Hello cris --

sorry, I heard (I thought from yourself, but obviously I'm mistaken) that
you studied at Jesus college.  Anyway, no matter.  I mentioned this only
because I'm becoming more and more curious about my own participation in
the academic set-up, the ways in which my enthusiasms as an undergraduate
seem now to have been latent professional aptitudes etc. -- often I think
that the reading I do as a graduate is less calibrated and productive than
that I managed to fit in after hours when working.  Anyhow:

No, I don't agree that a billboard in Picadilly Circus can be considered
socially obscure, despite all the reasonable claims for its ephemerality
which you provide.  It's quite possible that the writer of such a piece
might not get paid for it (this is incidental anyhow), but certainly the
billboard space represents a locus of invested capital, designed
thoughtfully to promote an interest after the fashion in which any
commercial interest can be promoted in advertising.  London is a great
geopolity of such loci.  This to me incurs inevitably the structural
analogy: behind their posters, billboards are all the same, and this fact
of an ulterior capital reality cannot but appear to some extent in the
poster, whatever it might be.  The most interesting exploitation of this
condition (by far) is still organized by inventive pr agencies.  

This is what I'd add to Doug's objection re the TLS, with which I agree.
It does infract the possible modes in which the poem itself might be
apprehended, if it appears in the TLS.  But yes, Doug, the contaminated
source was precisely what I was arguing against.  

I see nothing pure about being in the academy, Doug, and don't imagine for
a moment that it could constitute any resistant self-positioning or
exemplify any responsible attitude.  I like Bugs Bunny too, and find it
odd that people keep implying that my messages evince a crypto deprecation
of 'low' culture.  They do not.  

Your point Doug about scientism is an important one, I think.  Again, it
might be that we disagree regarding how best this might be countered, or
mitigated.  I don't think that a commercial sanction can really create an
exit route (through poetry) from this circumstance, particularly if the
more or less avowed purpose of a 'wide-ranging' anthology is simply to
argue that culture is wide ranging.  because yet again the wide range is
merely a printed index, pasted with blurb.  No gesture of
self-articulation, no space for recalcitrant or objectional sympathy given
for any of the poets lumped together.  Perhaps such an anthology would
work quite well, were each poet's selection prefaced by her or his reasons
for disliking the work of the other poets included (or for liking it).
Though again, what could have been a propitiative dispute would become
reified as mere entertainment.  Look at the asses jaw!    

Ric, I didn't object to your post because I thought you urged us to admire
ALL poetry.  I objected to precisely what you reiterated: that we admire a
range of poetry.  I find this prejudicial, an affected good disposition.
It is not necessary, in order to discover new and various work that we can
admire, for us to believe beforehand that we -ought- to make such a
discovery.  This is evaluative positivism, determined from the outset not
to be too critical of the circumstances of poetry.  I'm simplifying your
point of course (and complicating it), but it does seem to me to imply all
of this.  

Wow I do clog the airwaves, but feel that it's only proper to try to
respond to everyone.  Does no-one here (except Doug) disagree with anyone
but me?

k  
 
           





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