practices by my affiliation with the opposed camp?
I see that the implied question behind both your mails - why is one practice
given practically all of the oxygen of media publicity and the other so
little - has not really been broached. But what I've written may at least
help you not to confuse me "with some whole other person" as Gene Hackman
once put it.
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Allen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since Wordsworth?"
OK OK, getting a little cross now Mr McKendrick. Jeff DID concede the
chronological mistake, more than once. And I think it is the height of
arrogance to say that the mistake showed he has "no interest in or
knowledge of Baudelaire", particularly 'interest'. Why do you say
that? And why are you so antagonistic and sarcastic? We don't all have
encyclopedic knowledge of stuff we are interested in. I have some huge
areas of interest and knowledge but I know that if I were to have to
answer questions on them, particularly on such things as names, dates
and chronologies, I would be very unsure. It very rarely invalidates
the larger issues, unless the detail is an actual lynchpin of the
argument, which in this case it wasn't, it was just a tentative step.
In this particular instance, for example, I knew that Baudelaire had
translated Poe, but in my mind Poe was always a bit later in the
century than he really was, and I could have easily made the same
mistake as Jeff. Not a big deal. It might detract from evidence for
the notion behind his original question, but it doesn't invalidate it.
I think part of the reaction to Jeff's Wordsworth thing from our
overseas buddies is down to the usual lack of experience of the
peculiarities of the British scene (but I certainly acknowledge what
Mark said about how the noise made on the net can skew our picture of
others' problems) . I understand the importance of the Wordsworth
question, whatever the answer to it is, because of the on-going
problem that certain types of poetry have in this country in making
their case against the literary establishment's on-going support of
poetries to which at times the adjectives 'empirical' and 'parochial',
and lots of others of course, have been applied, at the expense of the
names on cris's list etc.. most of whom are a complete irrelevancy to
the average poetry reader in this country, even now. Jeff, like me,
appears to want answers, and those answers are not just to be found in
the present. Wordsworth, with regard to the turn he gave to English
romanticism, might possibly have some relation to this thing.
i realise that 'this thing' has never been a problem for you, lucky man!
Regards
Tim Allen
On 26 Aug 2009, at 11:28, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
> Jeff,
> You posted the list a blog piece about the origins and development of
> Modernism. I pointed out a factual error and then went on to say, with
> numerous examples, why I thought the whole thesis was skewed. I'm afraid
> this can happen when you publish your opinions in places where people can
> comment.
> Instead of 'conceding' that mistake about Poe (a mistake that shows you
> really have no interest in or knowledge of Baudelaire) and then claiming
> it merely strengthens your initial point, it might have been better just
> to apologize for talking absolute bollocks.
> As regards the examples I gave to try and make the discussion more
> grounded - you haven't given any yourself of either nineteenth- or
> twentieth-century "empiricism and parochialness". You merely re- iterate
> vacuous terms like "British mainstream poetry" as if that will justify
> everything.
> Jamie
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeffrey Side" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:00 AM
> Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since Wordsworth?"
>
>
> “It was my first mail that first drew attention to the anomaly by
> complementing Poe on his clairvoyance, and you hadn't 'conceded' this
> point when I wrote my second mail.”
>
> Perhaps not, but I assumed your ubiquitous sarcasm in it not worth
> responding to.
>
>
> “I'm afraid that like your claim about Poe, your judgements concerning
> Wordsworth, Shelley etc. just won't stay afloat. It's not "cherry-
> picking"
> to quote a few lines from Wordsworth. As another example, the whole
> Immortality Ode (in which he posits an innate knowledge and a
> prenatal existence) would refute your idea of his 'empiricism' as would
> the animism of the Lucy poems”
>
> True the philosophical “argument” in the content of these poems posit
> an extra-empirically based faculty and a belief in a non-material
> universe, but the execution of these ideas are (apart from some of the
> Lucy poems) delivered in a poetical language that us empirically sound,
> in that it is didactic, as it has to be to convey his message. Of course,
> not all instances of his poetry will be executed in this manner, but that
> is to be expected, as he didn’t always live up to his own poetic council.
