Chris Emery is right, I think, about 'canons'. One might be more or less
willing to be open to conversion than Chis claims to be, but still...
On the other hand, if a canon is a take on, or (personal mental) picture of
the field, a range of preferences & of perceived connections, supportive &
explanatory contexts for the parts of the picture that seem most important.
. . then how many of the professed pluralists on the list have radically
changed their conceptions over the last few months, years, decades? That
is, I find it hard to believe people are so non-judgemental. Tolerant,
maybe - but what, no reservations, no estimations, no commitments to ways
of thinking & writing?
A canon might be relatively exclusive or be more plural, might include
opposed & or alternative strands or traditions within it. Or might not.
And personal, working hypotheses-type conceptions might shade off into
areas of suspicion (could school X really be important? will poets N & M
turn out to be more important/influential than R & V?), areas of
what-me-worry (ie, poet P seems to be praised by certain factions but me, I
can't see it. Shrug.) And will adjust gradually (poet D was terrific, but
the lineage subsequent to her has narrowed to this & this characteristic &
doesn't seem usefully able to deal with certain sorts of subject matter -
so what derived or 'foreign' stances might allow for the required
flexibility?), adjust to changes & perceived changes or will change just
thru development of the person doing this thinking. You know, Kuhnian
"loci of commitment" & "shifts of paradigm"?
I find it hard to conceive of a working poet having no picture of
Where-it's-At (of singular or plural, but FINITE locations) - while at
the same time they might not necessarily have feeling that this is FACT,
let alone verifiable or demonstrable.
(For what it's worth, Robert Adamson, like many poets, in his poetry
invokes particular traditions or lineages - that he feels akin
to/interestingly opposed to or in dialogue with.)
I'm sure that this denial of maps-of-the-terrain & of allegiance to kinds
of thinking/writing/feeling & attendant areas of attention makes for the
"Shucks, I don't know" sort of responses many gave to the question a few
weeks ago of why women weren't being included in male-edited anthologies.
Cheers
Ken Bolton
Otis Rush, Ken Bolton and Little Esther Books
PO Box 8091, Station Arcade, South Australia 5000
Fax +61 (0)8 8211 7323
Website http://www.eaf.asn.au/otisrush.html
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