David, (once again) I suppose that this post is meant to be offensive to
me, but I’m struggling to work out what you’re saying. Or maybe you’re just
clearing your throat?
Excuse me for taking it step by step.
The preamble “This is a mere personal observation of a me speaking” I think
we can take more or less as read. But I’m at sea with “I feel like I am talking
to a politician”. Are you saying that I talk like a politician? How exactly is
that? (I’ve only spoken to three or four politicians and they all had different
ways of talking.) Do you mean I’m being slippery or evasive? Or too impersonal?
Or even, here I’m really guessing, that I represent some kind of privileged
class?
You follow that with: “I remember somebody telling me that was what it was
like meeting Seamus Heaney in person.” Somebody told you – is this you talking
“personally”? Blame by hearsay. Hundreds of people who’ve met Heaney would give
you a very different account. My own experience, if you want me to talk
personally, was that he was exceptionally kind, pithy, irreverent, not even
guarded as he might easily have been, and about as far away from a politician as
I could imagine. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Still, the
first point was I think an attack on me which is at least not as cowardly as
attacking someone who can’t reply.
Your next sentence is in a contortedly passive mood – is this a parody of
politician-speak? “What I have noticed is that under cover of a concern about
etiquette on lists it seems to have been insinuated that someone on the list
needs psychiatric help.” (“Talk about ad hominem!”) Are you saying that “under
cover of a concern” about list rules, I have “insinuated someone
needs...psychiatric help.” To the best of my knowledge neither here nor
elsewhere have I suggested anything of the sort. If you think I have, you should
say so clearly and tell me where. I’m quite willing to apologize or explain if I
can see the fault, and have always been repelled by that dictum often used by
politicians, though coined by a seasick admiral: “Never apologize; never
explain”.
Or are you referring to Alison’s post about the psychiatrist in “You, The
Living”? Though Sean seems to have taken it personally, there’s no indication at
all that it was directed at him or anyone in particular on the list. It’s as
likely that it’s directed at me since I’ve been talking almost as much. So I
don’t see the “ad hominem” element since no-one is being named, and I certainly
don’t see why you should be addressing this to me. Anyway, for me her post was a
welcome distraction from what was getting to be a fruitless argument, and now
lies in ruins.
And your last point again leaves me bewildered as to why it should be
addressed to me. Perhaps this was the intended effect?
“It might be interesting to consider how the role of free-lance
self-employed writers in the marketplace squares with ideas of social obligesse,
in fact how any such a market traders position supposes any lost echoes of the
Victorian higher mind (touchstones available guvnor any day any time Burke and
Hare Personal PLC)”
I have spent almost the last 40 years as a “free-lance self-employed
writer” – apart from some 8 years as a plasterer and 4 years as a lettore in an
Italian university – is that personal enough? I used to do some reviewing but
precious little now, and at present work mainly as a translator, for which the
pay is really a pittance if you reckon it on an hourly basis. Could you unravel
this for me?
It seems to me that if anyone talks like a politician (with the attributes
of evasiveness) on this list it’s you. Most of the time if asked a direct
question you go off on a periphrastic tangent or don’t reply – take, just as one
example, Tim’s questions to you about there being “any essential difference
between a small private circulation between the members of the local poetry
group and someone in a university department circulating their poems to their
own 'poetry group'?” which addressed what you’d been saying but received no
response.
If the accusation of being a “politician” is related to my enquiry about
list rules – I can only say that I stated the case openly. You replied
ironically, clearly in disagreement, and I responded to that with a question
that again received no answer. Except this abusive post.
The last time I politely asked you to explain a rather opaque
attack, you accused me of Blairite blandness. I wonder if you could do better
this time?
Jamie
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 11:16 PM
Subject: Re: (No subject)
Jamie
Hi.
This is a mere personal observation of a me speaking: I feel like I am talking
to a politician. I remember somebody telling me that was what it was like
meeting Seamus Heaney in person. What I have noticed is that under cover of a
concern about etiquette on lists it seems to have been insinuated that someone
on the list needs psychiatric help. Talk about ad hominem!
It might be
interesting to consider how the role of free-lance self-employed writers in the
marketplace squares with ideas of social obligesse, in fact how any such a
market traders position supposes any lost echoes of the Victorian higher mind
(touchstones available guvnor any day any time Burke and Hare Personal PLC)
Personally, Yours etc.
Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone from Virgin Media
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 19:40:40 -0000
Subject: Re: (No subject)
Schwitters was a marvel of courtesy and Tzara by all accounts had very
distinguished table manners. He even expressed a mild concern about those in
public “acting in a manner more or less intimate with themselves”.
Anyway it doesn’t seem as though the rest of the list, apart from myself,
actually has “such a concern”.
Yours, Dave, and Mark’s have been the only comments on my post, and both
opposed.
I’d stand by what I said: that there is a difference between what Mark
calls “a bit of name-calling” (which I don’t care for but wasn’t objecting to)
and insinuations about people characters, in other words “ad hominem” attacks. I
gave my reasons, and I suspect they were close to the reasons the rule was
formulated here in the first place.
If you feel the precedent of Dada exempts you from any social
obligations of courtesy, and you don’t think the discussions on this list are
impaired by making slurs about other poets, that’s fine. Why not, though, as I
said to Mark, move to have the rule expunged?
Do the list owners (I’m sorry I don’t know who you are at present) have any
opinion on the matter?
Jamie
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: (No subject)
It
has struck me more than once that the level of bad etiquette that might appear
on a list like this is mild compared to satirical reviews on such a bastion of
middle-class middle-aged beslippered comfort as BBC Radio 4 let alone the
exchanges at our august Houses of Parliament. It also comes to mind that it is
rather odd for forums dedicated to Dada and beyond to have such a concern about
table manners.
On psychiatrists - I have observed that many consider their
responsibilities little more than authorising pills - there was a kind of spat
recently between the our native psychologists and the pill-popping support
workers aka psychiatrists aka the Sons of Mengele some of you may be
aware.
More anon. Happy Chrumble mass
Dave
Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone from Virgin Media
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 14:13:27 -0000
Subject: Re: (No subject)
The title of ‘You, the Living’ comes from Goethe’s Roman Elegies "Therefore
rejoice, you, the living, in your lovely warm bed, until Lethe’s cold wave wets
your fleeing foot." (Thanks, Wiki.) So another link, if it were needed, with a
poetry list. The film’s score is also a wonder – comic and heartbreaking
– from the tuba playing, the brilliant version of the Swedish song
"I Have Heard of a City above the Clouds” to the
fantasia guitar solo of Micke Larsson character played in a house that’s a
train.
Jamie
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:05 PM
Subject: Re: (No subject)
Hmm.
I took Alison's comment rather like a poem that is posted on the site. You can
accept it as it is or delete it.
Do all posts have to deal with the issues you put forth, Sean, and only
those? I didn't see any indication in the subject line that the email was
addressed to your issue.
Cheers,
J
___________________________
Jaime Robles
On 17 Dec 2013, at 22:53, Sean Carey wrote:
But what dear Alison has this to do with the issues I
am dealing with here?
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
To:
BRITISH-IRISH-POETS
Sent: Tue, 17 Dec
2013 17:37
Subject: Re: (No subject)
Thanks Alison. You
feel I need to see it on an intellectual or as entertainment
basis?
-----Original Message-----
From:
[log in to unmask]To:
BRITISH-IRISH-POETS
Sent: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 17:22
Subject: Re: (No
subject)
Make of it what you will, Sean. I highly recommend Andersson's films, if
you haven't encountered them.
xA