Well I have to say that canons are useful, afterall we can't possibly be 
saying that all poets are equal or that all texts are of equal worth, unless
you are merely building a corpus. So canons are merely the fashionable
contrivances of the age in offering us glimpses into coteries of one kind or
another, this being one. I'm with Ken here. We need more canons so that we
can, through conflict, arrive at some notions of quality. What survives of
course is up to the readers.

I'm not sure that I want to consider poetry with an open mind? Do any of us
really purport to do this, the recent postings certainly don't betray such
beneficence. I'd rather come along with all my prejudices and have some of
them toppled and some of them confirmed. But critically I am the product of
my prejudices and that's the way I want to stay, they are afterall my
prejudices.

Pluralism is the enemy of culture isn't it, I mean power sharing is a bit
like watery beer. Does that mean we all go for MacDonalds and watch Disney
and drink Coke? I mean, I'm all for breadth, but cheesy openness would mean
allowing the vandals through the city gates, we'd all be reading Roger
McGough and choking with laughter at those terribly funny poems from Pam
Eyres. Equally, it's a bit like thinking that the world of true poetry is
being protected in the chiselling colleges of Cambridge, hoo haa.

Lastly, it is true to say that poets that survive the centuries are usually
bigger than the canons they came from. Kerboom. So let's not have openness
and pluralism, let's keep warring on what gets read, by whom and why. It's
much more fun, and we can get to slag off all the boring arid bastards we
know and love. Bob Adamson NOT being amongst them, for me.


Best

C



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