Trevor I am sorry if you do not care for my comparison --Murdoch and Prynne.
As for control of meaning --this seems to me to be essentially
anti-poetic --surely the difference between poetry and prose resides in the
fact that the use of tropes and imaginative language in poetry opens up the
possibilities of multiple meanings --to dictate meaning is no different than
Murdoch's editorials --and that is what you claim Prynne does. Prynne is for
closure of meaning --and that is anti-democratic, as against the "democratic
humanism" I wrote of earlier to be found in the writings of the Russians.
This form of semantic imperialism, oh I'm on a roll here, surely goes
against what Prynne advocates in life?
I write with the hope that my poetry can provide pleasure or interest to a
reader, I do not write to prevent the reader from engaging in a dialogue.
Far from being monological Trevor, I have courted more responses --and I
believe more people, lurkers have come to the fore. Most of them have been
constructive in that they have given us more information about Prynne's
poetics -- and that can't be such a bad thing can it? I do wish that
others -- of the non-Prynne camp will come out. I suspect they are the
silent majority. Lol.
Your generalizations about "English poetry" I find breathtaking in
>their failure to recognize differences.
I love breathtaking cliches. Yes, I will stand by what I said earlier. Most
of the innovators in the Twentieth century have been either American or
European (including Irish). I have always found late Twentieth Century
British poetry a bit like the proverbial British Rail cheese and water
cress sandwich. Wet and soft, and decidely unpalatable --but with age, as it
become stale --well maybe it comes to have other qualities . . . How about
that for a generalisation. Now that's a challenge. Tell me otherwise. So far
you have given me stones. Writers who are unwilling to relinquish meaning,
fly in the amber poetry, surfaces and one fly secreted by the author --
writers who are too mindful of theories about language --which they know
absolutely nothing about -- to care about their craft or art. It reminds me
of the 1970's when one could exhibit fresh air as long as one wrote an
explanation or apology for doing so. The art could not stand by itself --it
had to have an intellectual prosthetic. And of course the prosthetic has to
be defended --hence all this jargon and these neologisms -- one cannot
scrutinize it too much otherwise it'll topple over. How so convenient.
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