A bit of self-promotion at the expense of others. Pity his one poem
in the piece isn't more than an assertion of self-importance.
Which is not to say that there hasn't been a lot of conscious
myth-making. When hasn't that been true of poets?
It never occurred to me, from this side of the Atlantic, to read
Briggflats as authentic anything other than poetry.
I saw Bunting read once. It was a bizarre performance. But what
counts is the work.
Peter Riley's historical corrective, which I've read before, does the
trick--gets beneath the mythologizing, but Peter doesn't find it
necessary to erect his reputation on the corpses of other poets.
Mark
At 01:13 PM 12/20/2009, you wrote:
>"NORTH EAST POETRY: DEBUNKING SOME MYTHS" by Keith Armstrong
>(Discussion of Bunting and other North East poets as overrated)
>
>http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/annexe/north_east_poetry.htm
Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University
of California Press).
Forthcoming in November 2009.
http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
|