Keston: just thought I'd say that I'm very interested in your scheme to
reprint older texts. By all means. Perhaps Alan Halsey & others could
chip in knowledgably with suggestions for titles...? Of the authors you
mention I only know them from (ahem) DB Wyndham Lewis's _The Stuffed Owl_
(an anthology of comically bad verse). -- One personal favourite, though,
is William Diaper's wonderful _Sea Eclogues_ & _Halieuticks_--these were
available at one point in this century in an incredibly expensive Muses'
Library edition, but are now hard to get. (The curious may find a sampling
of the latter in Charles Tomlinson's _Oxford Book of Verse in English
Translation_.)
Re: the mainstream, I don't see the problem with the use of the term:
however inexact it may be, the considerable overlap between, e.g. the
recent Crawford/Armitage and O'Brien anthologies shows that its boundaries
are obvious enough to people on both sides. -- I'm in the probably not
unusual position of being _notionally_ openminded to this mainstream but in
the event being greatly disappointed when I actually read the stuff (& I've
read a lot of it lately). Again, like most of the people on this list I
have a spotty list of exceptions (Hill, Sisson, Markham, Redgrove, Gunn,
Davie, a very little Hughes...). Not very new-gen., I'll admit. But
actually, recently, I've been most excited by going back to earlier writers
in this century for whom classification is meaningless: Ivor Gurney, FR
Higgins, Lynette Roberts, Keith Douglas, Rosemary Tonks.... -- So: there's
one, possibly still "closeminded" view. -- Honestly, I'm pretty sure this
list already gave this topic a whirl a few times in recent memory; is there
much more to say?
All best--
N
Nate & Jane Dorward
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109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, ON, M2N 2B1, Canada
ph: (416) 221 6865
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