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thanks mak komninos At 11:31 PM 1/20/01 -0800, you wrote: >Just to add a piece--and I don't know how relevant to Australia. In the US >and Western Europe it's not unusual for urban people who can take vacations >to do so someplace rural. In the US the middle class often send the kids >away to a summer camp and rural second residences are not uncommon, the >wealthy have rural compounds adjacent to each otherfor all ages. So for the >kids a rurality freed of toil--a vacation from toil--enters the >imagination, and is sustained into adulthood. > >For adults who write the rural place may even be an art colony. > >So leisure to write happens disproportionately when one is away from one's >usual residence, and the rural as freedom from toil becomes an imagined >topos. > >Now multiply this by a few millenia--Roman poets also wrote their poems >while rusticating. > >And then there are the other myths to which Kominos refers as romantic. Old >old habits that are alive and well at the movies, for example. Not just >that somewhere there's an Edenic existence that's more real than the >imperfect one we lead--a reflection of awareness of injustices or >mortality--but that, at least in America, the belief in the Eden of perfect >freedom that's supposed to exist beyond the rural is promoted by those it >serves to offer to dwellers in overcrowded cities as an imaginative out, a >release of pressures that could otherwise cause the whole social construct >to explode--one's daily life has an escape clause, one can light out for >the territories. Space as opiate. > >Mark > > > >So the rural >At 01:41 PM 1/21/2001 +1100, [log in to unmask] wrote: >>Hi Komninos - some stray thoughts - >> >>>why do we continue to use imagery which is not part of our everyday >>>experience? >>> >>There are a number of people who _do_ live in the country, and it is part >>of their everyday experience; are you speaking of them as well? What >>about poets like Lionel Fogarty? However, there have been some peculiar >>things in the bush - those centaurs that Hugh McCrae put there, for >>instance - which suggest that for Europeans and other immigrants it's a >>representation that's always been full of tension and contradictions. >>It's fair to say that the strain of Australian writing which might be >>called urban - starting with Jonah, and through poems by Furnleigh >>Maurice, Kenneth Slessor etc - has tended to be undervalued and >>unrepresented in the general glaze of the tv bushman: but it is there, >>and has been very visible in the past couple of decades, I would say >>especially in poetry. Same as Rick Amor's urban landscapes are there, in >>dialogue with Fred Williams. >> >>As JK pointed out, alot of contemporary "landscape" poetry tends to the >>dystopian - environments destroyed and lost - and look rather at the >>violent and brutal, pace Barbara Baynton (Coral Hull is another one I >>forgot to mention: violence looms large in her work). >> >>>is it a need to establish that we, white australians who have appropriated >>>this country, actually belong here, so we try to write ourselves into the >>>landscape. and this may not be conscious in individual writers but >>>underlying in all of us who have come to live in australia and are not >>>indiginous? >> >>The landscape thing is or has been I think an expression of alienation - >>think of the first European paintings of Australia, which made it all >>look like English parks. Part of the problem for the non-indigenous >>population has been "seeing" it - it has often struck me as a good joke >>that one of the first Europeans to write about the Australian landscape >>was called Barron Field, which sort of sums up European perceptions of >>the time. Landscape has by far more often been presented as hostile and >>threatening, and there is that thing about cutting down trees, which I >>have never understood except as a desire to "conquer" a resistant and >>frightening environment (which leads to that heroicisation of the >>"battler" - but you know, Steele Rudd is rather more sardonic and harsh >>than the kitsch representations of On Our Selection etc suggest). >> >>But there are many people who have thought about all this much more than >>me. I have my own problems with all that, a sort of linguistic >>alienation due to my own background, which means I _don't_ write poems >>about the Australian landscape, although I was brought up in the country; >>which is perhaps another kind of response to those issues. >> >>And there are many takes on all this - John Anderson's poems for example >>attempt none of these things, but rather seek to linguistically inhabit >>the landscape, as a European Australian. A patient and gentle >>attentiveness, owing much to Ponge, Bonnefoy and others. Anderson might >>well be called a romantic, but in the proper sense, descending from >>Wordsworth. >> >>>why is so much australian poetry which appears in international anthologies >>>tied to rural landscape? >> >>That might have been true once. I'm not so sure it is now. But I don't >>know if it's an exclusively Australian thing. >> >>Best >> >>Alison >> >> > komninos's cyberpoetry site http://student.uq.edu.au/~s271502 cyberpoet@slv site http://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/cyberpoet/ komninos zervos, tel. +61 7 5552 8872 lecturer in cyberStudies, school of arts, gold coast campus, griffith university, pmb 50, gold coast mail centre queensland, 9726 australia.