Completely agree Peter. This has been my opinion of Barry and his
reception for quite a while.
Tim A.
On 7 Sep 2010, at 22:06, Peter Riley wrote:
> MacSweeney is not very much lionised compared with some poets, and
> there have always been people who just don't get on with his poetry,
> or with certain phases of it, for it went through a whole cycle of
> self-reinventions. His alcoholism has been promoted by his publisher
> as a selling-point, but he was highly valued in forward-looking
> zones long before he died. His reputation became strong in the north-
> east where he became (and promoted himself as) a local poet/hero/
> victim/martyr/character/phenomenon. I'd agree that a critical re-
> assessment over the entire oeuvre would be a good thing. It's a
> chaotic body of work riddled with all sorts of posing and
> sensationalist excess but there are extended episodes of absolute
> brilliance, especially in the mid-90s (Pearl) mid-80s (Ranter etc)
> and intermittently throughout. There will be a book of essays on
> him which Blodaxe will eventually publish, which might help to sort
> things out a bit.
> Pr
>
>
> On 7 Sep 2010, at 19:56, David Lace wrote:
>
> Try as I have, I just can’t see why he’s lionised so much. Is it
> because his alcoholism and death from it have led to a sort of
> poignancy being projected onto his poetry and giving it a value it
> otherwise wouldn’t have had he lived?
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