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Apologies if I sent a former message again - I'm having problems with my computer - add technical low ground! --- On Mon, 16/1/12, JAMIE MCK <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: JAMIE MCK <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment” To: [log in to unmask] Date: Monday, 16 January, 2012, 12:51 Yeah, but sometimes it must be hard for those mainstreamers to occupy the political, the moral and the aesthetic low ground. Best, Jamie --- On Sun, 15/1/12, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment” To: [log in to unmask] Date: Sunday, 15 January, 2012, 22:11 It's fine to be a member of the mainstream. But a mark of that membership is often the denial that a non-mainstream exists, and that's not fine. In the US, and I think in Britain and Ireland as well, you may have noticed that those in the non-mainstream generally recognize the names of the more important mainstream poets, have even read them, but the reverse is often not the case--I've had the experience of mentioning Oppen or Spicer and being greeted with blank stares, this from people university-certified as poets. Mention Randolph Healy or Peter Manson in mainstream circles and see what you get. Best, Mark -----Original Message----- >From: Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> >Sent: Jan 15, 2012 3:37 PM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment” > >I found Michael’s foray into the Swedish detective genre entertaining, and >particularly liked his rheumy-eyed, old string-puller with a taste for >Persian classics. But from then on his account becomes unrecognizable. I >wouldn’t quarrel – who would? – with his first proposition (‘And yet, >cultural establishments exist’) but with the way he goes on to describe >them: ‘like social classes....like the morale of sick institutions’. Once >these analogies are accepted – and, as Chris Hamilton Emery’s note suggests, >we all tend to think the establishment isn’t us – then ‘the outsider’ >becomes the untainted figure whose perception is being suppressed and >‘silenced, if it can’t be dimmed’. Here we have the "mainstream" as a >tottering Arab dictatorship. > The imagined ‘response to the outsider-( "but you don't understand, if >only you could meet... you would soon see... etc etc")...manifests the >effective though invisible self-defence of the establishment.’ Hardly that >effective: such feeble pleading wouldn’t really be the manner of any >establishment that, as Mark argues, ‘holds most of the power’. I think by >this stage we’ve moved into Fantasyland - a fantasy which flatters the >integrity of the writer by assuming the lack of it among others writers >perceived to be more centrally placed. > Having been described on this list, without any apparent malice, as an >‘insider’ by someone whom I’d consider just as much an insider – or an >outsider – as myself, I’m inclined to agree with Chris’s sense of the >indeterminacy and relativity of the term. At what point does somebody cease >to be an outsider? When they are published by a bigger press? When they >receive reviews from newspapers? When they write for the newspapers? When >they have an institutional teaching post? When they start writing reviews of >their nephew’s translations from the Persian? >Best, >Jamie > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> >To: <[log in to unmask]> >Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 11:58 AM >Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry >establishment” > > >A familiar chapter in any Bildungsroman, when the hero begins to pierce the >outer layers of the establishment only to to find its centre constantly >shrinking and moving away, - to find that no-one including of course >himself is ever part of what once (from outside) seemed so monolithic and >solid. We chase it down, and after many Proustian penetrations eventually >reduce it to (Stieg Larsson-style) a single mild, old and terminally-ill >gentleman who views us through milky ice-blue eyes and murmurs that, these >days, he restricts himself to a few lines of Sir David Minnay's exquisite >translations from the Ancient Persian, but even so, this is really only >because Davie is a grand-nephew... > >And yet, cultural establishments exist (it is better not to think only of >poetry); they are much better exemplified by the Institution and by mass >structures than by the supposed individuals concerned: e.g. in this case >schools, colleges, newspapers, radio programmes, prizes, societies, >diplomatic exchanges, tourism hotspots... They exist and their patterns >persist, like social classes, in spite of all the individuals who decry >social class or prefer never to mention it. They persist like the morale of >sick institutions, exemplified by no single employee yet hugely resistant to >transformation. The outsider's view, as so often, is the perception that >must be silenced if it can't be dimmed. And the response to the >outsider -( "but you don't understand, if only you could meet... you would >soon see... etc etc")- itself manifests the effective though invisible >self-defence of the establishment.