In your case, Mark, my comments don't apply as you have approached
the whole matter seriously. I'm mainly talking about the very
frequently appearing anthologies we have in the UK, which seem to
serve little purpose other than as marketing exercises.
On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:23:58 -0400, Mark Weiss
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I've done two Latin American anthologies. I knew probably a dozen of
>the poets in the first--there were 58 in all--and one (of 55) in the
>latter. I made or consolidated some friendships (and strained a
>few--I left out a bunch of friends), a few of my poems were
>translated and published in Latin America, and I became a very minor
>celebrity in a very few places. None of which benefits ever occurred
>to me before I started.
>
>Anthologies do sell well compared to other poetry books, but the
>labor is overwhelming--the pay per hour is if anything less.
>
>If we want good anthologies we have to take them seriously enough to
>criticize them as intellectual and artistic constructs. Some are of
>course simple exercises of opportunism. Or begin that way. But
>writing off the endeavor on that basis is way too easy. Like it or
>not, anthologies are the usual gateways into unfamiliar territory.
>
>The limitation is that the critic would have to know the field as
>well as the anthologist does. But don't we make the assumption that
>that's the case of every reviewer?
>
>Best,
>
>Mark
>
>At 02:39 PM 3/15/2010, you wrote:
>>Doug, I tend to agree with you. Though, I feel that anthologies are
>>compiled mainly by poet/editors to promote their friends and others
>>who may return the favour one day. Such anthologies, also, have the
>>potential to sell well to libraries and schools, so they are a good
>>investment for the publisher.
>>
>>
>>On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:48:51 -0600, Douglas Barbour
>><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> >R Clarke's response seems fair, as well, though.
>> >
>> >I dont know enough about the politics involved here, but I'm
willing
>> >to believe that there are many (poetic) 'regions' in GB, as there are
>> >in Canada, & certainly in the US, which does not even begin to get
>> >into the estranged poetics in many of those 'places.'
>> >
>> >Could there be an anthology that fairly represented the whole? I
doubt
>> >it.
>> >
>> > From what I can see of Todd's writing, & that review, he tries to
be
>> >eclectic (& I dont mind that, I'm a bit of that myself), & is not that
>> >interested in sussing out rival poetics but merely in arguing what
>> >serves as the most inclusive register of being there, in Britain.
Yes?
>> >
>> >Whatever, I have too much poetry I know about & seek out to read
>> >already (spent the weekend, coming out of a discussion on
facebook,
>> >rereading some major Olson, as well as Guy Davenport's brilliant
essay
>> >on him): now that was getting back into poetry as such.
>> >
>> >Doug
>> >On 15-Mar-10, at 4:20 AM, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>> >
>> >> post-of.html
>> >
>> >Douglas Barbour
>> >[log in to unmask]
>> >
>> >http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>> >
>> >Latest books:
>> >Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>> >http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>> >Wednesdays'
>> >http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-
>>aboveground-press_10.html
>> >
>> > The secret
>> >
>> >which got lost neither hides
>> >nor reveals itself, it shows forth
>> >
>> >tokens.
>> >
>> > Charles Olson
>
>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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