Glad to see Bill come back feistily. I'm very much with him in thinking that
Carl Rakosi deserved special treatment both on grounds of his distinguished
career and of his age, and that it would be a great shame if the Voice Box
should hold anyone to account long term for an genuine, good-hearted attempt
to extend this treatment to Carl, let alone justify from that a general
prejudice towards poetry from certain camps. I'm not at all sure this is what
the South Bank is doing, however, and would beware a too-ready name-calling
when, sometimes, these matters are best dealt with in more genial
conversations. Arts administrators wouldn't be right to judge artistic
questions according to a small budget dispute; it would exceed their authority
and be extremely petty.

Accuracy. Surely the only thing "new" about chat pages is that they are chat
and therefore subject to the kinds of error-correction that all conversation
endures. The real mistake comes when people misunderstand them as "written
submissions": much of the flaring comes out of that mistake because mistakes
of tone or fact that in conversation would be nudged into kinder mode or
gently corrected come to seem like a page of a book. Unfortunately, the fact
that archives stay on the Net eternally changes this "chat" aspect into
"book", but the conduct of the conversation will be harmed if we think like
that. The mainly interesting thing about contributing is, to me, that it's a
bit risky to my reputation sometimes.

In the present case, the thinned out version of what happened at the Voice Box
was all I could know out here in Paris. By fulling out Simon Smith's version
listees have taught me something. So thanks for that, Mr Grouser and others.

I have great problems with the term "avant-garde", because it has either
fallen right out of use (though there's nothing, really, to replace it --
don't give me "innovative", please), or it has narrowed into some definition
created by powerful or less powerful coteries. If by the term we merely mean
"pushing ahead into the future of poetry" it seems unobjectionable, for it
would not have to be defined.

I can only get into this by talking about my own practice. So please
understand I'm not trying to open a discussion about that. My own work of the
past eight years has been deliberately set against tight definitions of where
poetry "should" be headed, not because I am in opposition to those definitions
but because I think poetry "should" be more, not less, experimental. Also, in
poetry as in society I am terrifically against power-broking: I just hate
guruism. I believe that an individual poet's attack on the front positions
may be either spearhead-like or on a broad front of genres: if you try the
broad front the more doctrinaire spearheaders may think you're no longer being
"avant-garde", though you might be being very avant-garde indeed in your own
terms. Worse, they may think you have sold out. And, since these are your
friends, that's a hard road to travel, since you've been very careful about
those matters: it might be a sell-out, for example, to be afraid to leave safe
avant-garde pastures where you get instant approval for whatever you do.
Meanwhile, you still think that operations of language-upon-language, for
example, are a very positive direction, but add that they're only one way to
go. And you might welcome all other promising ways to go, without necessarily
wanting to join in all of them.

So, some New Year questions, designed to retrieve 1999 from the foothills of a
meaningless millennium: Suppose listees imagine what the world might be like
in 50 years' time. Suppose they look back on what happened in poetry in
1998-9. What will the avant-garde territories (or indeed the mainstream
territories) look like? Which tendencies look likely to have most usefully
served the future, either the future of poetry or, why not?, of the human
species, etc? Which will look like mere transient in-fighting for positions
of power?


Doug
 I am sorry to learn that Peter Riley inadvertently lost the
 text of my last message to the List. I have sent him a copy
 back-channel.
 Others may care to flick back a day or so and find that I never
 used the word 'complain' which Peter Riley attributes to me.
 It is difficult therefore to respond to his challenge to respond
 to a point I never made.
 But this is indeed one of my grouses: how can we be certain
 that information fed us on the List is accurate?
 Look for example at Simon Smith's submission of 20 Dec 1998.
 Is it accurate to claim that Alice Notley read at the Voice Box in
 the year before Carl Rakosi did?
 Are the terms the ideal description for Douglas Oliver, Alice Notley,
 Tony Lopez and Stepehn Rodefer? If so why not include mention of
 readings by poets like Brian Catling, cris cheek, and Aaron Williamson
 who I understand also read at the Voice Box in the period in question?
 Is it a type of poetry or particular poets that Simon Smith is
 supporting?
 Re-reading this strange 20 Dec public communication, I find it
 particularly hard to bring into corelation terms like 'shenanigans'
 and a 94-year-old poet like Carl Rakosi, whose health seems so prime a
 concern of Simon Smith that it forms a fit basis for a jibe at a third
 party. What should we in theory do in such cases? Ignore any
 potential breach of confidence in gentlemanly silence? Make a gentle
 remonstrance? Wonder why Simon Smith feels he has some innate right
 'to convinve the aforementioned organisers' about who should read at
 the Voice Box?
 The question of why certain poets are chosen for certain venues and
 others are ignored is indeed a proper question, in my opinion, to be
 asked. But I am afraid it will simply end up with some defending
 the integrity and others bemoaning the rifts in the existing sticky
 webs of patronage.
 
 In lamentation,
 
 
 bill
 
 ----------------------
 
 [log in to unmask]
 
 
 
 
 ------------------------------
 
 Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 10:52:17 GMT0BST
 From: "Peter Larkin" <[log in to unmask]>
 To: [log in to unmask]
 Subject: Messages of substance
 Message-Id: <[log in to unmask]>
 
 Bill's substantial post (whether lost or retained) reminds us of the
 ambivalent outfall of the pervading presence of the "techno" in much
 experiment, and he's quite right to demand whether it can show that
 it's doing anything more than glossing out the human as a mechanical
 fellow-traveller. But I do find Bill's appeal to openness and
 "undefined, infinite possibilities" of the human substitutes a vague
 sense of creativity in a way which is not so useful for the more
 specific skills of the verbal arts. Isn't an art functioning well
 when it intervenes between blocked pathways and empty horizons?
 Shouldn't the task of poetry be to de-rigidify but along the finite
 pathways of the human past & present in what is a local and timely task of
 realisation rather than a gesture at infinite openness? Of
 course poetry should dedicate itself to some sort of horizon, while
 taking care to place its skills at the service of remaining on this
 side of it, rather than diving off into a transcendental
 creativeness. >>


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