I take your point(s), Lawrence.
Indeed, it’s clear the many rods of ‘modernism’s Britain were confused & confusing (certainly overlapping in many odd ways).
I do think Donald Davie got a lot right in his Under Briggflatts, & that his account of the various streams is useful.
I think you’re right that some of us (like me) tend to be too anglo-centric, thus issuing the modernisms of other languages/cultures. As someone limited to the English language, I only know such work through translation, but it still allows for a lot. Yet, because what I learned most from are works in english, even there I suspect I red poetry from other languages through the english language poetics most important to me. Thus, how I read Celan, for example.
Still, a useful nudge to think more subtly & in context(s)…
Doug
On Nov 21, 2014, at 10:39 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Walking to my place of work this morning I was thinking of all the things I
> was going to say - and most of it I haven't - in reply
> One was picking up on the mention of Hardy. & I wanted to aver my high
> regard for those poems & also a lot of the modernist push... but I wanted
> to say that it ain't so simple(resisting the temptation to go all ira
> gershwin there) & thomas would have been one of my examples... well,the
> example, but I was sure there were others. I'm not sure about that now. But
> Edward Thomas certainly
>
> so ta for that
>
> & I was also going to say that it gets muddling once one steps out of the
> anglo world & away from Ez or can do unless one does a great deal of work
> Work's ok, but there's not always time
>
> I have a high regard for Ritsos, but my Greek is nowhere near good enough.
> And my background reading is still undone decades after I stopped tramping
> around Greece. So I have access to a body of work that's just sort of there
> inexplicably in a largely empty room in my head
>
> a bit like Syd Barrett sitting there and I'm not quite sure who he is but
> he's very familiar
>
> *
> and the oddity of how some of us start and stop with enthusiasms.
> Somewhere between pre dawn and my first coffee, that crack of Meliville's
> about passing a coffin factory went through my mind and I decided that next
> I shall read again Moby Dick
>
> that's all I have to say
>
> nice w/e all
>
> L
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> .
>
> On 21 November 2014 16:48, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> [poem of the day from
>> Poetry Foundation.org]
>>
>> The Thrush
>> When Winter's ahead,
>> What can you read in November
>> That you read in April
>> When Winter's dead?
>>
>> I hear the thrush, and I see
>> Him alone at the end of the lane
>> Near the bare poplar's tip,
>> Singing continuously.
>>
>> Is it more that you know
>> Than that, even as in April,
>> So in November,
>> Winter is gone that must go?
>>
>> Or is all your lore
>> Not to call November November,
>> And April April,
>> And Winter Winter--no more?
>>
>> But I know the months all,
>> And their sweet names, April,
>> May and June and October,
>> As you call and call
>>
>> I must remember
>> What died into April
>> And consider what will be born
>> Of a fair November;
>>
>> And April I love for what
>> It was born of, and November
>> For what it will die in,
>> What they are and what they are not,
>>
>> While you love what is kind,
>> What you can sing in
>> And love and forget in
>> All that's ahead and behind.
>>
>> Edward Thomas 1878-1917
>> [PF says:
>> Thomas wrote his first poems in 1914 at the urging of the American poet
>> Robert Frost,
>> with whom he forged a friendship during Frost's years in England. ....
>> in 1915 he enlisted in the infantry and was killed two years later in the
>> Battle of Arras,
>> while the first edition of his Poems (1917) was being prepared for press.]
>>
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
that we are only
as we find out we are
Charles Olson
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