Thanks for this, David. I should let Michael reply for himself but I think you missed his first post which warmly welcomed Dylan as Nobel recipient. What his next post was pointing to was the international impact (foul word these days) of Transtromer's poems, widely loved way before the Nobel. Michael will know better than me that in Sweden Transtromer is known of by most schoolchildren and appreciated far beyond what you still belittlingly call 'poetry "fandom" circles'.
But as you seem to acknowledge at the end of your post, 'small audiences' (not at all the case with these or many of the other Nobel writers of the last 10 years) aren't anyway an indicator of lack of quality or inconsequentiality. What could have been more obscure in the nineteenth century than Emily Dickinson, a poet now justly considered one of the greatest not just of her age but of any.
That might also be something to value in the Nobel awards - the celebration of a talent insufficiently recognised rather than an accolade for a globally super-celebrated artist like Dylan?
That said, Tim's list of the Nobel writers he's read and hasn't makes me feel likewise a bit shocked at how many of them I haven't read including, probably shamefully, Jelinek.
Jamie
> On 19 Oct 2016, at 13:11, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> Jamie, I was exaggerating to make a point: that few people outside of certain academic and poetry “fandom” circles know who these poets are compared to Dylan. So to that extent compared to Dylan they are inconsequential. I was defending Dylan’s right to be a Nobel winner because of Michael’s condescending attitude to Dylan winning the prize rather than criticising those poets for their small audiences. Sorry if that didn’t come across.
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> ---------------------------Original Message-----------------------
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> Jaime McKendrick wrote:
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> David, your remark that these poets and writers were "pretty inconsequential" was what I was taking issue with and not with your appreciation of Dylan which I happen to share. Your explanation - "that we are talking...not about influencing a few poets who teach at universities" is pretty close to 'gibberish', to use your own word, but it's also weirdly uninformed to presume Szymborska and Transtromer have no readers that aren't poets and academics, and not just in Poland and Sweden. (Not to mention the prose writers you dismiss.) Who teaches at university anyway? Well, not me nor Michael either. And If we did would that disqualify us?
> Even less enlightened,
> Jamie
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