Speaking of the tradition:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/19/gun-with-which-verlaine-shot-rimbaud-up-for-auction?CMP=share_btn_fb
>>> Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> 10/20/16 9:50 AM >>>
It was in a post of yours a some months back, re 'novelty' and American poetry.
I don't know enough about it to know if you are right about American attitudes to British poetry in general, it's just that I have not seen it myself. To my mind quite a few avant Americans have always been pretty enthusiastic about avant Brits, they have certainly given the sort of notice and attention to poets such as O'Sullivan and Raworth that were never forthcoming here in their homeland, apart from the then small Brit avant community etc.
I've always been interested in the differences between the Americans and the Brits but never from any sense of national ownership - I don't give two figs where anybody comes from.
I would also have thought that, purely for reasons of access and availability, a while back it was a lot easier for us to pick up on American poets than for them to pick up on ours.
Cheers
Tim
On 20 Oct 2016, at 14:18, Peter Riley wrote:
Curiously, I don't remember saying anything like that. I thought I was talking about American poets' attitudes to British poetry, conventional or innovative, which with exceptions I have found consistently negative for the last 40 years. This was very noticeable in the running of the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry for instance. Our enthusiasm for the new American poetry knew no bounds but was clearly not reciprocated.
I suggest we not start a discussion as to whether the "experimental" can claim the "left field" as its own.
