Can we take it that there is a broad concensus now - from Forbes to
Griffiths and others, perhaps indeed everyone except Duncan - that folk
legends of a collapse-in-sales of Poetry Review in the Mottram era (over
two decades ago) are not supported by fact, and have no place in a serious
critical argument.
We may also choose to add that all the evidence which has been presented
suggests that in fact the opposite is true. But the most significant
point, which Bill makes so well, is that you simply don't judge a poem by
its sales or circulation figures, and that this too is inappropriate in
criticism of any standing. This was indeed a point of my rather sloppy
piece about poems making their own spaces.
As Bill suggests, you can try to weild a history - ANY history - like a
club, but it doesn't get you any closer to understanding the poems of a
period, still less the poems you need to write NOW.
I hope that this will, in due course, lead us back to poems and poetry as
the main subjects of our discussion.
RC
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