>>It reeks of closed mindedness.
>
>
>and bitterness
>
>
>Anthony


Hello

I'm suspicious of the tactics of some anti-mainstream rhetoric and agree
that the "mainstream" is, as Robert Sheppard suggests, a "construction," or
it can be, at least in part, though it's not simply that. I'd even say
that it can be, er, fluid. Does it, as Peter Riley speculates, refer to a
style avoiding extremes? That seems to be one of its uses, though all of
that also would be, er, fluid (more or less). Sociologically speaking
("commit sociology--no!") it might mean something else, though that's where
the problems come in as poets, perhaps especially so-called "alternative"
poets, graft style and poetic modes onto larger social and political maps
with little finesse and a lot of self-congratulation.

Nevertheless, concrete examples might help. Imagine a book, an anthology
say, which would seek to be eclectic in sampling a fairly wide range of
poetry from throughout the century. Imagine that it included among
post-1950 poets names such as Larkin, Davie, Jennings, Hughes, Hill, Gunn,
Heaney, Markham, Mahon, Dunn, Harrison, McGuckian, Raine, Lochhead,
Muldoon, Dabydeen, Kay, Shapcott, and Duffy (just to give a few examples
that come to mind) alongside others such as Prynne, P, D and J Riley,
Raworth, O'Sullivan, A and R Fisher, Cobbing, and C Walsh (to give just a
few others sometimes supposed to be a small part of some kind of
alternative). Now one would think that such a book could shape or reflect
a pluralism, eclecticism, etc.

But nobody is ever happy really: the smaller the pie, the sharper the
knife; the sharper the knife, the smaller the pie, as a friend of mine used
to say. Only so many pages in any book. Imagine that a so-called
"mainstream" poet and critic got wind of such an experiment and had a look
and found himself excluded--for whatever reason. Would he write something
like the following?

***

Judging by the proposed contents, this XXXXXX seeks to demote or ignore
many poems and poets who might be said to belong to the "middle ground,"
and to promote those associated with an "alternative tradition." Its
title, however, seems to promise a panoptic survey. The first thing that
XXX needs to address, therefore, is what sort of book they want, and what
sort they have had delivered to them. If it's published more or less as it
stands (promising one thing, being another) it will get a severe kicking in
the reviews.

. . .

The catalogue of missing figures is laughably long. Among those that
immediately occurred to me are: Enright, Thwaite, Brownjohn, Beer, Fuller,
Longley, Maxwell, O'Brien, Fenton, Paterson, Jamie, d'Aguiar, Hofmann,
Reid, Szirtes, Carson, Didsbury, Selima Hill, Cope, O'Donaghue,
Williams--and me for god's sake!

The celebration of poets like Prynne, the three Rileys etc. is fine--but
the price that everyone else has to pay is unbearably high.

. . .

I'm sure that many, if not most reviewers will think, as I do, that the
book is deeply irresponsible, ignorant, confused--and confusing.

I urge XXXXX to sort it out, either by keeping the title and broadening the
range of poetry included; or by changing the title to make clear that the
anthology favours 'alternative" (and American-loyal) poetry, and really has
no time for or understanding of "the English line."

***

And so on. Imagine that the word "mainstream" was itself used in some
other part of such a text, proudly--with a sense of the writer's ownership
of the term. As with "middle-ground" above.

Closed-mindedness? Bitterness? You be the judge.

Perhaps this would be the rhetoric of a "mainstream" beyond
"constructedness," of someone who both imagines and really does have the
power of a special kind of naming. As Peter Riley suggests, having the
history of a term like "mainstream" would be useful, but one wants also to
know its current inflections--all of its uses and what it means when X as
opposed to Y uses it and how these are related and the stagnation and
animosity resulting, etc.. There is, apparently, no escaping the term. So
I think that everyone on this list should put in a bid for it if they want
to, though maybe you don't. Robert Creeley has said somewhere that some of
the terms the so-called "alternatives" tend to use can be
self-marginalizing--maybe he's right. I'd insist on a right to name
yourself or, better yet, to refuse to name yourself except as "whatever."

in haste,
Keith Tuma





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