My apologies if you found my reply aggressive. It was not thus intended. No more than emphasis was intended.
Otherwise, I’m now drawing a line under this interchange here.
Tony
> On 1 Feb 2018, at 20:29, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Tony, please don’t say “look” to me. I find it a bit aggressive.
>
> You say that you don’t mind how many books popular authors and poets sell, yet your use of “anyone else who can persuade the public to buy their books” sounds pejorative.
>
> Yes, you “didn’t say anything about respective sales of avant and mainstream works either; as Jamie has observed, being in one camp or the other doesn’t equate automatically to higher sales” so then why insist on categories for bookshelves? My point was that your ignoring the avant and mainstream as being separate categories didn’t affect their sales for you, so why be concerned about making categories for other types of poetry—unless you are simply doing so to satisfy your views of what is “proper poetry”.
>
>
>
> —————original message————
>
> Tony Frazer wrote:
>
> Look, I’d rather not bore everyone with this interchange. It seems you don’t get what I mean. And it seems I frequently don’t get what you mean. We’ve been here before. And I’m not ascribing blame.
>
> I’ve said more than once in this whole thread that I don’t give a damn how many copies these young women sell. Good luck to them, and to Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling etc, for that matter, and anyone else who can persuade the public to buy their books in large quantities; on one level, I admire their ability to do so, even if I don’t admire the literary quality of the product. I didn’t say anything about respective sales of avant and mainstream works either; as Jamie has observed, being in one camp or the other doesn’t equate automatically to higher sales. (Prynne outsells a lot of well-known mainstream poets, for instance.) When even big London presses are shifting only a few hundred copies of poetry collections, we’re talking about minuscule percentages of overall book sales, and are estimating the number of (Rilkean?) angels on the head of a pin. That’s also why small presses like mine can complete, up to a point: because the market has left the product behind and we’re all left, more or less, on an even playing-field.
>
> Tony
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