I think as with anyone it all forms a mind.
I'm profoundly interested in human behavior and in the transmission
of culture (small c). That there has been a separate child culture in
most places and most times, transmitted from child to child and
largely forgotten by those same children as adults, is pretty
amazing. In the case of the Opies' studies, it was especially
interesting to me how much of what had been a British urban
children's culture made its way into my mostly Eastern European and
Italian neighborhood.
I'm one chapter away from finishing the London. Earlier today on the
subway I almost burst into tears while reading it. What he describes
in 1902 was pretty much the state of things from the beginning of the
eighteenth century until reforms early in the twentieth century and
finally the Labour govt of 1944-48. There should be an altar to
Clement Attlee on every streetcorner in Britain. It was also true of
New York in the same period, the New York my family migrated to. And
it remains the state of much of the world's population, including the
homeless sleeping on the streets of New York.
How can these awarenesses not have an effect on one's writing?
At 04:16 PM 3/31/2010, you wrote:
>People of the Abyss - yes!
>give us a report on yr reading, Mark.
>That and John Barleycorn stay in my mind and call me one day to reread.
>
>Max
>
>As for the Left Forum, I presume you haven't been attending it.
>
>And where did the Opies' books lead you...?
>
>(None of which is strictly poetryetc stuff, but...)
>
>Quoting Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > If by choice you mean somehow piques your interest, sure. Nobody
> > forces me to open a given book. But it's not just poetry in the
> > curriculum. For instance, I'm reading an early book of Jack London's,
> > The People of the Abyss, which I'd never heard of, because Trevor
> > Joyce is going out with a sociologist who was presenting at The Left
> > Forum and we arranged to meet in the book section there, where it
> > caught my eye. Or the Opies' wonderful series of books on the
> > folklore of childhood, which were lying around the house of a
> > folklorist friend of mine who said "worth reading." etc. Out of all
> > of which one improvises a world thus far.
> >
> > This is very different from reading within a specialization and
> > forming one's poetic therefrom.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > At 11:33 AM 3/31/2010, you wrote:
> > >But for the writer, Mark, 'accidental on purpose'?
> > >
> > >I mean, along the way, many of those 'serendipitous readings' come
> > >about by choice. I found a copy of Olson's The Maximus Poems (Jargon
> > >24) in a small bookstore in Halifax, say, & the dedication to 'the
> > >figure of outside' led me to Creeley? Etc? Which is partly true,
> > >although, of course, I & my writing friends had already 'found' The
> > >New American Poetry, but that lucky 'find' was a kind of choice, it
> > >rather than some of the other anthologies around at the time, which
> > >didnt offer the same important goods.
> > >
> > >Doug
> > >On 31-Mar-10, at 8:16 AM, Mark Weiss wrote:
> > >
> > >>Armand Schwerner called it the "accidental curriculum."
> > >
> > >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
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
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
|