> Date:          Fri, 16 May 1997 05:31:45 -0400
> From:          Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:       activity, or something
> To:            british-poets <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-to:      Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>

> 
> <<My own small sense would be that Prynne, in his 'resolve' is met and
> undone
> by Raworth (for myself that writer who activates the quotidien humane)
> with pith and humor and local engagements beyond Jeremy's scope.>>

I don`t seem to have received cris`s post, from which the above quote 
is excised, tho` I got Lawrence`s and Ken`s responses to it.  I don`t 
necessarily agree with the judgment but it`s an interesting and 
possibly fruitful comparison which provokes a number of 
supplementary questions.  Why, for example, was Tom Raworth, until 
fairly recently, the only British poet with a following among our 
Stateside counterparts?  

One of the problems I have with A POETICS, after the essential 
importance of CONTENT`S DREAM, is that, whereas the essays in the 
earlier book seem led by the material being discussed, the poets and 
poems in A POETICS are enlisted in the illustration of a 
thesis or group of related theses (hence the name of the book, of 
course).  This might seem like an obvious point but the problem with 
the thesis/theses is, that the poetry quoted , much of the 
time, is supposed to be an example of exemplary "nonsense" which 
short-circuits conventional habits of language-processing in order to bring us up 
short in exposure of the power relations that constitute and govern 
those habits, and govern us in turn. [I don`t have a copy of A 
POETICS to hand, unfortunately, and am willing to accept the 
possibility that I`m being, well, wrong...possibly conflating a 
number of points of view among those associated with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, 
and possibly misrepresenting them all, in their opinion.]
 The poetry doesn`t have to "mean" anything, and, in fact, shouldn`t. 

  Could it be that Raworth`s relative popularity in the U.S. is, to a certain extent,
 an indication that THE FORM OF his poetry (and I`m thinking of the
 trademark short line/long poem/unpunctuated work) was peculiarly conducive
 to this type of thinking?  [I (almost) touched upon this point in a review of 
CLEAN AND WELL LIT in the final ish of Object Permanence - mentioning 
Bernstein`s blurb on the back and the fact that he is inclined to 
give the disjunctive line breaks a "socially/psychically therapeutic 
function" - which leads him to neglect what the poems might be seen 
to be ABOUT.]  Blindness and insight:  Bernstein`s poetics creatively 
misreads work like Tom Raworth`s, work which, relative to Prynne`s 
oeuvre, nevertheless remains open to the possibility of that 
misreading because it has "more phrase than substance" or more form 
than content, COMPARED TO PRYNNE`S (that is), which exhibits
"more substance than phrase", to end on a suitably gauche note by 
quoting (a dodgy translation of) Marx.  
There`s just more to say about CONTENT in Prynne, no?  Which is one 
reason why he gets more attention over here.  Saying something about 
a book or poem by Raworth, I feel a certain compulsion to quote a section which 
appears to make some sort of sense and then add a comment which makes 
it quite clear that we`re both on the political Left...after that, as 
much as I LIKE the work, I`m stuck. I owe a substantial debt to Prynne`s "Letter 
on Language Poetry" for the thrust of this argument, if I read the 
thing correctly. 

robin
 


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