On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, Alan Halsey wrote:
> There was a reference the other day to a remark by Marjorie Perloff,
> that British readers have read much more 'language' theory than poetry.
I'm sure this isn't true today, though it may have had a grain of truth in
the early days, for the "first-contact" generation... Looking back to the
time when the first issues of L=A=N=Getc hit these shores (I got mine
intermitently from Paul Green) it did seem to me then that the theory was
way ahead of the practice, in the sense of better developed, actually
recognisable. The poetry, inasmuchas it was separable from the theory
(which as Alan says, it usually isn't) didn't seem to offer too much,
presented in little magazine-style nuggets. It was, for me, only when I
was able to get hold of book-length langpo poets that I was able to sort
the stuff out for myself, a process which is ongoing. I recognise that
this is just one experience, recalled through the mists of time.
What those first L=A=N=&c did for me was to send me back to some of the
figures behind those writings - Stein, and late Zukofsky. Which was
useful, for sure.
What sometimes narks me a bit about US comment on UK poetries is that it
sometimes tends to assume a level of colonialism in reading the way the
evangelic blinding light of Langpo took root on its arrival in UK. I'd say
the reason some elements of langpo have found fruitful relationships with
some areas of britpo is that some areas of britpo were already open to
that kind of development, had pre-existing affinities with, were moving
that way anyway. I'd tentatively point to longterm ongoing shifts in work
by, for instance, Edwards, Lopez and Sheppard - each in radically
different ways - to support this. And then step back hastily and let them
confirm or deny.
All this would presuppose that a unitary approach to langpo theory or
poetry were possible, which it ain't. Not that it's a who-got-there-first
problem anyway.
RC
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