Sean - I just don't understand how you can say some of the things below. Your views are a very scattergun mix, which I think I've said here before. I very strongly support Pierre and Jeremy on the points they picked up on, particularly about the Tuma anthology and Out of Everywhere. Both those books were fantastic for all sorts of reasons. And the new Out of Everywhere looks really good too, and contrary to what you said in a later post, it does include a fair number of younger writers, and the ones I know of are brilliant and deserve to be there.
I am going to be presumptuous now, for which I apologise in advance, but this is what I think happens with regard to some of the stuff you say...
You pick up on a problem (political, social, personal) in a certain area and a problem in another area and you join them up. You join them up in such a way that anything between the two gets included in the problem so this turns the positive in things, (the Objectivists, Lang-po, Keith Tuma anthology or whatever) into negatives.
Of course certain issues are connected to each other, but these connections produce contexts. You have to look at something objectively within its context.
Cheers
Tim
On 14 Jan 2015, at 14:34, Sean Carey wrote:
Would be a real test and present more problems than in decades past. The divides now are more blurred with many former "rebels" now able to duck in between the various camps with ease. It is a much blander poetic culture with no civic or spiritual value system to curb bloody minded greed. There are many of Tilla's "lurkers" as she rightly termed them who remain silent except to do a promo plug.
Quality work exists on both sides of the Atlantic but it is ephemeral "experiments" that draw in the fans and readers. It seems hip and trendy to be raving about these poets rather than seeing through their old hat formats. If one works on the assumption that Objectivist and Language are now corny and dated we can move forwards. Both have had a good innings but require rejection. Any poetic advance can be learned from of course yet we cannot be stuck in a groove that blocks progress.
We always must be open to new thinking as well as technological progress in poetry. Any avant garde in time becomes the establishment as men and women age. Those who I knew as "young tigers" are almost all now past sixty. As in music often a composer is at his or her peak early or late in their career span. Any quality writer like Peter Riley merits respect and is entitled to his views. Anyone who can author "The Day's Final Balance" merits huge respect.
Peter himself might be the ideal editor of a contemporary anthology based on poetry from 2015. It would not be full of the well nourished brigade's efforts seen by previous anthologists as being worth ink. Indeed the limited amount of anthologies in recent times leaves a real gap. We must not yield the selection process to the likes of Keith Tuma whose focus is quite predictable. Nor indeed to an "Out of Everywhere" myopic outlook. These efforts do nobody justice but indeed Pierre and Jerry's Y2K books covered quality ground.
Doctors bury their mistakes and literary academics feign amnesia if criticism arrives their way. We must always hold them to account given the scale of their salaries. They assume deity status but a gown is merely a gown and a ticket on to the gravy train.
