In my experience Tim, this isn't true. There has been as much or more slagging off from unconventionalist poets as from the "mainstream", in public and in private at times intense, uninformed and very nasty. The poets under attack have not generally been read, it has been enough sometimes just to name their publishers (Faber etc.).  I find it all very irritating and irrelevant and it seems to be going on for ever, as it will until these crude and misleading categories are dumped. 
pr



On 30 Aug 2015, at 10:31, Tim Allen wrote:

I was hoping to stay off this today but as my hair is drying (yes I've still got a little bit of the stuff) I'll just say that yes yes yes of course a high proportion of the poets who get slotted in with the avant tribe (rightly or wrongly or by fault or design) are widely different to each other, and yet - dramatic pause - they all have a history of being slagged off by, or ignored by, the centre (or whatever term we choose to use) - this is why the debate is not phantasmagoric.

Cheers

Tim
  
On 29 Aug 2015, at 16:31, Jeremy F Green wrote:

whether we're talking about Creeley, Olson, Clark Coolidge (I'll come back to him), Rosemary Tonks, Basil Bunting or Denise Riley—is not one thing, and to imply that it's all avant-garde (insert scare quotes) is an example of the dubious part-for-whole illogic that characterizes this entire phantasmagoric debate.