Animadversion! Here are some tenets you may thrill to call arbitrary!

1. That the world is very much affected by very real -authorities-. This
goes on in the snippet of the world still called poetry, just as it does
elsewhere. What is required of us is not a theoretically bolstered
supinity, since this is precisely the attitude that correlates most
glaringly with the free market principles that ARE authority within
POETRY. Enjoy everything, give everything a chance, censor the speed of
your intuition so that it cannot be negative violently, look at the range
on offer, Get One Of Each. The concept that this open-mindedness is
meaningfully demonstrative of temperate POLITICS, is a flag concept. It
is precisely THIS ATTITUDE that is a rude echo of free market AUTHORITY.
Its primary conditions of survival are opulence and leisure.

2. As Marx said of philosophy: poetry should not describe the world, it
should change it. And of course it should, since anyhow this is
inevitable; the modal 'should' is purely decorative. What does this imply
about criticism? About reportage? About the gangsterism of repute?
Similarly I feel: in writing about poetry (and of course about poets) we
should not attempt merely to -describe- what it achieves, how it may
perplex or elucidate, how it appeals or does not, since anyhow this is
merely a propaganda prescribed by the belief that a positivist objective
critical attitude is a testimony of rational 'political' consideration. I
consider quite rationally that we ought rather to see propaganda for what
it is. When Roger described Lee Harwood's shirt, this was a piece of
propaganda, albeit the slightest sliver: the aspect is gerundive, what is
reported -ought to be- recognised as the disinterested observation of one
for whom the fact of a simple detail (and the small comedy of this) has
not been obliterated by some tyrannical and programmatic interest in
-evaluating-. This is evaluative inherently. It presents a
self-image characterized by negation of an -undesired- interest of another
writer. It is all propaganda: not in the sense ruined by eg Goebbels, not
in that we are straightforward conduits for an official enlightenment.
Some degrees of bending -are- in evidence. But it is propaganda LATENTLY,
we can (and MUST) anticipate a time at which retrogressive appeals will be
made to what we are saying NOW, and at which the propagandistic core of
our overt or not-so-overt prescriptions will submit to a new complex of
theoretic sanctions. To overlook this or wish it away incredulously is
most irresponsible. The question we have is this: with what power of
veracity is our propaganda more than an advert? I do not want to
advertise the assumption that 'reading around', the kind of prolific
delight and regard that is so favourably mentioned on this list, has
anything whatsoever to do with any real political concern outside of the
ambit of literary criticism. On the strength of itself, it does not.


3. The flipside of this is NOT that some poets are better than others,
that there ought to be a moral spectrum from bibliofind.com to a
remaindered scrapheap. John Brewer has written a book called The Sinews
of Power, a history of the development of the British fiscal-military
State following the 1688 revolution. His focus is innovative: he does
not write about Kings, statesmen, famous generals, poets, but about
excisemen and tax collectors, the great administrative body that worked to
secure Cicero's 'infinite money' and allow (eg) George II to achieve great
naval victories in (eg) 1759. A history of poetry could learn from this
method. Many poets are key to the development and retardation of the
language, to the discovery or cancellation of its possibilities for useful
or exchangeable expression. Some of these poets might be considered
'administrators' of Shelley's transcendent 'legislative' coterie. Or at
least, this somewhat facile set-up could function more simply were it not
demanded of us to ask, what poetry would be the executive? Anyhow, the
spectrum is not moral but truly -professional-, state-hierarchic and
remunerative. Where does Lee Harwood fit into the State, what is his
function relative to (say) myself, or (say) Tim Henman or Jack Straw. How
could 'literature' possibly be so caulked as to neglect this question.
And how could any heart be so desecrated as to find it miserable.


4. To object to a poetry is to object to its -function-. This is a very
proper type of objection indeed, and every possibility of its occuring
should be made obvious, so that as many people as possible are capable of
objecting. To call this aggressive or 'Darwinist' is absurd; it is the
opposite tendency, the prejudice against violent dissent, that acts to
suppress the critical perspicacity of its inheritors. People deserve to
be able to object to a poetry's function. Without this ability,
Benjamin's issue cannot be overcome: how is poetry more than mere
entertainment? It is, because it is a -function of the State-, and ought
to be criticized as such. It is this vulnerability that causes also
poetry's greatest fortitude and highest power of commitment.


I could go on and on. Let's stop talking about poetry as if it were the
trimmings of some teleologized democracy. Of course there are
hierarchies. Of course. Professional hierarchies.

                       

k



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