Thanks Sean. Just saw this now.
On Wednesday, 11 September 2019, Sean Carey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Yes this holds water & cuts through the nice consensus that there is not a thing to be concerned about in 2019. In this Dispatches hard questions are asked leaving one wonder about our collective complacency?
In a nutshell resistance is usually just viewed as some malcontent off his or her rocker which aims at closing down debating the issues. But if one considers many highly respected poets they would have been or labelled malcontents or bitter people. The thinking being he or she’s a bitter old fart full to the gills with sour grapes at not making it.
So one is left thinking of an old country or western song “Who Will Answer?” or think why bother raising critical views? Everyone wants a quiet life free of hassles with financial hassles the ultimate personal hell. Money makes things happen in this world and money can buy you love with apologies to John Lennon & Paul McCartney.
Poetry many say does not yield much cash but a poor poet is very very rare with Paul Potts ghost in Soho the sole reminder of bohemian living. I of course expect every poet to claim poor origins while every autobiography offers being born in dire poverty. It’s hip and trendy to offer humble childhoods but the facts are of course totally different. The absence of silver spooned poets in our midst is miraculous but it suits the theatre of variety.
Yes David
poetry is a business and offers benefits to those who climb the ladder.
It is not a career for the faint of heart or for sensitive souls seeking fame or fortune.
Do not expect any favours from your fellow poets or assume they care about your welfare.
To succeed one must network and seek advice from a PR firm and make oneself known to poetry’s movers and shakers. Choose your friends and partners wisely plus one’s location with your academic direction fully focused.
A good CV can work wonders and you don’t have to totally rely on Oxbridge as much as in times past.
The point on careerism will of course be seen as retrograde but even Adam Smith’s most devoted followers understand entryism in 2019. Marx is common knowledge on all stock exchange floors offices and fully understood.
The idea of harmony is superb for all who have made careers out of poetry as is the notion that peace reigns supreme. A harmonious culture offers an illusion of blissful coexistence with no conflicts. Everyone loves everyone in an outbreak of basically a new kinship with alliances the way forward.
An actual seriously experimental publishing press is now as hard to find or a poet prepared to think outside the consensus box. We drown in a swill of mediocrity but nobody seems to mind our fate or how we reached this point?
The poetry wars of Eric Mottram and Bob Cobbing seem a century ago not a few decades ago. Black Mountain & The Beats seem equally distant. No movement or project is ever perfect but they all meant well. Almost all of them are dead and gone but where are their successors?
Idealism morphs into realism and compromise in every area of life bar none. The existential reality of life tears away at our visions and dreams and hopes.
I recall my late father at my age now being a fairly disillusioned man and he had his reasons. His life saw him literally lose everything in a material sense but he hung on for another few years. But he never lost his humour or his honesty to his great credit or folded up.
In saying that I am not some malcontent seeking any sympathy nor am I a self pitying old man. In fact I am a fatalistic person who accepts what life offers never asking why me?
Thanks David for giving us some realistic thinking & food for thought.
Best wishes
Sean
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On Wednesday, 11 September 2019, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From a site I just found:
https://www.dispatchespoetrywars.com/about/
"About Dispatches Poetry
DISPATCH #1
It seems almost fashionable these days for various poetry spokespeople to assert – without question – quote – THE POETRY WARS ARE OVER – end quote.
That everything is just hunky dory, lion-and-lamb-wise, in the Happy Land of Really Nice Bards.
That the wild poets have come in from the wilderness, set aside their war-like ways, and got jobs in the Creative Writing Department.
That everyone agrees the only problem facing Poetry today is equitable distribution of Art Booty.
That we all agree poetry is just another commodity, something to be bought and sold and traded for jobs, grants, prizes, prestige, and power (such as it is in the Happy Land of Nice Bards).
That poetry is a career choice, a useful pathway into a productive life of remunerative professorships, arts management jobs, and government largesse.
That we are all fellow citizens in the Institution, now mellowed out in the shared recognition of the Equality of Styles.
That differences of poetry are nothing more than differences of taste – and all tastes, it turns out, are equal in a world of markets and general equivalence – it’s just a question of what sells.
Hallelujah.
We call bullshit on that.
Poetry is and always will be an unruly opening of profound modes of oppositional thought, a constant reset of “knowledge” and its categories, a site of revelation for unprecedented form and exorbitant meaning.
As such, it calls out for – demands – constant challenge to the cyclical, careerist sprawl which replaces Poetry with curated dreck, whether it’s the Creative Writing so dear to the heart and bank account of the University or the neo-avant-garde’s commodified word dumps exchangeable for a niche in the wall of the Great Hall of Literature.
If ever a time called out for poetry war, for the liberation of autonomous zones for poetry’s impolite dissent, and for the wanton instigation of untoward festivities in the face of Poetic Security Walls (see Dispatch #6), the time is now.
Join the party. Dispatches from The Poetry Wars welcomes collaborators who are uninterested in poetry as a career, whose urgency of appeal on behalf of poetry does not want for a little wackiness, and who can figure out the difference between Lenny Bruce and Henny Youngman. All interesting forms of resistance welcome.
Be warned, however, – we are not polite."
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