Re: Ric's suggestion. I think it would be best at present to wait and see
what happens. The threat to the future of Angel Exhaust itself may not be
serious. Duncan's retirement from it, however, is official and that is in
a way also "the end of Angel Exhaust" because whoever edits it it will
obviously not be the same magazine.
My opinion of Duncan's polemics is entirely beside the point. I disagree
with them sometimes to the point of detestation, and he views my own work
with such contempt that he can't even bring himself to attack it. But to
operate, directly or indirectly, on the source of public funding which
maintains the magazine in order to get it stopped is just thuggery.
Andrew Duncan is the only commentator on the current poetry scene to treat
it as an important public arena, rather than an artistic playground. I've
read all the recent articles and he hasn't slandered anybody or said
anything remotely calling for litigation or sabotage. When he deals with
someone properly, for or against, he argues in depth and at length from a
declared theoretical position, and deserves to be taken seriously, and we
need that kind of discourse. Unfortunately he also has a rotten habit of
throwing in casual and provocative gibes and swipes which dismiss poets
off-hand without criticism, and which are naturally very hurtful. I think
this is the main he reason he has made so many enemies. I've pointed it
out to him again and again but he won't stop.
But the actual intervention to the money people was not even to do with
that, it was pure insanity, pure paranoid homophobic insanity.
/./PR
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