Michael,
  I see no confusion about your list. Clearly it was "not meant to 
characterize mainstream poetry", but in the context it was surely offered at 
least in part to distinguish experimental practice from other kinds of 
poetry. This is why for me  'elegy' remains the odd one out. Undoubtedly 
there are distinct formal and stylistic conventions that pertain to the form 
at the time of 'Lycidas' but they have evolved in many different directions 
over time, and I see no reason why it shouldn't remain as fertile a terrain 
for both communities of writers, as Denise Riley's last book would suggest.
   Your rebuke to me (the Daily Mail, for heaven's sake) only makes sense if 
I am to be put in my place very much on the "them" side of the "them and us" 
divide. As it comes from you, with whom till now I've only had what I 
consider open and cordial exchanges, it makes me glimpse once again how 
annoying my presence on this list must be for quite a number of people of a 
less tolerant disposition. It was unguarded of me to ever think otherwise.
   And perhaps you're right. The programmatic side of experimental writing 
which very much appeals to you I often find extremely arid.
   I've left my own work outside the door of this list, and the last thing 
I'd want to do anyway is to consider just where on the spectrum it may lie. 
In writing a poem, I'd find the whole question stifling and paralyzing. This 
is not to claim, pace Tim, some kind of aloof position to these petty 
squabbles, but my experience of more porous borders between different kinds 
of poetry in other European countries is something I find far more 
congenial. Take the example of Sweden - much more your area of expertise 
than mine. In Malmo, Stockholm, and in Gothenburg where I stayed for several 
months, I have met poets from across the spectrum and never had to show my 
'poetics' passport in the way that seems to be required here. I have 
interviewed the late Bengt Emil Johnson and Gunnar D. Hannson for a British 
festival, and found a great deal of common ground. I admire both these 
poets, and though you may have a different view of their work, there is no 
way in which either could be co-opted into anything similar to the British 
mainstream. My experience in Italy and Spain, where I have spent far more 
time, has likewise assured me of the possibilities of dialogue, and by 
contrast I find the positions in Britain depressingly entrenched - I'm sure 
there are historic reasons for this but that doesn't make the situation more 
bearable.
   Good poetry is so rare on whatever side of the barrier it finds itself, 
I'm not happy to see fences blocking the view.
   If I can't speak of my own work I can at least refer to the translations 
I've done, and I think those should give you a reason not to assume any 
hostility towards the experimental on my part. A booklet of the Mexican 
neobarocco poet David Huerta - again Mark would be far more qualified to 
speak of his position, but certainly he would have to be included in the 
avant-garde. An experimental verse play by Pasolini. Besides a number of 
other Italians of all shades, I have translated books of poems by Valerio 
Magrelli and Antonella Anedda. Magrelli, I'd say, has repudiated certain 
characteristics of the Italian avant-garde but has maintained a dialogue and 
kept faith with its sources, and his first critical work was on dadaism. 
Anedda again I would find hard to place, but her closest affiliations with 
the preceding generation of poets would be with Amelia Rosselli who is 
justly considered one of Italy's most prominent avant-garde poets. (You can 
find her work in Jennifer Scappattone's translations which are themselves 
experimental.)
   This may sound like I'm offering a list of credentials. I'm not. None of 
this makes me an ally to your own cause, but it should at least make you 
hesitate before enrolling me among your poetic enemies.
Jamie

-----Original Message----- 
From: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 10:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: baBoom

>Your list in parenthesis looks odd to me anyway -
apart from 'elegy' I would have thought the 'mainstream' would equally
distance itself from these other items.

I fear I've sowed confusion, the list was not meant to characterize 
mainstream poetry, but to name a very few  linguistic artefacts with 
well-understood linguistic conventions e.g. everyone knows that in limericks 
you say things like "There was a young man from Nantucket" and in ad 
voiceovers you say things like "Introducing the Gillette Fusion Plus ...the 
Fusion relaxed style from Gillette...". Within each of these well-understood 
conventions the language sounds normal, though it wouldn't necessarily sound 
normal outside that context. So I take it that fundamentally and 
programmatically LI poetry tries to apply language in deviant ways e.g. by 
deploying what Silliman calls "the new sentence" (disjunctive, chiasmatic) 
or by decontextualizing "the old sentence" or by breaking the word into 
vocables as per Cobbing or losing the words down the guttering between the 
pages ( as in the Andrea Brady poem I was reading last night) or a hundred 
other etceteras.  This is not to say that other poets don't do similar 
things sometimes but not in such a programmatic way.

Others may have a different view of what "linguistically innovative" is 
supposed to mean (maybe they'd understand it to refer to a more limited 
subset of the experimental communities)   - I'd like to know if that's the 
case   -  but this is the kind of way I understand it.

As for the boastfulness of the term, I guess this isn't unusual. Such terms 
often contain boastful claims (Futurist, Modernist)  or come to be badges of 
pride even if they began in denigration (Impressionist).  Whatever, they are 
always timebound. "I've never found the Romantics particularly romantic", as 
Tim Allen said somewhere.