Was going to backchannel this to Peter but since he seems to be leaving
the room for a while I thought I'd send it to everyone. It's a classic
example of the e-mail reply mode which Peter dislikes and then procedes to
use himself...
On Wed, 15 Apr 1998, Peter Riley wrote:
> Of course there are no readers for most ("postmodern
> + linguistically innovative" two terms I heartily detest) poetry which
> despises the very concept of readership...
- 3. despise readership? who does this? I've not met 'em. If they despise
readership why do they publish/perform or whatever they do?
- 2. two terms you heartily dislike and perhaps I can see why - too big,
too general, to start with. Care to suggest alternatives? Or should we
just writhe under the general censure?
- 1. no readers? not true. Where "this sort of stuff" [provisional term,
pending other definition] gets around, it gets readers, and the readers
respond, more often than not, positively. Or, such has been my experience.
The rest is just statistics.
> There's nothing necessarily
> wrong with writing like that and it may have some kind of future (though
> it's been going on for about 80 years now without getting anywhere much)
- rather a hasty obit for a bunch of pretty decent writers, I'd've thought
(if I understand correctly who you mean). "getting anywhere" in what
terms? Global Domination? Public Honours? Invitations to Corporate
Backslapping events?
RC
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