On 3 Dec 2013, at 18:20, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
In other words you could find two poets largely in accord in their political sympathies who are radically opposed in matters of aesthetics.
True and is this not the principle error of the avant-garde, to think that you can step straight from aesthetics into ethics, or vice versa. Like get the politics right (or the ecology or the gender attitude) and the poetry will be fine. Or the other way round, which they call "aestheticised politics". Or as somebody put it, it is assumed that the political and ethical implications of what they do are self-evident. Or that radical politics itself has an aesthetic dimension in, e.g., language use.
pr