I'd like to echo Douglas Oliver's dissatisfaction with the terms innovative
and experimental. Though I find avant-garde whiffs of the militaristic.
Alison Croggon's point about the porosity of the mainstream / alternative
is appostite too.
Maurice Scully once said to me that he considers himself an "ordinary" poet
in that he writes about ordinary things in an ordinary way, not bossing and
shining until you're blinded by the dazzle.
But it's not like cats and dogs. You can't even divide them by saying
there's the kind you find in bookshops and the kind that fight about the
name of the group to which they say they don't belong. There's all these
canine moggies knocking around.
Anyway, aren't mainstream, innovative, alternative, experimental, avon
gourd such boring names. I wouldn't even buy a tub of margarine called
that. Anyone got any more exciting names?
Randolph Healy
Visit the Sound Eye website at:
http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_hme.htm
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