Jamie, technique in itself does not make a poem. It is the combination
of that with imagery, allusion, metonymy, a certain mystery, etc. The
Armitage poem has little of the latter aspects. That’s why I am
criticising it. I find the poem’s sentiments and execution of them one-
dimensional.
If you want to hear a better rendition of a similar theme then listen to
Clifford T. Ward’s song“Home Thoughts from Abroad” which does it
better, in simple, non-avant-garde language (which should please you).
Here is a link to it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9G0ENZJLI8
On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:49:50 -0000, Jamie McKendrick
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Jeff,
> I'm not sure why what I've written should seem " mostly technical
points"
>or exactly what it would mean if they were.
> Surely technique, in which sound-effects play a large part, should be
>relevant in describing why it's a poem rather than "perhaps, good prose
>fiction" as you call it. I've also mentioned a complex of imagery that is
>tightly worked, and to spell out a bit more what I called the vaporous
>elements in the poem, the 'st' sounds which begin with "missed"
(homophone
>'mist'), which leads to 'steam' in the next line, then is heard again in
>just, dust, lipstick, lost, upstairs, understanding, lipstick, stowed...just
>to take one thread of sound through the poem (and there are others) -
>suggest to me that Armitage has, even at this very early stage of his
>writing an acoustic sense that can be a central part of the way we
hear a
>whole poem - rather than a mere technical point, or even as "the
measure of
>poetic accomplishment" which you bring out of nowhere. What I'd
argue is
>that these are effects, including the rhythmic ones which (I agree with
>Robin) are a marked and positive aspect of Armitage's work, that
make a flat
>paraphrase an utterly insufficient means of describing (and
intentionally
>negating) the poem. This poem or any other. It seems to me that your
>obsessive concentration on 'empirical markers' means you ignore a
whole
>range of other features integral to a poem.
> (Your Jacket article makes it clear, as I'd guessed all along, that your
>zealotry on behalf of this term "empirical" is deeply indebted to
Easthope,
>in particular to his dim and philistine reading of Edward Thomas's
>'Aldlestrop'. But perhaps we oughtn't to get into that again.)
>Jamie
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jeffrey Side" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 12:23 PM
>Subject: Re: Response to my criticisms of Armitage's poetry
>
>
>Jamie, these seem mostly technical points you like about the poem.
But
>the poem is still like a thousand other poems expressing similar
>sentiments. It is, perhaps, good prose fiction writing; the sort that is
>esteemed in some creative writing classes, but is this to be considered
>the measure of poetic accomplishment?
>
>
>On Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:55:09 -0000, Jamie McKendrick
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>It's a poem written when Armitage, I'm guessing, was 25, or younger.
>There's less fizz and word play in it than in many of the poems of his
>first book: it's quieter and maybe not that ambitious. That said, I like
>the vaporous sweep of the poem from its first image of
>what's "missed...by moments" , the steam of the "just-boiled kettle"
to
>the final images of "the air, still hung with spores of your hairspray;/
>body-heat stowed in the crumpled duvet."
>> The lines:
>> "and in this space we have worked and paid for
>> we have found ourselves and lost each other"
>>stand out for me, and I think will have "cost" something to write.
>> Its handling of the pentametre looks to me more than "adequately"
>skillful, as does the subtle "st" and "sp" sound-patterning that runs
>through it
>>
>> It's easy to make a crushing equivalence between the domestic
and
>the bourgeois, but most of us live our lives in domestic settings and
>interiors, and I see no dishonour in their inclusion in a poem. As both a
>love poem and a poem about a relationship in crisis, I think it has a
>kind of tenderness and integrity.
>> (I doubt, though, that this account will tear Robin away from his
>admiration for David's post and the "specific points" he has somewhere
>found in his and Mark's dismissals.)
>>Jamie
>>
>>----- Original Message -----
>> From: Mark Weiss
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:11 PM
>> Subject: Re: Response to my criticisms of Armitage's poetry
>>
>>
>> And aren't paid for.
>>
>> At 06:02 PM 2/16/2010, you wrote:
>>
>> "How's that?"
>> I'd say it did quite well on the nastiness scale.
>> Though it doesn't distinguish itself from 20,000 other bits
>of "criticism" posted every day that cost nothing to write.
>> Jamie
>>
>>
>> From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Tuesday, 16 February, 2010 22:51:43
>> Subject: Re: Response to my criticisms of Armitage's poetry
>>
>> Shall I try? Probably 20,000 poems a day are posted or published.
>Most are skillful and nothing more. Most take no risks whatsoever.
Most
>want to be liked. Most are crashingly boring. This is one of those.
>>
>> The problem is, this sort of waste makes it harder to fight through
>to find the good stuff, the stuff that's cost the poet something to write
>and that will cost the reader something to read.
>>
>> How's that?
>>
>> At 05:46 PM 2/16/2010, you wrote:
>>
>> >It's adequate. Could I be nastier?
>> I dunno, Mark. Could you be?
>> Jamie
>>
>> Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry
>(University of California Press).
>> http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
>>
>> "Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's Random House
>Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry has a bilingual anthology so
>effectively broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside the United
>States and also created a superb collection of foreign poems in
English.
>There is nothing else like it." John Palattella in The
>Nation
>> Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry
>(University of California Press).
>> http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
>>
>> "Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's Random House
Book
>of Twentieth Century French Poetry has a bilingual anthology so
>effectively broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside the United
>States and also created a superb collection of foreign poems in
English.
>There is nothing else like it." John Palattella in The
>Nation
>>
>>
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