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Yes, the optimum year for New Apocalypse was 1939, and Thomas had set in motion the basics of the approach by 1936. If it was a reaction it was against the rationality of the Auden lot.  But I think the war did influence the change of tone from the ebullient Thomas to the doom-laden younger Apocalyptics.  There's an article by me in Poetry Wales 44/3 winter 2008-9 called "Thomas and Apocalypse"

But NA wasn't a style, it was a group with a membership and a manifesto. Graham was not in it, in spite of being more "like that" (but ebullient) than anyone else, and Nicholas Moore was in it who wasn't at all "like that" (but was modernistic). The philosophico-aesthetic tenets of NA were I suppose basically Nietzschian. 

I think by the time Rexroth edited his anthology those poets would no longer have been thought of as NA, and the only ex-NAs included, I think, were Moore, Heseltine, Treece and Hendry. 

I think what the anthology does show is that there was plenty of modernistic writing (Anglo variety) around at the time, not separated off into an enclave, but integral to the whole.  Rexroth was on the whole perfectly fair to the less adventurous quarter of the scene. There was another very interesting anthology, Anglo-American, edited by Moore in 1945, Atlantic Anthology, which likewise doesn't separate off the NAs, who are actually not in it, but aimed at a central zone of adventurous writing in prose and poetry which was transatlantic. Stevens is in it, Eliz. Bishop,Goodman, alongside Graham, Bottrall etc.  Not so many 'discoveries' but enough, and the Americans definitely win, due to the curious omission of a number of British writers who could very easily have been included. 

PR


On 10 Jan 2011, at 08:14, GILES GOODLAND wrote:

I would say on this point (and very much on the theme of paternity) that although the idea of World War Two may have been an influence, the Apocalyptics were meeting before the outbreak of war.
 
 
Giles

From: David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, 9 January, 2011 23:52:49
Subject: Re: Thanks, Robin.--Other Questions

I think something called World War Two had more claim to Apocalyptic paternity, Rob, although I don't think it's the only suspect. 'Under the Volcano' is a kind of Apocalyptic masterpiece in prose, though Lowry had no real connection with the 'school'. Edith Sitwell was just as representative as Dylan Thomas too: 'Still Falls the Rain'.  I like your revolutionary notion of reading the thing as well as downloading it :)  I spent a while tonight bringing a smile to some hardy veterans who knew many of the people in the anthology by going through the contents list and titles on the phone. 

On 9 January 2011 22:10, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Alison Croggon
To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[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.



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David Joseph Bircumshaw
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