----- Original Message -----

From: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">David Bircumshaw

To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]

Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 2:19 AM

Subject: Re: Thanks, Robin.--Other Questions

Oh I loved Edgell Rickword but wasn't he a bit old to be a 'new' poet in 1949 (he was in WW 1 remember).

 

Point, though he was only eighteen when he joined up in 1916, so the WWI poems are what you might call precocious, and he lived to a fair age.  And William Soutar and McDiarmid (included) were both born earlier.

 

I always think of him as a 'now-forgotten' poet of the 20s (who kept on writing. And wasn't forgotten.)
McCaig wasn't the only 'Forties-style' poet to renounce his allegiance - Norman Nicholson too (or a young poet not Rexroth included, one P.Larkin - The North Ship was 1949 wasn't it?)

 

North Ship  was pretty much Auden rather than Thomas, so not Apocalypse, even Then.  Have you read any of McCaig's early Apocalypse peoms?  I haven't, and they're excluded from the Collected.

 

Talking of exclusions, David (D.M.) Black never mentions his first two books -- one was called Rocklestrakes and the other the title I don't recall -- both published by Howard Sergeant as Outpost pamphlets.

Go figure.

 

Hey, Bill Montgomerie's included!!   Does that mean I count as a hardy veteran, since I knew someone in the anthology?

Best,

 

Robin

On 10 January 2011 00:14, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hey, I'm not endorsing the term "Apocalyptic", dave, just that I seem to remember that it was the name attached to some poets who were thought to be influenced by Dylan Thomas.  Only reason that it stuck in my mind was the McCaig connection.

 

I'm still neanderthal enough not to trust stuff which just exists in the Cloud, so natch the first thing I did was backtrack the Internet Archive URL and download a pdf file from the HTML list there.  Didn't quite get to printing out a physical copy, but.  (Last book I did that for was a rather cute work called The Conceited Pig, starring a young porcine called Wilbur.  Whoever wrote it -- between 1842 and 1848 -- was sharp enough to pick up on the Chicken Licken/Little story before there was even a chicken in the narrative, from Robert Chamber's Scots version.)

 

I notice Edgell Rickword ain't there -- shame that.  Seems like his name should be in the frame that Rexoth deploys.

 

Robin

----- Original Message -----

From: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">David Bircumshaw

To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]

Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 6:52 PM

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]" target="_blank">Alison Croggon

To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[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.

--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
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blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/

--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/