Ken Edwards wrote:

While the authoritarianism of total serialism in music in the 1950s may
now

> be deplored, it is also true that this authoritarianism no longer
> holds
> sway. We have much more pluralism in composed music now - but Glock's
> legacy in this country is the acceptance of modernism as the major
> 20th
> century aesthetic phenomenon against which other movements in Western
> composed musics have to define themselves.
>
> Everyone must judge for themselves whether this was a healthier
> outcome
> than was the case in poetry, where currently there is no true
> pluralism:
> the battle has been entirely lost to aesthetic conservatism. Whether
> the
> Poetry Society/Poetry Review affair had a major bearing on this, or
> any
> bearing at all, I don't know. From my point of view, the outcome was
> significantly worse.
>
> Mottram's lurking aesthetic authoritarianism posed a problem for me -
> I say
> this as a committed friend, student and supporter. And the question of
>
> whether the Poetry Society faction of the mid-1970s made tactical
> errors in
> dealing with the Arts Council et al, refusing to compromise etc, is
> not one
> I want to resurrect (I seem to remember Peter Riley had quite a lot to
> say
> about it on this mailing list a few months back). But I seriously wish
> they
> hadn't lost. What we have NOW in poetry certainly seems like "the
> total
> exclusion of contrary points of view".


Frankly I can't comment on the Mottram stuff as I wasn't a poet and
wasn't involved. Ken is right though that the situation with modern
muisc (and modern art for that matter) is considerably different from
that which prevails in poetry. The difference surely is that the first
two are more passive experiences for the great mass of the public than
the latter. Where personal input is required (the effort of reading), a
more visceral response is often obtained. All of us on this list know
that the other two art forms need similar input but the great public at
large treats them as background or a momentary experience.

I still feel that Glock's legacy was pernicious - it effectively
destroyed musical careers (above all of tonal composers) and insisted on
a monolithic view of history which was just not the reality. The fact
that the current musical establishment is more open to experiment than
the poetic one is not a good reason to support its way of doing things.
And if anyone thinks of the current serious music world as being "open"
see what the reviews of Steve Reich have been like over recent years,
not to mention LaMonte Young or John Cage.

I guess at the end my point is that all controlling and defining forces
which set up a canon of orthodoxy are to be mistrusted - whether I
happen to align myself with their views or not - and I agree more with
Eric Mottrram than with most such editors. Poetry Review run by me (or
by most of us here on the list) might be "better" from our point of view
than the current Peter Forbes incarnation, but it would be every bit as
exclusive as the current one. But of course that's ok - "our" poets are
good, theirs are not. But that's what THEY say. There's no universal
paradigm that allows us to point out the errors of others with any
valididty other than: nyah, nyah I'm right and you're wrong. That goes
both ways of course. The world of art is a complicated place, full of
bald guys fighting over combs (sorry Jorge Luis), and just as full of
petty social climbing and careerism as the corporate world I spend the
rest of my life in. And I'm not surprised - that's how the world works
in my experience.

It's sad, but I'll carry on plowing my lonely furrow, supporting the
people I think are worth supporting, and hoping I can convert a few
bodies along the way. And what we STILL need is an inclusive kind of
magazine that's open to many different types of writing. Ken Bolton's
Otis Rush magazine in Adelaide did this, if I can judge from the last
couple of issues, John Kinsella's Salt still does it, Tranter's on-line
Jacket does it, though in a less compendious way. Maybe we can hope for
Stand under JK's stewardship to be a broad-minded enterprise?

Sorry if anyone's offended by this diatribe, but cultural commissars
(or Gauleiter) of the Glock type tend to cause a visceral reaction in
me. Maybe that's my problem, but I'm betting it's more general than
that.

Tony




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