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David, when you have time, could you unpack 'reinvented the pluralism and fragmentation of 1982-89'? Robert > ---------- > From: David Kennedy[SMTP:[log in to unmask]] > Reply To: David Kennedy > Sent: 13 July 2000 18:31 > To: "british-poets >" <"british-poets" > Subject: A Mainstream or Many Niles? > > Alan Halsey wrote: > "It seems to me, though, that both Other and Conductors of Chaos are much > more eclectic than reviewers like to suggest. Much more so than if they'd > been assembled 20 years ago; much more than, to take another important > anthology, A Various Art." > > > This is one of those things which, once I've read it, seems so bloody > obvious and yet seems to be the crucial missing component in many > discussions of innovative poetries. Although, of course, one has to ask > whether the taste of various editors is not also a significant factor. > Maybe > Caddel/Quatermain's and Sinclair's own tastes are just more eclectic than > Crozier/Longville's? I'm still historically ignorant so would like to ask: > would an Other or a Conductors have been possible/impossible at an earlier > date? > > But, Alan, being the gent of fine distinctions and scrupulous argument > that > he is, raises the most important point of all: what is the mainstream? The > problem is that Movement-derived poetries have been and remain > commercially > dominant. This is also part of the masking that Alan refers to. > He is also dead on re mainstream = commercially promoted. This is > certainly > what happened post The New Poetry. The New Generation Poets promo was a > successful attempt to reinvent poetry as a commodity. I'd hazard - he says > putting on the blindfold and smoking his last cigarette against the wall > prior to be shot at from all four winds - that the best of the activity I > and my co-editors represented in TNP was a belated 'mainstream' equivalent > to Mottram's Revival 1960-75. The 'establishment' - a contingent grouping > of > PoeSoc folk and London poetry editors - filled their designer panties and > reinvented the pluralism and fragmentation of the period 1982-9 - which > revealed important writers like Bill Herbert and Maggie Hannan - as > something with the politics taken out. But I too am rambling. Damn that > Stella! > cheers > David > > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%