In my experience this word "mainstream" is very little used with reference to poetry, or only in certain quarters,  and I can't think of anyone who would agree to being it. More importantly, there is no consensus as to what it means, or even whether it is pejorative or not. So it is a word which can only be read by a group which can agree to recognise it. 

I don't know how many silent listeners on this list would agree with Tim, not only his beliefs but also his vehemence, but it occurs to me that I have only come across one other poet who adopted the same kind of attitude --  determined to believe that he is the victim of a conspiracy and, more importantly, that the entire (British) poetry scene is corrupt from top to bottom, that it is a pejorocracy in which the worse a poet is the more reward and fame she gets, that it is all controlled by a clique of critics, journalists, officers, etc. lobbied by publishers like Faber and Chatto. It is a world of lies. This is, of course, Anthony Barnett. I don't think he uses the term "mainstream". His favourite epithet for all these bad poets and their bad supporters is the word "shit". It's difficult to mount a critical discussion against this word, as against "yuk". 

But such sentiments in more reasonable form have always been common and at different times and in different ways justified, I think. It would be a long story. 

PR

On 27 May 2016, at 22:28, Jamie McKendrick wrote:

Of course you're right also about cinema and music, I should have reflected for a moment longer. It's a useful point. Do we speak of the mainstream novel? What different associations does the term have in the different arts? Does it just stand for the more commercially successful? The more popular? The more traditional? 

   Whatever those associations are, it's always seemed to me slightly risible when applied to one sector of the generally marginalized art form of poetry.

  Also there are a number of poets who self-identify as 'mainstream', presumably without the negative properties I've listed below. But I think my point stands, if it's used in the way i've described it's merely a prejudicial term.

Jamie

On 27 May 2016, at 21:14, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

David, I'm not trying to outlaw the term - though I see no useful connection with 'mainstream politics' and haven't come across it in the other arts except perhaps theatre. If someone spoke to me about mainstream painting I'd wonder what planet they were from. So sure, if it's helpful to people let them use it. Myself, I've a vague idea about what it's used to cover.

   When it becomes the repository of all or most of the vices in the poetic universe - anecdotal, empirical, pettily epiphanic, faux realist, domestic, bourgeois, quietistic etc. etc. - I'd say it has outlived any usefulness, and the cargo is merely abusive not descriptive. Saying that it 'aspires to be normative' and variants thereof would seem to be continuous with this set of negative characteristics. So if you think that this neat distribution of vices on one side of the divide and their opposed virtues, presumably, on the other side is an accurate representation of the world of poetry, then the term may well be useful to you.

Jamie

On 27 May 2016, at 20:26, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I'm a little curious here,  Jamie, in that it seems somewhat apparent to my hearing eyes and reading ears that this term, 'mainstream', is in a state of accepted usage in discussion of the literary and other arts throughout that broad, cloudy world of discussion, debate, acceptance and rejection that goes on, riverrun, about us and about.

 So are we here saying that a term which is in such aptly general and generalised use, about the novel or cinema or genres of music and even outside the arts, about politics for example, does not apply to near recent and contemporary British poetry?

 I wouldn't want to try to define what exactly the term entirely means, it carries too much cargo, but if I was forced to I'd at least begin by saying it is that which aspires to the normative. Or perhaps is nuanced on an occupation of the normal. Or a set of projections of normality.

On 27 May 2016 at 19:31, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Tim,
 I've no wish to blight what looks like a sunny weekend for you or for me by indulging in what by now has become a fruitless and repeated argument, so I'll try to keep it brief. I'd gladly find an exit if the sign could be switched on. If you can see the exit I'd be grateful.
  With Duffy you'll remember I argued that your list of negative attributes didn't seem to me accurately to describe her work, and that I didn't see why she should anyway be considered representative. Same goes for Armitage. As probably the two most popular poets in Britain I'd say they were distinctly egregious (in its early sense of being outside the flock). Doubtless they'll both have a number of imitators, though I can't think of anyone offhand.
  Chez Armitage, I pointed out that The Hitcher can hardly be seen as condoning the violence it describes, being evidently a dramatic monologue. We were in agreement about that and I follow your account of the poem up to 'It works'. Thereafter your critique of it doesn't convince me, particularly when you call the poem 'dishonest'.  If I've understood you, you see it as technically successful, but as having a moral failing at its core - a reading you're obviously entitled to but for me to comment further I'd need to have a clearer sense of what you mean by 'dishonest'.

