Alison,
  Sorry - I see it was Motion's and Morrison's anthology that made you think 
there wasn't any British poetry after 1945. My confusion was that there was 
nothing in it from before the late 1960s.
   I have the feeling Jeff's intention was also, in his own way, to erase 
the poets represented in that anthology.

>"Wouldn't it make more sense to compare Heaney to Billy Collins? Heaney 
>might in fact come off better."
(Might?)

I see what you mean about comparing "like with like" but, even though 
they're usually crude and partisan, if comparisons are to be made, I'd 
almost prefer them to have free rein across all frontiers.
 (There's now another Heaney article in Jacket, by Rob Stanton, which 
contrasts one of Heaney's poems with one of Prynne's. The dice are loaded: 
it's very unilluminating on Heaney, but says some interesting things about 
Prynne - and at least the attempt doesn't try to pretend one of them isn't 
even a poet.)
Your revulsion at these "reductive terms" (mainstream and avant garde) which 
I share - just having to use them in this discussion has filled me with 
self-loathing - might also argue against re-inforcing the walls between 
them.

Maybe it's a mercy Blake's been left out so far.
I haven't noticed Blake's influence on much modernism, but he and Shelley 
were surely far more of an influence on Yeats than Wordsworth ever was.

Best wishes,
Jamie





  ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 12:26 AM
Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since Wordsworth?"


Yes,Tim. It's pretty obvious there is a conservative tendency (I
mentioned the Penguin anthology, which Jeffrey also refers to, and
which illustrates that baldly). I thought UK poetry was pretty
uninteresting for years until the wonders of the internet exposed me
to the "alternative" and I realised there was a lot of inspiring and
rich stuff going on underneath the skin. Jamie, to be clear, by
"conservative" I mean aesthetically conservative - it's obvious that
matching poetic innovation with a place on the political spectrum is
problematic, look at Pound - even David Jones flirted with Mosley's
ideas.

What bothers me about Jeffrey's argument is that he is accepting the
same map as that Penguin anthology. So he's just as culpable of
erasing people like Maggie O'Sullivan as Motion. If you're going to
compare like with like, probably US and UK mainstream poetry look
pretty similar, although with regional differences. God knows I've
read a lot of seemingly identical US poems where the Poet reflects on
landscape in contemplative poeticalness etc etc etc (featuring lots of
"description").  But taking the US avant garde and comparing it with
the UK mainstream (and boy do I hate these reductive terms, just take
it as useful shorthand) is surely begging a lot of questions. Wouldn't
it make more sense to compare Heaney to Billy Collins? Heaney might in
fact come off better.

Jeffrey, my point about defamiliarisation is that it's been a
characterisation of several innovative poetics that stem from sources
other than Wordsworth. You seem to be hunting down WW's genetic
markers as if he's some kind of disease, leaping (aha!) on any symptom
of (as far as I can see, anyway) relation to a reality as a Sign of WW
deformity.  Whether or not you like Language poetry (or Brecht, for
that matter) is beside the point. And yes, here at the end of the
world people were reading Wordsworth. And even writing to Mallarme,
via the post, which was by ship in those days. Thank god for modern
communications, eh?

And blaming Wordsworth for Everything is just bizarre. I find it weird
indeed that Blake (according to Joris/Rothenberg anyway the Big Daddy
of modernism) isn't mentioned in this discussion at all.

xA

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Tim Allen<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Again, have to agree with Jeff, he's not aggrandising US poetry.
>
> So Alison, this 'conservative ascendancy', you agree then, it is an
> ascendancy.
>
> One of the weird things about this conservative ascendancy (and this is
> something I've talked about before) is the way it isn't seen to be
> conservative at all by people who run away from any hint of conservatism 
> in
> the other art forms. Poets that many of us see as dull, mediocre,
> reactionary, predictable, one-dimensional etc are lauded by people who 
> love
> radical and experimental tv, films, novels, music etc. A lot of this is 
> down
> to relativism and lack of access of course, but the phenomenon goes deeper
> than that. But for now let's stay on the surface, lets' make a sweeping
> statement: the Brits like their rock music and art to be radical but they
> like their poetry to be safe and unproblematic, especially if it gives 
> them
> room to image how thrillingly 'dangerous' it is (Oooo, look what she's
> talking about here - how daring!) or how bravely it deals with problems
> (Oooo, look at the skill with which he confronts this important issue) and
> so on.
>
> Tim A.
>
> On 29 Aug 2009, at 11:26, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>
>> “I do wonder why you're generalising a certain conservative ascendancy
>> in English poetry in order to aggrandise American poetry”
>>
>> I don’t think I’m aggrandising US poetry, more its influence, and that
>> influence is largely a French one.
>



-- 
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Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com