Keston,

I had hoped, as I said, to get away from this discussion with what I see
as its narcissistic focus on "Cambridge poetry", but your siren stage
whisper brings me back.

Okay, let me recheck my facts . . .

" I didn't begin the line on 'Cambridge poets', if you recall: Peter
Riley
did, I merely asked if other listmembers shared his view." (KS)

"I come from a working class background and have always had a deep
aversion to highly mannered writing which flaunts unearned rights and
claims assumptive superiorities without having to explain or justify
or analyse or even indicate its grounds. And which attaches the reader
as a member. I can't read things like Smollet for instance, or Andrew
Duncan's prose. I call it the moneyed tongue. I often find it to be full
of
violence, as in this case." (Peter Riley)

"I'd be interested to know if anyone here does think that poetry written
in Cambridge seems to display the money it took to be produced?" (KS)

I made clear in my reply to you that "I've no idea whether this is what
Peter was referring to", but it seems clear to me from the above that
while
Peter was discussing the merits or otherwise of the 'satirical' CCCP9
review, it was yourself who directed the discussion to "poetry written in
Cambridge". The question itself seemed a little ludicrous with its
suggestion
that all poetry written in a specific city might display such uniformity,
but
I replied to what I took to be your point. Then . . .

1) I reply, saying 'not all, but some, yes' (but that certain aspects of
the
      accompanying prose are more egregious(!))
2) You ask "But Trevor, what has any of that fine disdain to do with
money?"
      and gesture towards "the most pompous of reflex put-downs"
3) I reply, attempting to make clear and move on
4) You respond to me that "your quotes don't illustrate your points" and
      complain of me as
     (a) smug,
     (b) dismissive,
     (c) ascribing to you a joke which wasn't,
     (d) revealing "a kind of botched resentment" via a "jibing and
waiving
            disposition"
     (e) while agreeing with Peter, "seemingly without any capacity to
            say why or on what account"
     (f) displaying "conspicuous aversion to real dispute" and thereby
           "merely acrimonious"

Forgive me if I do less than full justice to your own rigour in real
dispute;
time flies, don't you know. But might I suggest that in future you either
not
ask questions if you're unable to deal with the answers, or,
alternatively,
that you specify beforehand exactly what variety of answers would be
acceptable to you?

"Perhaps you could say again, or at all, how you find uncolloquial prose
'moneyed'" (KS)
I don't, and have never said I did. Must I list for yet a third time what
I find
tedious? Right: "the hifalutin (and dull) streams of polysyllables, the
air of
inward-looking complacency, the trotting out of theory for dressage
rather
than use" (TJ)
No mention of uncolloquial prose. Gottit?

"Trevor: your quotes don't illustrate your points" (KS)
" I note how your own register becomes less "elaborate" when it comes to
being 'absolutely fucking skint'" (TJ)
I beg to differ . . .

"Sorry you didn't enjoy the reviews of CCCP, perhaps you weren't reading
them very well. If you take another look . . . " (KS)
. . . you will see that my point did not relate to enjoyment, but rather
to a
failure "to give me, as an outsider, any worthwhile information as to
what
went on." My disappointment here is due, firstly, to my unsatisfied
hunger
to find out more about some of the poetry to which I have no easy access,
as,
for instance, Michael Ayres or some of the French poets present;
secondly,
to my wish to see the event presented in such a way as perhaps to make it
attractive to other such outsiders as myself. That way, given that we
avoid
a clash between CCCP and Cork next year,Cork would also be a beneficiary
if visitors attend both.

". . . you may find that they included some pretty straightforward (and
some
elaborate or ironic and over-wrought) points about the readings." (KS)
Perhaps accessible and/or of interest only to those on the inside. Fine if
you're there, but if not, not . . .

All points with which I hesitate to weary other list-members, while
resenting also what strikes me as a continued exercise in Cambridge
navel-gazing. My response, if it came at all, would have been
back-channel.

But then came that (subjectless) dramatic aside . . .

"Why does it so often happen on this list that potentially useful
discussion
gets shut down by resentful flourishes, parrying no argument but creeping
to some dreary communal sense of fun with remarks like, 'assuming this
isn't a self-parody...' and other jounalistic sneers? Can't our outbursts
be
less inward, for a nice change? I thought Peter had provoked a useful
and
pertinent discussion: how can we currently legitimate the pejorative use
of
'moneyed' to describe styles of prose argument, or styles of verse? This
is
-interesting-, -worth talking about-. Absurdly it's coughed down without
insight, as if we were sitting primly in a pub where any advanced idiom
would be likely to earn us a clip round the ear. " (KS)
 
Now who could you be referring to? You're not, surely, avoiding "real
dispute",
with all those overtones of manliness, by snivelling behind your hand to
the
gods? You couldn't be adverting to myself when you speak of "creeping to
some
dreary communal sense of fun"; surely not after your earlier groping for
communal support when you assert of my alleged incapacities in argument
that
"I suspect I'm not the only person around here who would find this
typical"

Keston, I'm bored with this. If you've got something to say to me, say it
and have
done. If it's not an exercise in self-admiration, another list of
derogatory epithets
or a farrago of points I've already dealt with, I'll reply. But please,
pretty please,
no more whinging to the list in the hope that someone else will sort me
out for
you, eh? There's a good chap!

Trevor





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