I have not stated that either Lowell or Plath were slovenly. Practitioners
of the style they launched on an unsuspecting world, the confessional poem,
was entirely self-indulgent and, thereby, often slovenly as the only
aesthetics was to let it all hang out. I'm not that well versed (pun
intended) on British poetry so I can't make any value judgments except to
say in response to your seemingly disparaging remarks towards the free
versers that a great deal of great poetry has been created in that 'form'.
They have been other definitions of poetry and different ways of
differentiating poetry from prose but, for me, prose uses words while poetry
plays with them and their sounds.
John Herbert Cunningham
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Tim Allen
Sent: April-14-10 10:38 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: review of the new Les Murray
OK, but why slovenly. Neither Plath or Lowell were slovenly.
My question to Uche was rhetorical really. I have experienced the same
thing time and time again but when I was in America I experienced it
more - and the same thing can be found still in written form in many
American mags that see themselves as remaining outside the big city
based literary establishments and academies. As I said in a post
earlier today, this free verse thing - which became almost synonymous
with the ramblings and complaints of a 1st person voice - lasted
longer in the States than it did in the UK. This gets complicated, but
in the UK what we might call the bulk of the lower divisions of
mainstream poetry turned some while back to a realistic poetry based
on models of transparency - a poetry far less reliant on the real
utterances of voice than the Americans, but far more indebted to an
idea of artificial condensation in the form of a 'voice'.
I don't know which is worse.
Tim A.
On 14 Apr 2010, at 16:13, John Herbert Cunningham wrote:
> I think a great deal of the 'slovenly self-indulgence' is a legacy
> of Robert
> Lowell and Sylvia Plath and confessional poetry.
> John Herbert Cunningham
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Tim Allen
> Sent: April-14-10 9:47 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: review of the new Les Murray
>
> On 14 Apr 2010, at 15:27, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
>
>> Of course I've heard of a lot of stories of political ferment in
>> the 60s, but it's still very hard for me to conceptualize how it
>> might have
>> translated so directly to prosody/anti-prosody.
>
> I don't think translate is the right word - it was all of one. It
> wasn't a simple matter of feeling rebellious and then going to write
> some rebellious poetry, for example, it was more a case of writing
> rebellious poetry and then realising what you had done and being able
> to relate it to other activities of the self and those around you.
> These things take their forms in actuals - music, art, fashion, sexual
> activity etc.
>
> I was only in my mid teens in the mid 60's. i've had a lot of time to
> think about it since.
>
>> Having been born well after
>> the 60s that period is legend to me, and I guess I'm learning that
>> some of
>> the reality was even more demented than the legend.
>
> Legends are superficial, visual, - journalistic comment takes these
> specular manifestations and deliberately mistakes them for what was
> going on, to avoid dealing with the substance.
>
>>
>> Where I first got very heavily involved in poetry, in Nigeria, the
>> dominant
>> dispute (even then becoming dated) was over Négritude, and how to
>> reconcile
>> colonial with traditional "modes of thought", which was in those
>> cases as
>> much a nonce term as ever.
>
> nonce term? ???????
>>
>>
>> Right now I'm in Boulder, Colorado, where apparently the Beat poets
>> laid
>> down their bequests. It is certainly a hippie town, and that is
>> part of its
>> charm, and from what I've been able to stomach of the local poetry
>> culture,
>> I wonder about the correlation between the overall town culture, and
>> the
>> slovenly self-indulgence I suffer through at so many poetry
>> readings, but
>> I'm not inclined to push any such correlation very far, as you can
>> tell.
>
> Now this is interesting Uche. The 'slovenly self-indulgence' you have
> to suffer at so many poetry readings. I know exactly what you are
> talking about and the phrase you use is perfect. So what is this
> 'slovenly self-indulgence'?
>
> Any answers out there?
>
> Tim A.
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