Tim, you see your own case too readily in my remark, which didn't
imply any attack on "innovative" (yawn) (sorry) poets. In using the
word "reactionary" you privilege a certain attitude to both poetry and
history, which contradicts your reduction of the distinction to mere
"difference". What's interesting in the long run is where the
different poetry turns out not to be so different after all.
P
On 1 Oct 2014, at 12:36, Tim Allen wrote:
Sorry Michael if I'm responding to this first but I'm sat here so I
might as well.
"The trouble has been a confusion of novelty and quality" WOW. Now
there's a typical Peter Riley type statement. Where in heaven's name
do you start to argue with that. The baggage in that statement would
take up the luggage compartment of a 707. I suppose it implies that
Peter has the ability not to confuse novelty with quality while
certain others (maybe me etc) do not have that ability so are taken in
etc. Well, I have to disagree Peter, I happen to believe that I have
an eye to quality as much as you do - but I look upon such quality as
living within a context, within certain borders, an eternally
provisional quality if you like, not something that can be fixed by
any supposed overview. And I would see novelty in the same light, but
as an ingredient, something that either lent itself to the quality of
a poem or, yes, lent itself to the failure of a poem. This applies to
all poetry, British, American, whatever. If it is the case, and it
probably is, that certain young British poets back in the 60's were
drawn towards American poetry because of 'novelty' then so be it, if
'novelty' is the word you want to use for that quality of difference
that it contained. But there were cultural and generational reasons
for that, reasons why some poets found in the American poetry
something that was lacking over here, reasons why it spoke to them. To
imply that they were just confusing novelty with quality is
ridiculously reactionary.
There, I think that that was pretty painless, considering.
And of course avant poets can be as conformist as any of the
traditionally orientated ones - but it isn't my fault, any more than
yours, if at the moment there seems to be a lack of discrimination in
some quarters where conformity to an expected poetic takes precedence
over 'quality' .
Cheers
Tim A.
On 1 Oct 2014, at 11:06, Peter Riley wrote:
> 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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