When I was a lad, it was loadsa fun to rubbish Stein (unless received,
re-sieved through the ok channel of Duncan) and nobody knew any better
because - in our part of the world - you couldn't get a decent text
anywhere and it's so much easier to rubbish things you've not read.  (OK,
I should've been able to find Look At Me Now And Here I Am, seems a pretty
good introduction to me, Peguin 1971, but I didn't) All that changed for
me in the early 90s when I started to come across bits I could believe in,
including the excellent Stein Reader ed. by Ulla Dydo (1993) - I had to
start all over again. The 2-decade delay, during which parts of my brains
vulcanised, is unforgiveable: I can now see the sheer pleasure of her
writing, and its importance too. Tender Buttons 1st published 1914,
ferchrissakes - but it's not the dating which makes it remarkable, other
than as a record of the time it takes for a text to find its readership.
I'm glad to say I'm not alone in coming to this late realisation but it
wouldn't alter my sense of discovery.

Before we consider all these foolhardy trailblazers whose end up with
their work in "horrific barren wastelands" or more simply "in a mess" we
might perhaps think if the people concerned would share these opinions.
Pound might, for instance: there's something profoundly moving (to me)
about the fragmentary late Pound stumbling towards recognition of error,
in a way which is just as unique as his early work: how many big
recognition of error poems can you think of? Zukofsky? Well, he showed no
sign of "repenting" 80 Flowers - a work which I'd say was anything but a
barren wasteland, however "difficult" it is - he was going on to "90
Trees"... And if they did thus end up in a wasteland mess (for which
little evidence has been produced) does that imply that we should give the
whole thing a miss and head for something safer? I hope not. 

So much of the work on Peter's list seems to manifestly justify itself -
"you will have to go a long way round / if you want to avoid them"  as
Bunting said of Pound's Cantos - that I'd rather just read them, learn
what I can from them (even if I've left it too late) and move on. I'd
certainly rather bang my poor tired noddle against Finnegans Wake than
what was it? The Honorary Consul ... ? But I'd hate to meet anyone who
treated either as life-guiding revealer.

Antholgisers of any persuasion have got to come down and STOP being
hierarchical or canonical: you'll notice that in our intro to Other (the
word hardly suggests a canon, does it?) we go to some lengths to avoid
that rap, and only a really stupid reader will pick up that book and say
Ah, so this is the "Others" group is it?... But then, there are a lot of
stupid readers about.

And so we come to Peter's I-can't-list-em, er, ok-I'll-list-em list: great
names, and worth talking about (some are in Other). It's interesting to
see Brian Marley there, as he is so often when I play the listing game,
though he stopped writing poetry some years ago. I mentioned him to Andrew
Duncan when he (Andrew) was listing Great Northern Poets. And he replied,
who's Brian Marley?  I'll do a Brian Marley bit, Peter, if you'll do some
of the others.

RC











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