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I thought people were meant to remain very polite to each other on e-mail discussion groups. Thanks, Ric for telling me my "once fine mind" has decayed beyond recognition. And what the hell has a "Cambridge education" got to do with what I said? I have never upheld any form of education or any Cambridge connection as a means of support for my own views on any topic on earth. There's a strange and fierce resentment at the word "Cambridge" among the poetic left which has never been made explicit. It's nothing to do with me. It's to do with someone else. All I said was that the tone of recommendation being used implied a community of interest which is belied by the incoming correspondence. Why should that be taken to imply that you can't speak to each other? On the contrary, it means you have to recognise that there is a great deal of difference and find ways to address it, which is likely to be much more fruitful than in-the-know cryptic winks (and there have been quite a lot of those recently). Who pays any attention to arbiters, be they Andrews Motion or Duncan? Some people restrict their readings programatically one way or another, under the influence of pundits or not, more fools they. I don't see that it makes any significant difference. There are certain specific zones of cultural promotion which remain a scandal, there's no doubt about that, but they don't thereby create a mainstream. There are two ways of MAKING IT for young poets in English-language poetry these days: right and left (official poetry and academic poetry). Both work. Surely that is by now obvious. What poet of integrity would want to take sides in that meaningless confrontation? Peter Riley %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%