Dear List,

Like Lawrence's my e-mail server has been erratic, though I still
faced some 300 messages undealt with this January. A very few I
should like to comment on.

I note Peter Riley’s exasperation at the quality of contribution to
the list; some of this apparent decline I attribute to the technique
of reducing to ridicule that which it is deemed improper to answer,
until no one any longer 'gives a fig' for any issue involved.
Yet there are subtler forces involved, and I incline to agree with
Alaric (if I have understood aright) that an e-mail list is a
strange extra-sensory experience. It reminds me of a court room or
a 'public' enquiry into which you are not allowed to introduce any
evidence from the real world, but have to convince or otherwise by
virtue of rhetoric, education, affiliation, etc. in a purely internal
process. It is deemed improper to mention names from outside the
List, yet the alternative of self-important circularity seems to me
rather worthwhile avoiding.
The main problem I find is not with netiquette, not with personal
reference or abuse, political comment or failure thereof, but our
inability as a List to recognise the essential WASP-like nature of
our make-up and values. As a jury, we are inadequate. We have not
even begun to question the values that underpin our literary and
technical assumptions, but spin around on top of a Western philsophy
as if this exhibits virtue.
The perpetuation of one concept of a proper human being is not the
business of poetry, if I may make such an assertion. Plato and
Aristotle may help us understand what a few 19th century scholars
intended, but do not indicate a wonderful lineage of unbroken thought
giving us thousands of years of advantage over everyone else. Islam
could claim the same. As for the convenient Indo-European theories,
as far as I can make out, they are a myth based on supposed unity of
worship and developed to give support to claims for democracy and
ultimately nationalism in the early 19th century. Mostly what is
involved in such gestures is the intention to define and control the
human.
This century the main contender has been Freud, and his literary
impact in seeking fixed motives for human action, and by inference,
via a mind of different levels, a possible escape from conscious
thought - into realms of alternative non-linear thinking, dominate
a lot of what is produced around us, even in terms of 'experiment'.
If we exist in an experience of time, can we really appreciate a
type of thought that is non-linear? Does the cut-up technique
with its random implications really provide camouflage against the
gods of consciousness? Can we even chant our way out of time?
Whether technology directly affects creativity, via the medium, is
a parallel point. Does Open Field Poetry owe its spacing to
the potentials of the typewriter? Do we avoid metaphor in the search
for a universal language without decoration, complexity or too much
verbal connotation - citing the supposed directness of the (to us)
newly explained Chinese written character? Does multi-voice poetry
reflect the potential for multiple tracks on recording equipment, and
sound poetry the ability to produce an electronic synthesis for
voice? In short has the machine led the way to experiment and
enlargement of resources, or is it used to bring the human into line
with the mechanical, and make the art product very smart, very
symmetrical, very neat, very clean and more elite than ever?
>From which you may guess I think that art is best reflecting and
encouraging - if anything - the openness and undefined, infinite
possibilities in the human, not the traditional, accepted, debated
and tried paths of the past, which lead only to more social rigidiy
and inequality.
Now I do not claim to achieved any of this enlightenment I muse
about, but I am concerned in whether the List is going to be able to
accommodate a width of experience and approach, or simply get bogged
down by its own preconceptions. I find it strange for example that
it initiates a discussion of the policy of the readings at the Voice
Box, without looking at those of the Cambridge Poetry Festival or
any other group - or the intricacies and risks of grant-funding as a
type. Again, is politics really something so mundane so impure that
it can only be mentioned as a concept apart from poetry? Of course,
it is intriguing to wonder whether 'Left' and 'Right' have any
validity other than as concepts of self-definition, vitually equal to
popular and elite. For me, if you leave out grace-of-god and genius
then hard work and social/political attitude count a lot.
But even here is there not endless paradox? For example, if a poet
were visiting China, say, when an embarrassing incident like the
Tianaman Square ‘upset’ occurred, what should that poet’s reaction
be? How could it be counted - whatever it was - either Left or
Right? Such abstracts can let us down badly.
What am I arguing? Not that a technological system like the List
works inevitably towards the creation of a self-supporting elite,
but that without awareness of its role, it can too easily be
swayed by tone and type, and that it can end up conforming to the
specification of 'controlled crowd' rather than 'spontaneous crowd'
or 'independent entity'.

bill
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