Hi Robert - been a while.......

And oh yes, of course you're right. once again we have positive and  
negative versions of the same process. When anyone starts writing they  
are following models and templates - they have to when starting out -  
I thought of saying that in my post but didn't want to confuse the  
issue - and of course it does exactly that, confuse the issue. Some of  
the best poetry is written within movements, coteries and groups,  
where shared enthusiasms and objectives spur each other on -  and  
competitiveness of course - it gives poets that desire to be original  
in how they move on from immediate influences etc. So yes, I can only  
agree with you, especially about the examples you give. What irks me,  
and this happens time and time again in bourgeois notions of poetry  
(showing my age here with this terminology, ha!), is when the models  
and templates are not recognised as such, but are looked on as being  
direct doors from the writer's consciousness - the way the artificial  
is treated as though it was natural - we know this stuff.......

So I can also see how my statement about theory coming after the fact  
is problematic. I was trying to refer to my own experience of these  
things - by the time I got to a stage where I could understand (to a  
degree) the kind of structuralist and post structuralist theory that  
could shed light on what I was doing, I had been doing it for quite a  
while. But I know there are some people who have not operated like  
that, those for whom there is a much more direct link between theory  
and practice - and sometimes that link is just too sudden, too  
obvious. (I admit this would be very difficult to back up - it would  
need names.)

Of course it is a dialectic, as you say, or it should be. Sometimes I  
forget how much I was initially influenced by models and templates  
from the French avant garde, and yes, their theory too.

Where does that leave us then, after confusing the issue? I can only  
repeat myself at this point - for me the problem is not about the  
dominance of theory (not a perception of mine but a perception of  
many, including Mr Fieled) but about the contexts, as regards power  
structures and fashions, in which theory is dished out.

Cheers

Tim Allen

On 30 Aug 2010, at 15:03, Hampson, R wrote:

> Tim,
>
> I was interested in your comments below. What happens, for example,  
> if you play your second paragraph against, say the practice of Keats  
> - reading Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dante for models; inter- 
> acting with the work of Leigh Hunt, who is one of his earlier  
> publishers - isn't this fitting poems into models, templates, family  
> resemblances - or, at least, developing his own work through  
> engagements with these earlier models? Isn't some of the early work  
> 'skewed' by wanting it to be accepted by Hunt? And aren't Keats's  
> letters frequently involved in theorising his practice and  
> theorising for future practice - developing a poetics?
>
> I wondered also about your statement that, for you, theory and  
> poetics always come after the fact. Isn't the theorising of one fact  
> the context for the next fact ... even if the next fact then  
> requires the theorising to be reconsidered. In short, i am wondering  
> whether the relationship between theorising and practice isn't  
> rather a dialectic.
>
>
> Robert
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: British & Irish poets on behalf of Tim Allen
> Sent: Sun 29/08/2010 10:34
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "The Conspiracy Against Poems" by Adam Fieled at The  
> Argotist Online
>
>
>
> Yes Mark, I was slightly surprised by your knee-jerk response to the
> subject, knowing from past posts that you actually have delved into
> similar areas of critique, and have agreed with me on issues connected
> with the negative influence of academia and institutional careerism on
> modern poetry. But yes, I agree that in the article Fieled appears to
> be lumping all of it in together and is conflating, without question,
> 'postmodernism' with 'experimental' etc - one of the reasons why it
> makes it difficult to talk about without, as I said, going around the
> sides.
>
> I don't think the people who write the stuff he is thinking of do it
> in the way he is thinking of (that sounds awful, pass), in other words
> I don't think people write consciously to fit their poems into
> theories - they write to fit the poems into models, templates, family
> resemblances. They write to please and to conform. They do this
> because of skewed contexts, contexts in which writing processes and
> habits are channeled in certain directions by needs other than the
> desire to create poetry for its own sake. I don't mean to make any
> retro case for a pure or raw naturalized poetry, because such a thing
> is very rare anyway, but I would make the case for an 'honest' poetry.
>
> For me theory and poetics has always come after the fact, and it is in
> 'after the fact' I have always found them to be illuminating. I just
> cannot imagine it being the other way around - visions of a sterile
> brittle poetry come to mind. Yes, of course then, the being aware of
> poetic theories, influences what gets written next, and in what way;
> no escape from that, but that is not the same thing as writing to
> conform to the expectations of a theory. Processional rules are
> something else, but again, I have a suspicion that this is something
> else Fieled associates negatively with 'postmodernism'.
>
> Ironically too, and in opposition to what the article says, most of
> the best Language poetry was written in the early years when the same
> poets were so hotly debating theory etc.... Mmmmmm. In some cases the
> two things were so entwined they were almost impossible to separate -
> the birth of postmodern reflexivity etc. But it went wrong, not
> because of the poetics, but because of the contexts those poetics were
> later placed in, in power bases and academia etc.
>
> I suppose I should be talking to Adam Fieled about this.
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim A.
>
>
> On 29 Aug 2010, at 03:43, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>> If I'm mistaken I apologize. But it's how I read the essay. I'm
>> absolutely with him when he objects to poetry that comes out of
>> theory rather than the other way around, and I've made myself
>> unpopular in a lot of circles by saying do, and going beyond that to
>> criticize the whole creative writing academic enterprise. But note
>> that he repeatedly refers to "postmodernism" as if there were one
>> kind only. It's his straw man and his bete noir. He's not saying
>> that there are some versions of experimenatalism (synonymoous with
>> postmodernism in his lexicon) that go too far, he's saying they all
>> do.