Hi Jamie
> 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.
It doesn't affect your point, but for the record I don't think I've read any poems by JB.
> 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.
I think this is unfair. However the terms has been used elsewhere, Ron's "school of quietude" had a lot more behind it than just a vacuous taunt.
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/School%20of%20Quietude
and see, particularly, this defence:
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/i-know-whenever-i-use-phrase-school-of.html
But what I chiefly meant to praise were his careful posts about prizes and laureateships. I'm having trouble tracking them all down, but here's a few:
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/she-was-youngest-winner-ever-of.html
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/w.html
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/kay-ryan-has-been-named-poet-laureate.html
> 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" - ....
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.
Well, "Objective" overstates it perhaps (I was of course trying to make a sharp contrast with Peter's "Subjective"). I am sure judging is often quite a chaotic process, and I don't mean to imply that judges all share an aesthetic. Nevertheless I suppose I think that the structure of the competitions and, perhaps, the structure of reaching committee agreement, tends to favour certain types of poems. I'm inclined to see it as a social pressure more than a shared aesthetic. I've no doubt that, were anyone crazy enough to take up my idea of a poetry prize for experimental work, it would soon be apparent that a new kind of intrinsic prizeworthiness would begin to assert itself in that new field, somewhat transformed of course, but still with a few disquieting resemblances to the kind we're alll familiar with today.
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