For someone who so often lays claims to 'honesty' with regard to your own critical responses, I'm afraid I find your language of condemnation fairly slippery: it continually shifts between moral, political and aesthetic categories. I accept these may be semi-permeable but it makes it hard to know exactly what it is you're so indignant about. If I assume the phrase 'reactionary meanness' is a political and moral critique you say no it's not it's aesthetic. Then later you hedge your bets again, saying it's only partly that, so in the end it sounds like the main thing for you is to plaster the perceived enemy with a slurry of insults. (I'm wondering if that's a mixed metaphor.). If you can't hear how contemptuous your descriptions of the amorphous entity called 'mainstream' poetry sound, no quoting and requoting on my part will persuade you.
  As I've tried to explain, I have no problem with criticism that attacks a poem for moral or political or aesthetic reasons, or tries to join the dots between them, as all of these elements may well be involved both in the poem's composition and its reception, and none of them are necessarily discrete categories. I might disagree with the criticism but I can learn something from it, if only why I disagree with it. I can learn very little from an indiscriminate wall of insults directed at a supposed enemy except how irked you happen to feel.

Jamie

> On 27 May 2016, at 09:53, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> You seem to want to move the discussion away from Armitage Duffy etc, but move it away to your list below and we'll have nothing to disagree about.
>
> Regarding the anger thing - no, I'm no longer angry, the word 'Yuk' isn't meant to convey anger, it's meant to describe a strong negative reaction, like eating something horrible and going Yuk - if I taste something that my tongue doesn't like I'm not 'angry' at it.
>
> The anger comes, or came from and for, another reason - the politics and power games of the thing - the elevation of one lot by critics, editors and reviewers accompanied by an (at that time) complete dismissal of the other lot. I know saying it like that makes it sound trivial but of course in reality its effects were far reaching for the poets concerned.
>
> I'm a bit surprised that you haven't followed up on the little bit I said about that Armitage poem, where I am honestly trying to be objective.
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim
>
>> On 26 May 2016, at 19:55, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
>>
>> Are you sure, Tim, it's the case of reading the same poems? I'm not, I've no way of telling what poets or even what critics you've been reading. Twice already I've said I may even share your views. All I can see is that you sound very angry ("Yuk! Just yuk") and you sound angry even to be asked to explain.
>> You also seem more sure of my tastes than I am myself ("You don't agree, obviously because you like whatever it is that I don't like there" and earlier in the exchange you thought I was being defensive because of my tastes). Admittedly, I've defended some poets here against attacks I found unjust but that doesn't mean I especially like or value their work. For the purposes of most of the discussions here I'm not sure it matters that much whether I do or don't like x or y's work. (Needless to say it matters to me!)
>> In case it might help to place my interests, as far as poetry criticism goes, in the last few years I've written on Dante, Montale, Celan, Trakl, Enzensberger, Merini, Anedda, Magrelli, Machado, Heaney, Hofmann, Bishop, Baudelaire and Whitman. In the visual arts, on the Futurists, Schwitters, Soutine, Kandinsky, Blake, Nash, Tuymans and so on...
>> A mixed bag, I'd have thought (excusing the telling contraction).
>> On this list the only poets I can recall briefly commending in the last year are Karen Solie and Peter Manson.
>> I've no idea what all that would tell you about my tastes but I can assure you that the last question I'd want to ask about any of them is whether or not they would conform with some blurry generic definition of 'mainstream' or 'avant-garde'.
>> Jamie
>

--

David Joseph Bircumshaw

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