Opening Slinger (Wingbow, ‘75) at random, and losing context as well as italics:
You better stay away from tobacco
or you might do just that, Pardner.
What happened to I she asked
his eyes dont seem right.
That aint grammatical, Poet.
Maybe. However Certain it seems,
look, theres no reaction.
Shake him no more then!
requested the Gunslinger...
It’s not the same thing, it never is, but the humour plays off similar switches of register from high-falutin to vernacular. And with some slight adjustments Kleinzahler’s words might just as well apply to Dorn. Maybe not especially Elizabethan genes for either, though Berryman’s Sonnets are steeped in Shakespeare. But if you see no connection I can’t take this any further.
I think I see what you mean about the sides of O’Hara that are less generally appreciated.
Schuyler? Seems to me all or nothing.
Sad to think there’s no ‘hors d’academe’ – perhaps it’s getting that way here.
Jamie
From: Mark Weiss
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 2:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: US - UK
Except that they're both humorous I see no connection between Dorn and Berryman.
No, it's not just about the academy, tho for poets younger than I am in the US there's very little except the academy.
It's also not a question of negative comments, but of whether there are negative remarks, but of whether Olson is even on the radar. Creeley continues to garner lost of negatice comment, but it's decidedly less vocal.
I have no idea how others read Ashbery and Schuyler. But here's something to ponder. O'Hara's The Day Lady Died has won acceptance across the line. It's an exemplary well-made poem. On the other hand, In Memory of My Feelings and the Odes, which are both messier and far more important poems, are almost never mentioned.
Robert: Yes, a fuzzy border. I can remember when it was a lot less so. Now, the folks on the other side read Lorine Niedecker, for instance, tho she was ignored in that camp for about 70 years. She has become something of a feminist cause. And recently Charles Simic wrote a nice piece about Reznikoff, who's virtually unknown on the other side--we'll see if that has any effect.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jamie McKendrick
Sent: Aug 31, 2015 9:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: US - UK
These accounts do attest to hostility and/or incomprehension. I could add some of my own, and a fair few encountered on this list. But I was more wondering about the public zone – specifically, having seen no negative remarks about Olson and Creeley, where that had cropped up. Or the anti-Americanism. Perhaps a futile thing to pursue. The division exists – and probably several other bitter ones within the opposing camps. I’m not seeking to abolish it, rather questioning whether it’s of much use or significance. The phantasmal elements – as I take Jeremy to have meant – feed on themselves and just keep it batting to and fro. I didn’t understand him to be saying there were no real reasons for the opposition.
Mark’s response to my list of US poets was centred on academic curricula. My own interests were extra-curricular. The academy’s important in choosing what is or isn’t studied, but I’m more interested, if it’s true that Schuyler and Ashbery are read on either side of the divide, in whether they’re being read in different ways. Likewise, not just because of who publishes them or who teaches them, why Berryman’s Dream Songs and Dorn’s Gunslinger have to be seen as aesthetically opposed. ‘Aesthetically’ is bad shorthand here but it’ll have to do. In Berryman’s poem the ‘blackface’ side of Henry and the crude racial stereotyping it involves makes him deeply problematic, especially in the context of what we’ve just been talking about, but I’m thinking more specifically about what Kleinzahler calls his “eccentric, syncopated mash-up of traditional measures and contemporary vernacular energy, an American motley with Elizabethan genes”.
Jamie
From: Tim Allen
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 12:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: US - UK
Yes oh yes. I've experienced my share of such encounters (all phantoms of my imagination of course).
On more than one occasion I've been asked who I think is the finest current British poet to which I have invariably answered Maggie O' Sullivan and got a completely stony stare back, looking at me as though I am some kind of mad man - end of conversation. These encounters were with poetry/literature teachers and academics, not Joe Soaps.
Had similar responses in such conversations at the mention of Tom Raworth, Robert Sheppard, Geraldine and, yes, Peter Riley.
Cheers
Tim
On 31 Aug 2015, at 11:52, Hampson, R wrote:
I had a similar experience at the London conference on the lyric about twenty years ago. I was introduced by the poetry editor at Faber (who had previously been my editor at Penguin) to a well-known poet – who asked me whose poetry I was giving my paper on, and, when I said Bill Griffiths, turned and walked away …
and from Mark...
A couple of years ago at an academic conference I found myself talking to the head of a lit dept. I mentioned Jerry Rothenberg. e anthologist," she said. To which I replied "He's also a fine poet." Answer: a scowl.
