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A couple of things, and then I'll let this lie.

It's really not about the culture at large. I'm willing to bet that to your poet laureate, for instance, most of the British and Irish contemporaries I care about are just names, if that. I do understand that from Britain it may look like the followings of Sopicer and Oppen are pretty broad, but I know from personal experience that they're not. You'll have to take my word for it--I could quote chapter and verse, but I don't have the energy or time. Neither, by the way, are included in Rita Dove's new anthology, nor does she feel the need to explain their absence (or acknowledge their existence).

A "heuristic element" doesn't obviate the disitinction I'm positing. There's a difference between Prufrock and Asphodel or the Cantos. Let's say that Asphodel is a record of a process of discovery in the act of occurring, that what will be written and the form it will take are both still to be found out by the poet.

This doesn't mean there's no value in poems written in a more closed way, though I have very little interest myself in contemporary poems that operate that way. But there really is a very broad dismissal of the non-mainstream.

OK, here's an anecdote. A friend from the other side is convinced that Elizabeth Bishop is god's gift to poetry, so, since I didn't get it, I bought the complete poems and read it and read it again several times. I still don't get it, but it's not for lack of trying. Duffy reading a lot of Prynne these days, just out of curiosity, or Heaney reading Trevor Joyce?

Anecdotal or not isn't an issue for me, by the way. There are lots of things in the field of phenomena that we constantly redefine, anecdotes among them. Think about the changes Duncan rings on his children dancing a circle dance.

Best,

Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Jan 17, 2012 9:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”


I can't argue with your experience in the US though I'd think that Oppen and Spicer had quite a following, over here as well. Personally I find the work of all four poets you mentioned of interest but I really can't say who's read what in whichever circles. My impression is that most living poets are fairly 'invisible' to the culture at large. I understand that you are speaking 'broadly' but I don't recognize your distinction: in the mainstream "the interest seems to be in telling a story the end of which is already known, as opposed to the non-mainstream approach of discovering as we go". I really don't - and am not just being contentious. Without some heuristic element in the writing I just can't see that the poem will have a claim on anyone's attention. On the other hand as far back as we can see poems have used narrative elements - they can be found in 'They flee from me that sometime did me seek' to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It's not necessarily what you're saying but one of the most re-iterated dismissals of the mainstream is that it's "largely anecdotal". Of course there are poems which fit that description, but in general it seems to me an inadequate and unconsidered description of a very varied body of work. Perhaps embarrassment should be felt all round.
Best,
Jamie
 
 
 
  ----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Mark Weiss
To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 11:14 PM
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”

Here's my take on your trinity. I can't fault the mainstream for its aesthetic--generalizing very broadly, the interest seems to be in telling a story the end of which is already known, as opposed to the non-mainstream approach of discovering as we go. There certainly should be room for both--the former tends to bore me to tears, but I'm not the only reader. Which leads to the political, in the narrow sense--I'm assuming that mainstream poets don't all vote Tory--the near-monopolization of the bureaucratic structures that have grown up around poetry (jobs, visible presses and journals, anthologies, prizes, etc.--the machinery of visibility). I suppose that's a moral issue. But what really concerns me is the political aspect. That's where the accounting should focus, imho. Tho I would think mainstream poets would be embarrassed not to have read substantially at least the major figures from the other side.

Best,

Mark



-----Original Message-----
From: Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Jan 16, 2012 5:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”


Mark, I see how I took your remark as more adversarial than it was meant to be, and anyway it was a response to my sardonic one. But I think there's some truth in what I said: that the "mainstream" is often held to account for its failings in all three areas, the political, moral and aesthetic, and I'm not at all convinced of the justice of that.
   I had some other thoughts on the tip of my tongue, but held back as it seems I'm always saying the same kind of things here!
Best,
Jamie
  
----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Mark Weiss
To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 9:55 PM
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”

Jamie: You do know that I'm partly joking around? Affect tends to get lost on email, largely because we're mostly strangers to each other--the same notes sent between friends are usually understood.

There are however real issues. It would be nice if the limited resources in the kitty were spread around a bit better. It would also be nice not to be treated as if invisible.

Let me add that as a Jew my affection for pork knows no bounds. Add to its native savor the lure of the exotic and the dangers of sin and you'll get my drift.

Best,

Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Jan 16, 2012 4:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”

The trough could be the beggar's banquet, where there's only crumbs and everybody fights over them. Noblesse oblige doesn't apply.

I was trying to be nice, but it's not always easy.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Jan 16, 2012 2:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”


A pretty miniscule trough, it has to be said. And "the pig", well, it doesn't exactly re-inforce your earlier statement that "it's fine to be a member of the mainstream."
----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Mark Weiss
To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 6:35 PM
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”

One does feel for the pig at the trough.

-----Original Message-----
From: JAMIE MCK <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Jan 16, 2012 7:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”

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]" 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.
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