>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 13:52:35 -0800
>To: "K.M. Sutherland" <[log in to unmask]>
>From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: e.g. mayan decapitated-head tennis
>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
>References: <[log in to unmask]>
>
>Point taken.
>
>Off the subject, but as long as I'm thinking about Olson: there's a
tendency to see his large claims as claims for American art as opposed to
European, and that's certainly there. But I think it's important to
understand the context. American art (all genres) was dominated by work
modeled on pretty bad European precedents--when in retrospect we see the
plastic arts, for instance, dominated by the Armory Show and the group that
Stieglitz exhibited at 291 it's because we've filtered out a lot of
pompier-like dreck and also some pretty good provincial painters like
Inness. The same was true in literature. At a time when much of European
plastic and literary art was profoundly invested in modernism (and had been
for a couple of decades) poetry in the US was dominated by John Ciardi on
the one hand and the New Critics on the other. It's his annoyance at that
wannabe genteel Europeans active in America that fuels Olson's opposition
of the American to the European.
>
>At 08:56 PM 12/14/99 +0000, you wrote:
>>
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>>Mark -- I agree of course, and come at the question through a perplexed
>>allegiance to what Olson did manage both to achieve and to suggest in the
>>work developed out of his own innovative optimism. But already in your
>>note you're taking a more wide-angled view than Olson could within the
>>restrictions of his project have admitted.
>>
>>k
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>>
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