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I won't push it David, it's not that important, but Paris was the focal point, I don't see how anyone can argue with that really, or even why they would want to. Spain, Russia, wherever, their eyes were on Paris. It was not a French thing, it was an international thing, yes, but it sat in the middle of old empires, except ours. Tim A. On 30 Aug 2009, at 14:54, David Bircumshaw wrote: > It's odd, you know, but I was raised in the understanding that the > most important or 'significant' poetry in European languages in the > first half of the twentieth century was in Spanish (American and > Iberian) and Russian (all sorts of nationalities). With the Poles > and the Greeks next in line. People like Bowra and J.M.Cohen and > Seymour-Smith taught me that in their writings, and that English > language modernist poetry (British or US or whatever) was a somewhat > lesser matter. > > 2009/8/30 Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> > Well, ummm, it depends on what you mean by accident, and what you > mean by nationality. > There are some well documented reasons why France became such an > early modernist hothouse, and it is not too difficult to understand > why the US, a young country that embraced the new, followed on > tentatively until after WW1 when it took over. The US was this > strange creature where the backward and the forward existed side by > side - still is I suppose. > > Tim A. > > > On 30 Aug 2009, at 12:36, Jeffrey Side wrote: > > I agree. I don’t think nationality, per se, has anything to do with > it. It > is just an accident of history that modernism developed from the > French > and US poets. > > > > -- > David Bircumshaw > "A window./Big enough to hold screams/ > You say are poems" - DMeltzer > Website and A Chide's Alphabet > http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk > The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html > Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk > Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw