(Cont. from my last)
  The Wordsworth quote from the preface to Lyrical Ballads I was thinking of 
was obviously "...why I have chosen subjects from common life, and 
endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men."
   My own resistance to your proposition in the first place did indeed have 
to do with a dislike of the idea of some factional position of the writer 
determining choices on the level of grammar, and also a kind of disbelief in 
the actual reality (or at least the significance) of these two opposing 
entities or tendencies, but disliking an idea doesn't at all disprove it. 
And since you made the observation I have begun to spot the phenomenon, 
quite often as it happens in bits of writing I'd consider only 
semi-competent, regardless of which tendency they might be deemed to 
represent.

The examples you give (of very varying quality - the Edward Thomas is good 
to be reminded of - but I know that's not your point) do look persuasive, 
though you've rightly had to accommodate two different tenses which have 
very different implications for each passage, as well as the (perhaps 
regional) simple past of the verb to have - well spotted! - in Heaney. I was 
thinking that the contraction in most of these cases served a metrical, or 
let's say rhythmic, function too - one syllable as oppose to two, but you 
have to be right as well about the desire to keep close to the usual 
patterns of speech (whatever other poetic idiolect is being brought to 
bear).

You say "'I'd' (and other related words...) are very popular in modern 
mainstream poetry in English. Contrariwise, these words almost never appear 
in experimental/avant-garde/alternative poetry in English" and you give some 
intriguing reasons for the prevalence of the form in the one and the dearth 
of it in the other. I'm ill-equipped to challenge your second claim here, 
and I'm sure extensive reading will have confirmed it for you. Still, 
looking just at the first sequence 'Maybe, maybe not' in Denise Riley's Say 
Something Back, I met with:

"You'd rather not..." (vi)

"They'd sworn to stay..."(ix)

"the sturdy sun you'd loved to bake in." (xi)

"or is it/ You orchestrating that now,// Who'd laugh at the thought..."

All of these examples have a precise place in her virtuosic use of a range 
of tenses (and many verb contractions) for a poem in which time is very 
close to the speaker. Regardless of whether the book might have reached a 
wider audience than her earlier work, I don't think this writing is an 
example of the poet abandoning her previous style or affiliations. You might 
claim, I suppose, that the loss she addresses in the poem gives a kind of 
primacy to the speaker which is uncharacteristic of avant-garde writing?

   Anyway I'm only offering this not to refute your post, but maybe to 
complicate it. You did say it was still a "construction site".

If there's further discussion of your post, Michael, could you post the 
entire thing on the list, as I seem unable to cut and paste from the blog?

Best,
Jamie

PS  I've no great wish to return to the villainous Paterson question, but 
the fact that this book was taken by Picador would indicate a lively change 
in his opinions, though I think any poetry editor who was not purblind would 
have good reason to want the book.



-----Original Message----- 
From: Jamie McKendrick
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 12:36 PM

Hi Michael,
   I did see this on your blog, and was tempted to comment there. As one of
those who responded agin or in lukewarm fashion, I ought to say I found this
slight reformulation and further analysis more persuasive. It's a cool
look - Cool Luke in regional version - at a convention, and is backed up by
interesting samples. The only moment I found less than fair-minded was the
final phrase of:
"...it (verbal contraction) can be associated with a conversational,
idiomatic, informal diction, such as is usual in mainstream poetry, which
aspires to be taught in schools." Sorry?! The first part of the sentence,
though, might well stay afloat, and may be related not just to some
assertions by Wordsworth, your starting point, but also to the influence of
Frost's 'sentence sounds'.
  I'd (there we go again) like to think a bit further about this, and I
suppose also about the motives why I and others responded with scepticism at
its first airing, about which you also have some cogent conjectures.
Best,
Jamie


-----Original Message----- 
From: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 11:36 AM


The following draft piece arose from a discussion on this forum last year...
it talks about the different poetic diction in mainstream and experimental
poetry, and about the limited use of verb forms in (especially) the
latter....  I'm still thinking about this topic and any suggestions or
rebuttals would be most welcome...

http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/id-shed-hed-wed-theyd.html