The trouble has been a confusion of novelty and quality, as if the one
necessarily implies the other. As if only traditionally oriented poets
are capable of being conformist.
I think we get a partial view of things from here according to our own
inclinations. I expressed in an early review the opinion that the us/
them division in US poetry was healing and the former rebels are now
accepted in wide-focused college teaching and influencing new poets,
but Mark Weiss (I think it was he) assured me that the old guard is
still as active as ever, teaching histories in which you will learn
about Lowell, Berryman, Wilbur and company, and you will not be told
about Olson, Dorn, Duncan and the rest. I can't complain about this
because I think all those heroes of "modernism" have big problems
attached and it is as wrong-headed to ignore Lowell as it is to ignore
Spicer. What's mainly sad is that the coverage continues in the form
of a division and an antagonism.
I, like everyone else, was badly educated in the history of 20th
Century poetry, and am still trying to set this right.
PR
On 30 Sep 2014, at 16:51, [log in to unmask] wrote:
Hi Peter,
Well I would hesitate to describe US poetry as more admirable than UK
poetry, or vice versa. What I envied was not the poetry as such,
(that's a different matter), but what I sense as a sort of shared
confidence in a directly applied modernist poetic, a lack of poetic
hang-ups maybe, something that liberates expression in what seems a
direct and non-precious non-self-conscious way; this at least is how
it strikes me as as a UK onlooker. I'm aware that I'm proliferating
stereotypes and that I could name US poets who make a different
impression; but I'm happy that Tim knew exactly what I was talking
about. There's probably a grass-is-greener effect. And where the
grass is indeed greener there's no doubt a corresponding price to pay.
I think that some kinds of poetry only thrive on stony ground.
Best,
Michael
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