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I was referring to critics and practitioners within  (let's not argue about the term) the non-mainstream. Makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Does good poetry mean the same to a reader of flarf, a reader of conceptual, an Olsonite, a 20th generation NY School?

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Jan 14, 2015 11:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Northern

Hi Mark - and yes I know that 'more' does not mean a lot. The point about critics not agreeing is of course true, in fact it's one of the things that keep poetry alive, but there is often quite a deal of general agreement from what we might call a coterie of critics and not all critics or coteries have the same status. My voice as an unknown reviewer and critic in my own shoestring magazine from a provincial city with a subscription list that peaked at around 400 had very low status compared to the metropolitan critics and reviewers writing in the TLS, Poetry Review and the broadsheets who were regularly ignoring the stuff I liked while heaping praise on their New Gen darlings. Having status does not mean that your opinions are correct but it does mean that people are going to respect your opinions and be more likely therefore to seriously consider them and then take them on board. This is how the world works - it's not made by conspiracies but it is made by psychological and sociological conditions. It's not just that a poetry reader is more likely to encounter a 'mainstream' reviewer of a 'mainstream' book, it is the assumed status of their opinion that has the lasting effect on that person's taste.

Status of course is also conferred by academia. This is one of the reasons why, over the past 20 years, avant work has found its status rising. I might be critical of the relationship at times and highlight its problems but It is definitely one of the reasons why, in Britain anyway, it didn't die the death back in the early 90's.

Cheers

Tim
       
On 14 Jan 2015, at 15:10, Mark Weiss wrote:

Note that Pierre is saying that there's more  discussion of the quality of l'extreme contemporaine here than in Britain, not that there's a whole lot of it. There isn't. I think a third factor at play is that among practitioners and critics alike there's not much agreement about what constitutes the good and the not so good.

Mark