Stephen -

I find this so problematic it's hard to know where to start, especially
as I have a sense that your argument is predicated on any number of
things of which I have no knowledge, social placings and attitudes and
the like. But I ask again, what do you mean by "changing society"?
Should we all go into Parliament?

Personally I don't care whether a poet is popular or not, and my valuings
of poetry tend to the apolitical rather than otherwise, although this is
often rather fraught and contradictory. But I gather from what you say
that you are responding to secondary valuings - critical canons, academic
whatsits or whatever - rather than directly responding to poetries
themselves. Surely this is a trap, which consolidates the place of the
academy rather than otherwise? And surely people can be permitted their
preferences of expressiveness without being accused of snobbery, inverted
or not, or even - gasp - Anglo-Catholicism? Or is all poetry that
attempts to deal with complex ideas of reality and language a high
falutin waste of time, above the heads of "ordinary" people? (I think
that's a little patronising.)

Doug Oliver was asking a similar question some time ago, couched rather
differently. I don't doubt there is a real question there. It's that
somehow your terms seem so reductive, so didactic, I fear that poetry
will get washed out of the argument altogether.

> If you wish to change things you do not write about
>stones or geological faultlines in the psyche, you write directly and
>explicitly in a language that is understood by many people.

It's difficult not to point out (I have a feeling I have before) that
Mandelstam drew from contemporary sciences and other arcane knowledges,
and his poetry is often very difficult to grasp on first or subsequent
readings. This didn't stop his impact, although he comes from very
different historical and political circumstances than we do. But again,
I'm not sure what you mean by "impact".

What's this Prynne-thing you have? Should he be shot at dawn?

Best

Alison




Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Literary Arts Magazine
PO Box 186
NEWPORT VIC 3015

Masthead online: http://www.masthead.com.au
Home page: http:www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338




%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%