 |
 |
I've been asked more than once outside of the list why I bother trying to discuss anything to do with this topic with you. My answer is that I do it because apart from being interested in the topic anyway I am particularly interested in the views from someone, like you, who in the main has been looked upon as a lyrically inclined late modernist i.e. not a mainstreamer (let's not quibble with the terms - I just know I am a long-time enthusiast for your poetry and therefore respect your opinions on the thing) but who has a different view on both the nature and substance of the rift. As we both know, there are people who have a far more rebarbative attitude and militant opinion than me. I wasn't anywhere near Earls Court in 1977. I was a young primary school teacher in Plymouth with no connections to anyone in the poetry world except some rejection slips. So on that particular part of the issue I am not the person to challenge you - I should leave that to those who were there. Robert Hampson has taken you up on it so perhaps you should answer his post. Nevertheless saying that "The arguments were not real, they were trumped up on both sides" is pretty strong stuff. It needs a lot of explanation. But what makes me doubt that your argument would hold water is the following... "because it was 'war' and in a war you have to line yourself up with the side you are on and we dutifully did". This is a direct contradiction. What comes first, the argument or the war? How can there be a war without a disagreement or argument? What are you saying? Are you saying they started fighting and found reasons for fighting after the fact? What? Whatever the reasons for arguing or fighting those things had some basis, some reality, even if it had nothing directly to do with poetry but was essentially cultural or sociological. If that is what you mean then say it. There might be an argument there. But even if that was solely the case it means that the thing was real, not imagined. This is why I said you seem to see it all through your own concerns with poetry. I was not being deliberately provocative but I can see how it might rile As for "others paid no attention to it because it was irrelevant to what they needed to write or read", well of course. Surely we all know that. It has noting to do with the issue. I thought I gave a good reply to this idea - "The “war” united a lot of highly disparate and inimical practices and beliefs into a solidarity against a common enemy (and this still goes on", a few weeks back, but neither you or anyone else responded. I know we can't respond to everything but it was an important point and I thought I answered it honestly and objectively. So it is highly irritating that you bring up the same point without engaging with what I said. And this - " If neither of these two things had ever happened the poetry here now, 2017, would for the most part be exactly the same as it is." - well it's unprovable, but my hunch is that you are wrong. A very tired Cheers Tim On 19 Sep 2017, at 15:39, Peter Riley wrote: > This is the whole point. The “poetry war” was not the reality. It was a construction, which some people accepted as good or bad or inevitable (including me) while others paid no attention to it because it was irrelevant to what they needed to write or read. The arguments were not real, they were trumped up on both sides because it was a “war” and in a war you have to line yourself up with the side you are on and we dutifully did, I did, but we were wrong. The real arguments were not a dilemma of either/or. Poetry never is. The “war” united a lot of highly disparate and inimical practices and beliefs into a solidarity against a common enemy (and this still goes on). Craig Raine’s reign at Faber and Faber was not the reality either. If neither of these two things had ever happened the poetry here now, 2017, would for the most part be exactly the same as it is. > > These are just beliefs, some of them are trusts. I don’t know why you have to call them “highly subjective and biassed” if they don’t correspond to your experience. What was 40 years before what? I don’t understand that.