Although I don't want to pursue the subject I'd just like to say how good
Robert Kelley's letter is. Because it doesn't back authority behind itself.
In saying these things about late Olson and speaking against
unfinishedness and language-centering, etc., I'm aware that I'm speaking
contrary to a vast literary orthodoxy and would expect, especially if
anyone from U.S.A. could hear me, an immediate salvo of deadly missiles.
But Robert speaks only as himself, so we simply disagree, which is fine.
Alice Notley said recently that too many poets are so concerned about the
future of poetry and thus its rightness or wrongness as a direction, rather
than its presence now, in which it will be multi-directional and different
readers for different reasons will locate value disagreeingly.
I think there are some very fine pieces in Maximus III especially among the
extended ones, like whatsitsname, Okeanos. But for my purposes there are
to many notebook pages in it and too much haphazardness of transfer. well
I'm just an old fashioned curate really. What I'm mainly happy to
disagree about is the either/or between process and product, because I
don't think those are the reader's real alternatives.
/PR
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|