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Hi Michael, now I'm not Peter Riley, and Peter Riley and myself have had our differences in the past with regards to the hard and soft options of opposition etc, but I do think you are being unfair here. I was tempted to follow up Peter's post with my own views about Burnside's poetry, but essentially what Peter said about it, as a description, matched my own take on it perfectly. The difference I suppose is the emotional one. How do we try to be objective about something that in certain terms appears to be quite excellent and yet does next to nothing for us personally (subjectively I suppose), or worse, highly irritates us? The choices are not simple. The work in question finds us enthusiastic or neutral or negative or irritated etc for a reason. Yes, what Peter doesn't do is shine any light on those reasons, the reasons for his own implied lack of enthusiasm for the work, but the alternative, to delve into the mechanics of that situation, is a sticky one, because it nearly always ends up in the attempt to fight the battle from the 'poetics' corner, which leads to ideology and entrenchment. I'm not saying it has to do that, but that it usually does. And Peter is someone who does not do that, and for those very same reasons, I would assume. Therefore his critique is implied, not stated - it maintains a rather safe position, but it is a safe position which leaves the issue open to civilized debate. The problem with this, from my own experience, is that it limits the debate, it papers over what are fundamental fractures. But the alternative, which is my own polemical experience, is fraught with problems - you start digging a hole and the hole gets deeper. I would never say that I had an entrenched position, but I would say that I was often pushed into what looked and behaved like one. What critique from an entrenched position tends to do is to take almost everything that is considered to be positive about a poem and turn it into a negative - which might seem to be ridiculous, after all this is poetry we're talking about, a shared activity to some degree, surely - we call both Carol Ann Duffy and Allen Fisher poets. And yet this attempt to understand what is going on with our positive and negative responses needs to be articulated. The question now is how to do it without the emotional while at the same time not restricting its scope. Not easy - because I am pretty sure that straight description (such as Riley's of Burnside) will probably be received negatively by those who 'love' Burnside's poetry. They don't want its mystery deconstructed. Cheers Tim A. On 25 Apr 2012, at 12:10, [log in to unmask] wrote: > I don't know if anyone else thinks this but I've been mainly > disappointed with Peter's pieces in the Fortnightly Review, except > for the one about Denise Riley. I think maybe this idea of avant- > garde poet addresses the civilized non-specialist is full of fatal > contradictions. > > I want him to say "I loathe John Burnside and everyone who likes > him", if that's what he thinks. Not do the faint praise and smearing > thing, which just feels dishonest. Like it's apparent to me that > there really is NOTHING that peter likes about JB's poetry, and he > can't be bothered to challenge his own opinion or to understand why > JB keeps winning. > > And I don't get the cattle analogy. Surely the point about existing > poetry competitions is that they ARE objective, precisely a matter > of sheaths and muscle. It isn't difficult to understand what makes a > poem a prize-winning poem. And this complex system of hoops to be > jumped through is indeed excellence of a sort. It is not the > excellence of Excavations, true. (I reckon Alstonefield could have > gone close. ) > > This was a missed opportunity. It ought to have been about the way > that poetry-collection prizes are always awarded to the same > publishers. The point that Ron Silliman has made, much more > persuasively, many many times. > > I don't really see why there aren't any competitions specifically > intended to recognize experimental work, though. I'd be prepared to > swallow quite a lot of ideological distaste in return for a wider > debate about the kind of books I care about. > > But I think it's good and a huge thing that poetry isn't dependent > on prizes and competitions, that's a precious quality. For > logistical reasons arts like classical music are completely > integrated with competition and patronage; that's bound to affect > the nature of the art, both for good and ill. Poetry is something we > can completely reinvent and no-one can stop us or even do much to > penalize us. (Because, as Jamie says, these "big prizes" are really > pretty paltry.)