Robin asks why, until recently, Raworth is the only british poet with a
significant following in the USA.

Well, he's not; he hasn't been.  Larkin, Tomlinson, Hill, and a few others have
had their fair share of readers.  But that's not what Robin means, I know; he
means "innovative/experimental/exploratory/neo-avant-garde types in an era
skeptical of them" etc.  So why is Tom the only one of 'those' who, until
recently, has had a fair-sized audience here?  Some guesses follow, speaking
only for my small usamerican readerly self.

1.  Tom's books are printed here, or many of them.  Plus he's spent a lot of
time here and has many friends.  Add to this the fact that distribution of
British books of experimental poetry in the USA is a disaster.

2.  Information about alternative  british poetry is very hard to come by.
Until recently, I'd wager that by far the most important advocate of british
poetries in the USA was Donald Davie, who of course had his own agendas and
canons; some of these suited USAmerican readers in need of a particular
construction of British poetry just fine.  Others who carried different news
across the Atlantic--Mottram, John Matthias, Tarn, Joris, Tom himself, etc.--
had local successes but probably nothing approaching Davie's. And not that
Davie's work as critic was without value, even in combatting american views of
"little england." This is (by the way) one of the reasons I suggested to John
Cayley that little magazine backlists (Prynne's contributions to The English
Intelligencer for instance) might be put on-line.

3.  US self-absorption, provincialism, mixed with the perception that british
poetry had been swallowed by the anti-modernism of the Movement and was
of little interest to anyone other than a New Critic. Modernism was american or
European; anti-modernism was England.  US preoccupation with a north-south
axis (neruda etc.), Atlanticism resisted as Cold War culture. The Cold War
itself breeding an interest in soviet bloc poetries.  A need to acknowledge
third, fourth, fifth world poetries.  French theory breeding curiosity about
what was happening in poetry written next to it (Palmer, Waldrops, etc.);
avant-garde histories in France, Italy, and Germany more visible.  All this
stuff crowding out Britain and its invisible histories and unavailable books.
Lots of unfortunate and/or ugly stuff along these lines, put cryptically
and crudely here, but you get the picture.

4.  cris cheek mentions Tom's "quotidian humane"--a phrase that hits it.  Tom's
multi-media productions (Jim Dine, Frances Butler, many more) are part of the
story too, but the fact is that Tom's not afraid of pop and mass culture, the
movies, etc.  Respect for those engagements, for the demotic in the particulars
and idioms, next to which Prynne might seem, well, austere.  Pedestrians vs.
Pelagians (thinking about a letter from Prynne to Milne in Parataxis).  A
different mode of wit:  I sat at the back of the room beside Tom last summer
when the South African critic whose name I'm forgetting spoke on
defamilarization in TR's work---a litle of reinventing the wheel there. Squires
asked a question about vision (he was into that). Tom picked up two empty
water glasses and held them to his eyes--fish-goggles--scanning the room.  I
nearly busted a gut.  Can't imagine busting a gut reading Prynne.  Mellors
says in the last Parataxis (with that useful Wilkinson article on Prynne) that
for JHP it is "the profane, the 'uninitiated' who jump to conclusions about
public identity, as opposed to the clerisy  of interpreters of the world who
can seriously claim to speak for 'us.'"  Now no doubt some will contest this
as a ventriloquising for JHP, but the ethical imperative Wilkinson, Peter
Larkin, and others locate in JHP will seem to some accompanied by a high
seriousness for which the term "clerisy" is not misplaced.  JHP is certainly
relentless in confronting commodification and the "culture industry." Next to
which the tactics of TR seem Wittgensteinian ordinary--more hopeful finally,
perhaps.  The whole issue of syntax/temporality in TR's facture is something
else--no denying TR's influence there, his status as a model.  Maybe only
Michael Palmer (a few others etc.) plays this tune as well, and MP is finally
very different. Again--apologies for cryptic and/or incoherent guesses typed
quickly.

But it's a bad idea to set up a Raworth/Prynne opposition anyway.  Both are
very interesting to this American. Raworth is on record expressing his
respect for Prynne, etc.  And Prynne has his readers here too, and with a new
edition promised he'll have more.  And as Robin notes lots of other folks are
getting more and deserved attention these days.  I understand that the contrast
began as a way of noting Tom's twilit status.  There are useful remarks
available in an essay by John Barrell in Critical Inquiry some years ago,
another by Andrew Lawson in Textual Practice, still another by Marjorie Perloff
in Sulfur--and more beyond those.  Maybe with all the new cash for the arts
in Blair's world somebody might sit down with TR and see if he'll commit to an
interview--unlikely maybe.  Get him a reading tour or a fat grant?

As for JHP's critique of langpo, that's really a critique of specific
propositions out of Bataille re 'general economy' as they are played out in
Steve McCaffery's prose, no?

Well I've blabbed enough nonsense, none of which is meant to offend if it does.

Keith Tuma


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