Tim, in reply to yours and somewhat parallel to what Peter says below, I’m
not really talking about convergence though that might be the case. I suspect
you too have a problem with the term ‘hybrid’ though for different reasons. We
understand a hybrid to be the product of two different kinds of plants or
animals which each have determined features. For me, these two camps have no
such determined features unless we’re willing to accept caricatures or very
generalised tendencies. The trouble for me is that I can’t see poets
meaningfully engaging with either caricatures or generalised tendencies. In
terms of the literary – leaving aside other contributary experiences – what
poets engage with (and by this I mean learn from) are particular poems,
particular poets. I take back what I said earlier about the ‘theoretical’! This
experience is personal, grainy, magnetic, intimate, intensely focused (though I
suppose all that could be theorised). There is nothing stopping a young poet, or
an old one for that matter, learning a great deal from both Hill and Spicer, or
from both Roy Fisher and Elizabeth Bishop. This isn’t hybridity – more like
serendipity.
I have far more concern, vaguely returning to that CW topic,
about its teaching if it were to perpetuate these kinds of binaries, explicitly
or otherwise, as I think it sometimes does, than I’d have about the hegemony of
university networks. You found your way, Tim, to a whole set of preferences,
gradually, without being steered in this manner, as I suppose all of us from an
older ‘untutored’ generation did. (Yes, I know that raises other questions about
an exclusionary canon, but nothing quite as restrictive...)
Jamie
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2018 3:36 PM
Subject: Re: Where does poetry sit in relation to academia, or vice
versa?
I
think what Tim says about recent convergences is quite right. The question
is, then, how do you recognise a poetical writing as “mainstream” when it no
longer has the necessary characteristics?.(For that matter how do you define
Geoffrey Hill’s
Clavics is a stylistic contrary to, say, Jack Spicer’s
Holy Grail? (without proposing, of course they they actually
agree
about anything.)) Is associative definition (such an
university emplacement, scale of reward) enough? Is mere assertion ("We still
are not one of that lot whatever they do") sufficient?.
I think what Jamie says about the obsolescence of binary conflict as basic
condition of production is quite right.
pr
With
regard to 'younger poets' Jamie, I don't think you are right, not from what I've
been picking up anyway. What I find is that elements of the old arguments are
coming out unchanged in essence but dressed in different clothes. On the wider
front, yes, there has been a coming together of the different poetries
(hybrid etc) with a more adventurous use of language from some of the young
mainstream merging with a greater accessibility (in terms of subject) from some
of the young avants, BUT, on the avant side there has also been a recent
increase of both activity and a sense of 'we are not doing what that lot are
doing'. The reasons for this are, as always, very difficult to work out, but it
does seem to have something to do with the social groups that an individual
finds themselves mixing with and sharing ideas with - again, this is where the
influence of higher education networks become evident.
Cheers
Tim
On 6 Jan 2018, at 14:53, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
Perhaps
I ought to preface these statements by personalising them and saying that I
find the divisions mainly unhelpful, only I very much suspect that I’m not
alone in that, and that a whole generation or two of younger poets will have
discarded them.