I just find it needlessly divisive and snobby. It just needlessly creates the potential for the avantgarde/mainstream controversy to spill out into other areas of poetry. I appreciate that as a bookseller classification is your thing, but it's bad for poetry.
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Tony Frazer wrote:
OK, the dig is fine. It doesn’t bother me.
Is there anything particularly, or inherently, bad about an attempt at a more accurate designation of certain types of poetry? Or writing? (See previous comments re the accepted sub-classifications of fiction.) I’ve not seen any rationale for that being the case. I recognise that it’s not going to happen, and there’s been enough discussion here this week regarding the vexed mainstream/avant divide to show why, but i can’t see why it raises your hackles in this way.
Tony
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