We are rather old to be doing this, all of us. I have noticed that  
young British poets these days are increasingly willing to site  
themselves neither here nor there, not to join in any hostilities, but  
to view the entire ensemble as a possible field of action. The reason  
we cannot do this is that however much we are willing to tolerate,  
however liberal, we are still talking about the same dozen poets we  
have always talked about and what they chose to write in itself  
divides us. What Prynne and Heaney wrote in itself proposes inimical  
and absolutely unreconcilable responses. We can pride ourselves in  
"enjoying" both but the antagonism is there, in the poetry and in the  
beliefs. There are a lot more poets even of the same generation, who  
were more independent or less aggressive, but we stick with our heroes.

In this talk about Hobsbawm there is no definition offered,--  if he  
pushed a certain line in poetry, exactly what it was, or what were at  
least the broad principles of it. If that emerged we could begin to  
talk about it. I myself might begin to see him as something other than  
a capable social scientist who should have steered clear of poetry, if  
I were offered some account of what his beliefs specifically about  
poetry were. A lot of the resentment here is about scale, I think,  
that Hobsbawm's insistence was not so much on a particular style, as  
on keeping poetry small-scale (social/personal).

But it does not necessarily matter if we do not see eye to eye. We  
don't have to, the field of poetry is not one which demands  
quiescence, it is much happier seeing some action. We can keep our  
heroes because they are personal. Sean's career and opinions, for  
instance,  the whole story of them, constitute a phenomenon of late  
20th Century poetry which can't be got rid of by mere disagreement.

As for ad hominem, we have seen nothing like the viciousness with  
which this has been pursued on the past, such as D. Holbrooke on  
Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas on whom he went to the trouble of  
writing two books of personal attack (infantile, masturbatory,  
neurotic etc.) or the attack on Keats (I think the word 'onanistic'  
was preferred). But never in my long life have I seen any suggestion  
that "beady-eyed" is anti-Semitic, it is a perfectly common English  
term, about as anti-Semitic as "size 12 shoes" or "lives in Salford".  
Although the general principle holds, it has to be admitted that there  
is, in my experience anyway, some correlation between bad poetry and  
unethical behaviour which we are sometimes entitled to point out,  
without making it into a formula.

pr