Picking up a couple pellets from Tim's good wide-angle scattergun shot, in
the spirit (I hope) of his request:
On Sat, 11 Oct 1997, Tim Atkins wrote a whole lot of stuff including:
> For me, at least, I'm not interested in at least half of what goes on on
> the list, [...] "Eric Mottram was a terrible reader & writer" is one
I'd like to venture here.
a. Mottram as reader on-the-air of his own work? Given that EM's poems are
in anycase rather like fast dubs of his conversation/immediate concerns, I
was always surprised how stylised/artificial his reading voice was: came,
I think, from a musical generation I wasn't terribly symathetic to in the
late '40s / early '50s. Perhaps too this came from his basic shyness about
his poetry too? Anyway, in some readings I heard he tended to bring out
the shape of the poems, at the expense, I'd say, of some of the
enthusiasms and passions on which they were built.
b. Mottram as reader on-the-page of others' work? There's enough members
of this list who've benefitted from his readings of their work: quick,
generous, sharp, supportive, enthusiastic, caustic... and often when it
seemed no-one else was listening. I know you didn't want to get into the
"what a nice guy" routine, but, when comes such another? I mean, who else
did/does it so much, so openly, so readily? Heaven knows, he was a
difficult man in all kinds of ways - but that support of "his" "students"
- those are both very wide terms - that's important enough, and rare
enough, to buy a lot of respect.
c. Mottram as reader/writer i.e. critic? You'd have to be psychotic to
agree with everything he wrote - his main "fault" I'd say was often his
strong point - his enthusiasm. Out of control, it could put him in sime
pretty exposed positions (his work on Bunting shows some of this - I'd
disagree on fairly basic points at times). Nevertheless, I enjoyed "Blood
on the Nash Ambassador" and agree with Cris on "Towards Design in Poetry"
which I'd suggest should be on any "poetic theory" dataset which Chadwyck
Healey might propose to accompany Contemporary Poets... It certainly set
down thoughts which meant a lot to a whole group of poets who are
currently writing.
d. Mottram as writer i.e. poet? He came late to poetry, and remained -
against whatever general impression people got of his personality - quite
shy about it. It'd be difficult to make an argument for any one of his
poems as "perfect" (and if any of you out there consider yourself makers
of "perfect" poems I'd just like to say that I hate both you and your
work, which I haven't read) - their faults are evident. However - they're
still a good read, for much the same qualities as I've mentioned in a, b,
and c above: enthusiasm, compassion, range. Don't be put off by the
general clumpyness of the line - I think EM would've gone apeshit if
anyone had ever described his work as "elegant" - "all the wrong notes are
right", as Ives wrote to his copyist... So much of Mottram's poetry is in
longish sets that it's difficult to say, Start Here (there's a story of
Harry Gilonis convincing Andrew Duncan with Mottram's - comparatively
early - "Tunis" - so it can be done...). I'd suggest the Elegies, for the
range of styles / tone, and A Book of Herne as a fairly simple bibliomanic
rant. My own favourite remains Estuaries, where so many of his personal
concerns and passions are in the mix, it's like a sampling from his
conversation.
So if you mean terrible as in bad, incompetant, abysmal, minging, I'd say
not, and it's worth trying again, enjoying for some of the human qualities
(including fallibility) which alone should save it from that. At one stage
it was very fashionable for Prynnites to sneer at Mottram, and Mottramites
to sneer at Prynne - I know we're beyond that now, and welcome a chance
to repay a bit of enthusiasm. Thanks, Tim.
RC
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