All these remarks on the US and its world-view and on language poetry and its
attitudes towards translation seem to me that dangerous kind of half-truth
based on distance from what is being talked about and on selective quotation.
Rather like an attack on PC attitudes based on myths. I don't think, for
example, that Peter should generalise so broadly about a country he has never
visited.

Taking points. It is not my experience that Americans aren't interested in
the rest of the world: which Americans and where would be more to the point.
Down in Biloxi perhaps, and I could tell an anecdote or two. The more
complicated thing to say is that the US is so big and so diverse that it can
seem that the world and its problems are already there. Therefore, to live in
the States is to encounter world-scale issues far far more than when living in
Britain -- where a hot discourse about world events plus holiday travel so
often substitutes for having to rub our faces in the actual kinds of problem
that arise. What they call a mouthful of experience.

It's possible that because of this, experience of life in the States can
unconsciously substitute for a more genuine awareness of other-cultures-
abroad: it seems the same thing. "You want to know about Middle Europe, Asia,
the Caribbean, etc. -- these guys are our neighbours, you know. I've got
daily first-hand information." (People don't say this: I'm illustrating a
fact.) The more aware US writers I know are also aware of this unconscious
substitution. But it's when I'm in Britain that I most feel shut off from the
rest of the world -- no doubt because that's my own country -- I love being in
Britain, the geniality you encounter so frequently, etc, etc.

Language poetry and translation. I wouldn't judge the attitudes of the whole
right wing in politics by reading a single article in the Daily Express, so I
don't see why Peter should spark off quite so much because of the SUNY Buff
definition. Surely the language poets (a disappearing term), more than most
other non-academic poets, have concentrated on translation? Most
particularly, they have been the principle translators of those French poets
they feel closest to, and here in France take part enthusiastically in the US
poetry translation sessions at Royaumont. Well, they have a poetry-political
interest in that, of course, but are only different from my own poetry-
political interests in being more vehement. Peter's extrapolations of their
theories, though they make sense to Peter and certainly have a logic, don't
express in any more than a prejudicial way a body of ideas which escape any
narrow definition of "theory". If someone should analyse Peter's own
admirable complex poetic practice in such a simplifying way he would be
rightly aggrieved.

When I was asked to contribute to the first issue of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E back in
the mid-seventies I didn't do so because I thought I'd already circumvented
the founding ideas of the journal, ideas I'd been pondering about for some
years. The whole language movement then proved highly manipulative in its
literary politics, and I felt distanced from it some more. I did not
anticipate that it would give rise to such a widely various body of work from
a multitude of writers, some very good, many boring -- and influencing Susan
Howe despite her differences from it. It became its own thing. The energy in
such movements puts to shame the British poetic tendency to operate small
enmities, frequent "principled withdrawals" from events that escape our
control or whose organisers don't share our own ideas fully enough, and
cautiousness about enthusiasm -- in short, our tendency to shoot ourselves in
the foot. None of this means endorsement of language poetry theories on my
part (I'd hope to have subtle approaches of my own to their questions).

Peter's extrapolation of Susan Howe's analysis of the specificity of Emily
Dickinson's poetry does not, fully examined, change the argument about
translation one whit. Susan says no more than I would if I remarked on the
close prosody of, say, Coleridge. The question is not whether a poem may be
translated "whole", to get it, itself, but whether a more or less close
version in another language may have value in itself and also be sufficiently
informative about the original to be interesting. Susan Howe's analysis
simply concerns how the original may be betrayed; it doesn't concern
translation.

The question of Western and American power versus events in Africa and,
currently, in the Middle East is the most worrying one at the moment.
Fundamentalist Islam's attitude towards women and towards jihad can't just be
elbowed aside in a simplistic (theory-style) affirmation of multi-culturalism
(a doctrine that came largely out of America). The Western determination to
visit consumerism and its accompanying amoralism in lifestyle on the whole
damn world can't either. Terrorism is evil, but is an easily seen evil. Our
blindness to the mistakes in our own culture can't be cured just by talking
about it as if we now saw.

Translation is certainly a tool for better communication but, where economics
and power are the drivers, better communication doesn't necessarily lead to
better understanding. How many people on this list seriously study Islam?
How many people have cars and are contributing to Western swallowing up of
world resources? How can we have understanding without changing our personal
life-styles (otherwise everything we say most self-righteously is a discrete
lie)? In terms of US attitudes, I am more interested in the blindness towards
what one oneself possesses and the secret influence that has on perception of
US power in the world. But then, I am concerned in such blindness in myself
too.

In the confrontation with Islamic integrationism, how does the West back off
from commerical pressuring? How does it encourage the more tolerant forms of
Islam? How does it respond to terrorism without multiplying it? Clinton may
yet rue his determination to act strongly, because it robs the US of its
properly righteous indignation against terrorism and, by invading national
borders in a bullyboy way, may encourage more moderate Muslims towards the
protection of their own camp. US public opnion polls show that retaliation
seems justified -- as I say, terrorism is a contained evil. Human use of
world resources is an uncontained evil and the WTO is its Moloch.

But who am I to express opinions here? I don't know happen to know what to do
about either the WTO or about integrationism!

Doug


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