uh, responding to Fred's challenge with some reluctance on the assumption
that FB will one day return to his (neighbour's) tent and it'd be rude not
to. 

On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Douglas Clark (in his Fred Beake voice) wrote:

> As to the idea that I should be being unpleasant
> in some unspecified way towards Bill Griffiths, or Maggie O'Sullivan, both
> of whose work I have loved for twenty years, and premoted whenever I have
> had the chance, the least said probably the better.

- then you are the victim of your own over-generalisation: if you want to
exclude them from your global criticism, you should do so. More helpfully
still, you could include the odd example of who you INclude, to give us
some idea what you mean.

>                   2. You clearly don't like my ideas, which is fair enough,
> but what are yours? I notice with wearisome regularity that poets of
> whatever persuasion will not discuss rhythm, as if it were some great
> taboo. 

- I hadn't noticed a lack of discussion in this area, indeed I've gained a
lot by listening to such. We evidently move in very different circles, but
it's worth saying that Bunting, Olson, Zukofsky all put their twopenn'orth
in here, and other poets "too numerous to mention" have helped me -
perhaps unwittingly. But it hasn't brought me to a place from whence I can
issue What We Must Do statements myself. 

> So, what are YOUR views?

- Thanks for asking: I'd hope that my views were there for all to see in
my work, and even my sternest critics would agree that there's no need to
wrap a theory round it. Like others, my starting point is sound - "music"
if you must, but I think it muddies things if you say poetry is like
music, and music like drama and drama like cookery - "sound" is simpler. 
I'll restrict myself to what works for me, as I'm reluctant to prescribe,
since I'm still experimenting with it all (enjoying it, and hoping not to
come to any conclusions for a long time). 

So all I can say is how I got to this point, how it seems to me now. I
started with syllable counting when I was young (early teens) but got very
bored with it, so moved on to something which was more pulse driven (human
pulse, not legumes) - with a flexibility to take the time variation and
development I was familiar with as a musician. Sometimes this directed me
to dip into the eel-barrel of the past for models - you can see some
evidences of this in, say, _Wyatt's Dream_ or _Going Home_ - to name 2
"earlyish" poems in _Sweet Cicely_ and the Paladin anthology. Occasionally
I'd do versions of stricter forms, such as _Nine Englynion_ (in _Larksong
Signal and the new Stride anthology) where I built on approximations of
the metrical and rhyme structures of Old Welsh and still, I'm happy to
say, offended the purists. Even in this archeological work, I'd say, the
development is more important than the conforming. 

But gradually I guess I find it more impossible to take rhythm on its own,
separate from the other elements of the work. I'm trying to put together
sound structures which don't seek to conform to older models (tho I'm sure
a pedant could try to squeeze them in), but which are articulated and
justified in their own terms. This is, of course, a discovery process: I
can't build a theory about it (other than a theory of discovery). I'd say
I look for an interrelation, an interaction of all the elements of the
sound: stress, pulse, pattern, and syntax in a cats' cradle of tensions to
hold the thing together, and that the problems are never "solved" until
the work is voiced. I'd cite the 3-line stanzas I've recently posted to
the list as instances of this, but I would, wouldn't I. 

It's woefully slender as a "poetic" (yes indeed, say my critics) but I
insist, it ain't arbitrary (though it leaves nice big spaces in it for the
chance associations to come in): it ain't free verse, as they say, it's
bloody expensive. At times it's error-strewn (I'll never get a DTI
productivity award - believe me, you don't see a tenth of it) but they're
my own errors, and I won't dig into the past to justify them. It's not
even original (damned right, say the critics) - I can point to many other
poets following a similar haj - but, as the self-employed say, at least
you're your own boss. 

And my awareness of it is changing all the time (and - horror! some of the
poems posted to this list have contributed to this...). So I won't come up
with a tidy everyone-follow-me dictat to send to a poetry mag and corrupt
the young and vulnerable. If there's one thing worth resisting in this
world - in politicians, librarians, cheese-sellers and poets - it's
determinacy. Or so it seems to me at present.

RC








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