Gosh, I take a few days away and my inbox gets tidally washed with
mentions of OTHER. Thanks to all who've commented. What strikes me, at
this point, is the difference between britpo and buffpo comments on the
intro as posted in Jacket #4 - with the buffpo folk largely saying (a) why
all this centre / periphery argument stuff still? and (b) why not more
aggression towards the perceived centre? (that's 2 different threads, by
the way) and britpo folk homing in on the who's in / who's out issue. I've
replied to buff(a), but not yet to buff(b) tho I guess the substance of my
reply will be, Oh, it would have just taken up more space (we already
pushed our kindly publishers up to 350pp from the agreed 300, and from
c.48 poets to 55) and really, our intention throughout is to throw
attention on what IS there, rather than what isn't.

We haven't got permission from Wesleyan to circulate the contents at this
stage. Some of the most obvious absences from OTHER are attributable
directly to the poets themselves, not responding, or responding late or
inconclusively. Obviously, we regret that: we held the bus as long as we
could, then we had to get on with what we had, which was, I'd say, not
inconsiderable. 

To Doug and others, I'd have to say that if there's a NofE "bias" in OTHER
I wouldn't be totally surprised, though we've tried to at least keep it in
proportion: even the NofE "section" (there isn't one) is far from
comprehensive. I'd love to claim the gift of total objectivity, but
obviously I can't. I guess that like all anthologists (even the great Don
Allen) we worked from the limitations of where we're placed, and try to
overcome them. We've tried to be pretty culturally diverse - certainly
gone further down that road than many others - but probably not as far as
some would like. With such a huge "field", comprehensiveness is out of the
question - this is certainly not an attempt at a new "canon". We thus risk
very much offending so many people by the exclusions: Doug, you rightly
query if we've got enough Scots on board, and the answer is probably not
(though we have got Clark and Leonard, to name two who've already cropped
up, and more besides). Trevor, you've queried at length our selection of
Irish poets, which you feel to be anglo-skewed, and you're certainly well
placed to support that, though as I've said to you, backchannel, I find
your arguments more socio-cultural than poetic, and you've yet to support
them with text. Doug, you mentioned Younger Cambridge Poets, where the
first two terms seem negotiable, but I'm willing to admit that, yes, in
general terms some of our selection processes did favour people who'd been
active for more, rather than less of the period, and therefore we had a
body of work to consider - this mitigates against the "younger" bit
(though there are exceptions) in a way which I regret - and I can only
say to them, the neglected youth, there'll probably be another bus along
in a minute.

One by one every member of this list can come back to us and say there's
not enough of [insert name of favoured group/s or poets here] and I'll say
yes, you're right - but to get more of x in we'd need to shoot poets y and
z (or a proportion of them) and that, I'd argue, would distort the overall
picture even more, diminish still further the pluralities included. People
get quite reticent when it comes to the poet-shooting nominations, I'm
gratified to say - but that such is the nature of the decision-making
involved and, believe me, it's damned hard, I lie awake wondering if we
made the right choices, sorry for the ones who didn't get into the
lifeboats, a situation I've been in myself many times.  I'd've loved a
publisher who'd offer us double the space - but it just didn't seem
reasonable to wait for one to turn up. 

I'd hope we could eventually view the work in OTHER in terms not simply of
numerical name- or- page-counts (the bums-on-pews approach) but in the way
in which the work we've included reflects and reacts with the other work
included.  As we tried to say in the intro, we're dealing with pluralities
here, and that implies interaction, the "intellectually and aesthetically
challenging kaleidoscope of poems" as Charles Bernstein charmingly blurbs
it. If you're looking for a definitive map of these fields, this isn't it,
and I'd distrust anything which claimed to be so. Treat it as a touring
guide - you may find it short on the place you've lived for thirty years,
but - I hope - an eye-opener for the places you're about to visit. For
most US/Canadian readers and many UK/Ireland readers it'll pretty well ALL
be eye-opener, even now. 

RC







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