I have spent the night in the pub thinking about Robin's statement that
I dont understand what is going on in poetry. Presumably since Mallarme\'e.
First I will clarify my own position cos that is easier.
`I come to bear witness' to the dreadful life I have lived through and
put it down on paper. Much of it coded so only the discerning can
understand what's happening. (That was all edited out of the `Selected
Poems' near enough but a little survives.) The key thing is using your
literary ability, if you have it, to document your life and leave
something as a memorial to the future.
What Robin is saying is that poetry has changed and has moved into a
new era and that this sort of writing is old-hat. What matters is
Wittgensteinian language-games where there is no reality only words.
That you are made out of words and only words and there is no underlying
construct. I would beg to differ. When I write from `depth' I am finding
words for what is deep inside me and my ambition is to express myself
as well as I can and put these feelings down on paper.
[Regarding Ric I have his three books upstairs and havent seen him really
do that. But that is an aside.]
Doug and Alice have just been talking about the liberation of the
American voice thru Gertrude Stein. Well my voice is liberated when
I read the poems in English that have gone on before for so many centuries
saying things to me that I recognise and understand. The emotions.
There have been very few people who can do it. And I salivate on them.
I grew up poetically on Ezra though he hasnt much of the real thing in
him. Just droplets like in the Browning `Near Perigord'. Over the centuries
there have been very few people who can do it for me, (express the emotions
that I understand so well knowing where they come from), and by comparison
this business of the postmoderns is so trivial and embarassing. Perhaps
one day they will produce a real poet but who knows.
But it is all a game and shouldnt be taken too seriously. The mistake is
not realising that you can walk away from it and live the rest of your
life in peace without the rancouress squabbles.
PS And all that matters is getting it published. Once that is done
you are allowed to walk away and leave it.
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