By a curious coincidence (?), Rexroth includes Rayner Heppenstall, whom I hadn't heard of before yesterday, when I discovered he'd written a book called _Reflections on the Newgate Calendar_ (which I promptly ordered, as inter alia I'm trying to construct, not as easy as it might seem, a coherent ordering of the set of texts which together might be called "the Newgate Calendar"), and there he is as a poet!
Nice to see Robert Garioch there, among the Scots, and more obviously Norman McCaig. As George Barker and the early (presumably) W.S.Graham are also included, it suggests that Rexroth might have latched onto the one poetic movement that Dylan Thomas did father, the Apocalypse Poets. (McCaig was part of it in the forties, I think, but later disowned the connection when his writing style changed.)
But why is the execrable Stephen Spender there, but not MacNeice?
Suggests I ought to read the anthology, which I've at least downloaded.
Robin
----- Original Message -----
From: Alison Croggon
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 3:49 PM
Subject: Re: Thanks, Robin.--Other Questions
Rexroth's introduction is salutory and fascinating; as you say, full of bracing insights. I hadn't read it before. Many thanks for the link.
xA
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 5:37 AM, colin herd <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Another interesting aspect of that anthology is that Scottish poet Joseph MacLeod is in it twice. Once as Joseph Macleod, and again as Adam Dirnan, the pseudonym he used when he became famous working for the BBC, to avoid the stigma of fame affecting the approach he took when writing poetry. Would be interesting to know if Rexroth was aware they were the same writer, though perhaps not, because the secret was not made public until 1953.
On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 2:33 PM, GOODBY JOHN <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Jess, that Rexroth anthology is The New British Poets (1948) - New Directions, so I don't think it came out in the UK. But it gives a great, because outsider's viewpoint, on the then state of British poetry. As you say, it has plenty of Scots - including Maclean, Soutar and Macleod - Welsh, and some Irish in it, and doesn't endorse a London-centric viewpoint.
