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]"
ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">
[log in to unmask]>
>Sent:
Jan 15, 2012 3:37 PM
>To:
[log in to unmask]"
ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">
[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]"
ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">
[log in to unmask]"
<
[log in to unmask]"
ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">
[log in to unmask]>
>To:
<
[log in to unmask]"
ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">
[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.