Michael,
   It's an arid subject, but I don't see the fatal harm in examining some of 
the contradictions.
   And I don't see the suppressed animus you detect in Peter's comments on 
Burnside - he seemed to be seeing an "excellence of a sort" just as you do, 
if not perhaps of the sort that either of you most value.
   I disagree that Ron Silliman makes a better point: he just keeps beating 
the same drum with the vacuous taunt of School of Quietude. Weirdly, for a 
community of poets from whom you'd expect more vigilance, its monotonous 
repetition has earned the slogan a modicum of currency here as in the 
States.
   And I have some doubts that these competitions "ARE objective" and so 
reveal a coherent aesthetic, involving, among other things, "a complex 
system of hoops" - though Peter intriguingly distinguishes one 'mainstream' 
trick of an obfuscatory opening which is then resolved into sweet clarities. 
(Any examples of this?)
   My experience of judging one or two of these competitions suggests a much 
more chaotic experience of opposed aesthetic judgements which for the most 
part can only be guessed at - given the brief time allotted to the 
discussion of a great number of books - and which have to be resolved 
somehow or other with a declared winner (who is therefore "the best"). I can 
see the objection to this description is that the opposed aesthetics are 
opposed only within a very narrow field, but I don't think that nullifies 
what I'm saying.

Jamie


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: beef


I don't know if anyone else thinks this but I've been mainly disappointed 
with Peter's pieces in the Fortnightly Review, except for the one about 
Denise Riley. I think maybe this idea of avant-garde poet addresses the 
civilized non-specialist is full of fatal contradictions.

I want him to say "I loathe John Burnside and everyone who likes him", if 
that's what he thinks. Not do the faint praise and smearing thing, which 
just feels dishonest. Like it's apparent to me that there really is NOTHING 
that peter likes about JB's poetry, and he can't be bothered to challenge 
his own opinion or to understand why JB keeps winning.

And I don't get the cattle analogy. Surely the point about existing poetry 
competitions is that they ARE objective, precisely a matter of sheaths and 
muscle. It isn't difficult to understand what makes a poem a prize-winning 
poem. And this complex system of hoops to be jumped through is indeed 
excellence of a sort.  It is not the excellence of Excavations, true.  (I 
reckon Alstonefield could have gone close. )

This was a missed opportunity. It ought to have been about the way that 
poetry-collection prizes are always awarded to the same publishers. The 
point that Ron Silliman has made, much more persuasively, many many times.

I don't really see why there aren't any competitions specifically intended 
to recognize experimental work, though.  I'd be prepared to swallow quite a 
lot of ideological distaste in return for a wider debate about the kind of 
books I care about.

But I think it's good and a huge thing that poetry isn't dependent on prizes 
and competitions, that's a precious quality.  For logistical reasons arts 
like classical music are completely integrated with competition and 
patronage; that's bound to affect the nature of the art, both for good and 
ill. Poetry is something we can completely reinvent and no-one can stop us 
or even do much to penalize us. (Because, as Jamie says, these "big prizes" 
are really pretty paltry.)