Peter,
I rarely disagree with what you say, it is more often than not a
disagreement with the tired tone that seems to be saying 'stop talking
nonsense you silly children'. But here I do actually disagree,
properly. I do think that 'an academic obsession with genealogies' has
something to do with how some poetry gets written, but I think we have
had a similar argument before - I know you have quite a developed
notion of the poet as an individual. I also think you overestimate the
influence of Shakespeare and underplay the influence of the
symbolistes, if I have understood you correctly, on C20 American.
Can't be bothered backing it up though, so I suppose we had better
drop it. A bit of an academic point too, even in relation to the thread.
I do understand your objections to some of this stuff, e.g. the
shunting of names and influences, but it is what polemical critics do
and, as I tried to say somewhere back in the thread, it is often a
case of trying to unravel things which have become accepted as the
norm - 'We are British so we don't write like that, we write like
this" etc. It is only recently that I have begun to appreciate how
much the poets of the 40's, for example, have been written out of the
picture. I knew it as a fact before, but not a reality, if you know
what I mean.
And I like Hardy too, and not just because I'm a Dorset boy. And when
I was about 22 I read loads of Wordsworth in a very positive frame of
mind.
I'm sticking my neck out here, I know, but I don't think you have paid
enough attention to the material you don't like, and what is said
about it by its champions. There is no reason why you should, of
course, but however much you try to keep apart from it there is always
a time when, in debates like this, it is going to become an issue.
There IS an issue here, connecting Wordsworth with certain strands of
the modern Brit mainstream, and this has nothing to do with what we,
as individual poets and readers, get personally from Wordsworth, or
anybody else. Blast - I think I've just contradicted myself. Time for
tea.
Cheers
Tim A.
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