I really don't like being rude, well without provocation, but this seems
vague and flowery to me and I don't finally know what you are saying though
it took a long time to say it.
Technique is *of *course important - in prose as well as poetry, in email
postings as well as anywhere... Actually, the key word is _innovative_.
Otherwise it gets lost under a lot of stuff that isn't.
_Mainstream_? Armitage? Yawn. Leave the dead to bury the dead.
I sincerely hope this list doesn't have a _mission statement_ or anything so
bogus - e.g. getting a sense of community out of selling - though attention
to the objectives of the list is certainly needed.
From: Ernest Slyman <[log in to unmask]>
To: british-poets <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 28 June 1998 23:51
Subject: Innovation
|The idea of verse innovative or experimental in technique as spelled out in
|the mission statement for the brit-poets introductory remarks is ambitious
|and of course hopeful to that end. The key word for me being "technique."
|
|Fine that poets seek the higher ground. The leaps and bounds one assumes
|that the pen makes from the past into the bleary-eyed tomorrow requiring a
|bit of dodging poetry's illustrious past.
|
|Self-delusion that one make anything purely itself. Mild hysteria and a
dose
|of amnesia required to feed the mind of the young poet. Mass hypnosis for
|the culture of the new. The elusiveness of the poet from literature's
|sparkling suns and moons. Though bright around fall all the skirmishes of
|light, illuminating the path for the poet. Many poets sometimes appear to
|fumble in the dark, insisting on making their own light. Innovation it
would
|often seem requires a blindness to the brilliant literary sunrises and
|sunsets which are very much still with us.
|
|Each dawn not necessarily any brighter for being new. What goes on burning
|in each of us would kindle and power a small city. Any obfuscation, whether
|be self-imposed or due to poor eyesight, often strikes me as wayward,
|semi-illiterate and ego-centric.
|
|A bit of self-flattery, albeit an epidemic when it involves a class of
|folks. So large a populace as those who pen poems, either for publishers or
|for their own amusement.
|
|What truly innovates is what has come before. The oldest sunrise burns
|brightest. The trickery is that the living insist otherwise.
|Ernest Slyman
|HomePage
|www.geocities.com/soho/7514
|email: [log in to unmask]
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