I'd like to keep my response to Peter's remarks brief. It's already
embarrassing that, because of a programme glytch, I seem to be sending all my
messages twice at the moment.

His complaint about my remarks on Britain is entirely justified and I'm not
going to back it up by mumbling away about all the reasons I had for sounding
off.

I have just been looking at an old 1970 copy of Peter's mag Collection Seven
and was amazed to see how much new ground it broke -- great inclusion of
poetry from abroad, land art caught at the very beginning, some of the best
examples of Cambridge work from the period, etc.

I briefly referred to Anthony Barnett's translation of Anne-Marie Albiach, but
now we seem to have wandered into another discussion about every Brit poet who
has ever done translation. Anthony's record is exemplary, of course. If you
read my original messages I wasn't praising the language po's for
participating in Royaumont, merely saying that "language theory" poses no
obstacle to participating in translation. I know all about Franco-American
connections and the literary politics of it.

Peter's current move towards plain talk, modesty, truth, and beauty fits his
own practice well and is, in those terms, the truthful foundation of a
poetics. I do believe he was being sweeping in his responses to tendencies in
poetry, especially in the US, which don't fit that programme.

In the States, there's a boiling and an upsurge, and it makes me
uncomfortable, as it should. All those young people stealing a march! I
don't recommend travelling per se; but if you live there you do have to deal
with it, not as another set of particulars but as a really urgent challenge to
your own practices. In my own life I have decided to welcome this as my way
of learning. The easier path is to track all the bullshit in it: yes, it's
very easy -- there's always bullshit to track, but some of it was left behind
on the trail I myself have followed through my poetic life. And on Yeats's
trail, Pound's, Eliot's, name them.

I only believe in modesty, etc. up to a point. I don't look back down the
long halls of poetry and find all that much of it. And I don't think Peter's
rule of poetic life matches my own, or should. Otherwise, he wouldn't be
writing to the quality of his present work and I wouldn't be stepping into
deep water all the time!

Best

Doug


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