Coming along in the USA as an adolescent reader of poetry and would-be poet, I didn't think much about "avant-garde" and "mainstream." The division was more along the lines of "modernists" (who were very mainstream--TSE on the cover of Time) and traditionalists (who were a big old bogie though nobody could name them). Then when I emerged from a decade of graduate study (dissertation on Blake's Jerusalem and Browning's Sordello, both I think avant something) I discovered the scene had shifted. Mentioning my enjoyment of Zukofsky to an MFA faculty colleague, I was told he was part of the "lunatic fringe" and I should not tell students about him; all poetry from Britain was considered to be inert, formalist frigidity, except for Ted Hughes, who was a Nazi woman-hater. A decade or so ago I taught a graduate seminar on contemporary British poetry and none of the poets in the MFA program had even heard of Geoffrey Hill, much less read him. So Peter is correct--the animosity is still going strong, at least in some parts of the American academy. David Latane
http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds)
From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2015 6:47 AM
Subject: Re: a good horsewhipping (was "delusions of whiteness", etc.)
I am forced to chip in again, to say that a very great deal of the animosity shown by American poets to British poetry, which was sometimes total, was clearly because the poets were British, sometimes explicitly so. I've pointed out this before -- there was a widespread polemic among such poets, especially among the less substantial figures, that said British poetry was finished for all sorts of ideological and cultural reasons, and for ever. I and my associates met this again and again in the 1960s and later. It is probably still going strong in the academy, as old wasteful animosities tend to.
Also that I think it's quite all right to be not interested in Charles Olson (or anyone) without being accused of animosity or nationalism. The avant-grade does tend to assume that its programmes and lineages are sacrosanct and to disagree with any corner of them must be an act of prejudice.
But I agree there was also an anti-American prejudice in some quarters, as when Donald Davie reviewing John Riley's Mandelshtam translations dismissed them for no good reason as "Americanised".
pr, hair also damp and disorderly
On 30 Aug 2015, at 10:58, Tim Allen wrote:
Sorry, hair is still not dry.
I've always said that a big part of the animosity shown towards the poetry of Creeley and Olson by the mainstream Brits (and believe me, that animosity is still alive and kicking) is because they were Americans. It probably was not consciously so but that of course makes it all the more difficult to deal with. There was plenty of other American poetry of course but what came out of the modernists was something that had shifted a long way from English models and found its own feet, influenced by different things (as Peter has pointed out, the French). Then part of that animosity was naturally transferred to those poets in their own country who were obviously enthused by the Americans - then hey diddle diddle the game begins.
Peter Riley has of course expressed his own negative views on this.
The part that Beat poetry played was, because of its wider popularity, a rather different thing to deal with.
Now where is that hair brush?
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