> A careful examination of his letters, his Preface to Lyrical ballads and
> his sister’s journals will produce copious examples of his advocating the
> use of descriptive language for poetic composition.
>
>
> “Sincerely, I can't see why you believe "I keep trying to use
> misdirection." No-one would think of denying the importance of US
> poets in High Modernism. It hardly needs to be re-asserted. But in
> response to this sweeping final paragraph, I merely glanced at the first
> 100 years - and could have sited a handful of others such as Arthur
> Clough, Christina Rossetti and Thomas Beddoes to make the same
> point. And that's before starting on the vexed issue of the twentieth
> century. But maybe you're not really interested in Baudelaire, Poe,
> Wordsworth etc. but only want to use them to glue together some
> putative tradition that explains "the appalling state of the mainstream".
> You can really get much more parochial than that.”
>
>
> I don’t see anything controversial in the paragraph you quote from me.
> It is true that Wordwsworth has influenced poetry for the past 200
> years, that’s why he is important, even his admirers believe this. Of
> course, individual poet’s works may not always crudely display this
> influence, but it is there—how can it not be, given his importance. I
> admit that the poets you mention are problematic, again, this is to be
> expected. My point is that his influence still pertains to this day,
> especially in British mainstream poetry. This is quite a modest
> assertion, I think.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:38:32 +0100, Jamie Mckendrick
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Jeff,
>> I'm perplexed by your response to my mails:
>>
>>> Jamie, I wish you would be less tenacious in your quibbling on this
>>> matter. Here is my response:
>>
>>>> “Apart from the back-to-front chronology of Poe and Baudelaire,
> 200
>>>> years of British (and Irish) poetry swept aside with those two
>>>> words "empiricist" and "parochial"?”
>>
>>> I have conceded this point in my response to those who earlier
> pointed
>>> it out. It seems rather than the French having influenced Poe he
>>> nfluenced them. Poe not being British, my main point stands: British
>>> poets had little to do with the development of High Modernism.
>>
>> It was my first mail that first drew attention to the anomaly by
> complementing
>> Poe on his clairvoyance, and you hadn't 'conceded' this point when I
> wrote my
>> second mail.
>> I'm afraid that like your claim about Poe, your judgements
> concerning
>> Wordsworth, Shelley etc. just won't stay afloat. It's not "cherry-
> picking" to
>> quote a few lines from Wordsworth. As another example, the whole
>> Immortality Ode (in which he posits an innate knowledge and a
> prenatal
>> existence) would refute your idea of his 'empiricism' as would the
> animism of
>> the Lucy poems.
>> You originally argued that unlike US poetry:
>>
>>> British poetry, conversely, has continued in the tradition of
> Wordsworthian
>>> empiricism and parochialism, largely antagonistic to any use of a
> poetic
>>> language that basis its affects on aspects other than descriptiveness
> and
>>> anecdotal confession. How long this will remain the case is
> uncertain. It has
>>> certainly been the case for over 200 years.
>>
>> Sincerely, I can't see why you believe "I keep trying to use
> misdirection." No-
>> one would think of denying the importance of US poets in High
> Modernism. It
>> hardly needs to be re-asserted. But in response to this sweeping final
>> paragraph, I merely glanced at the first 100 years - and could have
> sited a
>> handful of others such as Arthur Clough, Christina Rossetti and
> Thomas
>> Beddoes to make the same point. And that's before starting on the
> vexed
>> issue of the twentieth century. But maybe you're not really interested
> in
>> Baudelaire, Poe, Wordsworth etc. but only want to use them to glue
> together
>> some putative tradition that explains "the appalling state of the
> mainstream".
>> You can really get much more parochial than that.
>> Respectfully,
>> Jamie
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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