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In message <[log in to unmask]>, K.M. Sutherland <[log in to unmask]> writes > >I'd be interested to know if anyone has any opinion more or less ardent >about Charles Tomlinson's work, particularly the early books. For example >about the moral economy of visual apprehension. Or anything else: k > > It seems that in the sixties various then younger poets saw Tomlinson as one of the few officially-recognised poets who was working in an area which had something in common with work appearing in e.g. Resuscitator & this view carries over into e.g. Andrew Crozier's Thrills & Frills essay. I can't see it myself. His attempts to use a line & stanza form modelled on Williams & Zukofsky seem clod-hopping in comparison with theirs. The crux is possibly what you're suggesting re 'visual apprehension' (but I'm not sure about 'the moral economy'). I think Tomlinson (& others since) understood objectivism largely in terms of an ideal of perceptual & specifically visual clarity & precision - which in the case of Zukofsky certainly & Oppen probably is only half the story or less. This led Tomlinson to retreat from the attempted sharper focus of American Scenes to the really quite dull pastoralism of his seventies verse ... after which I lost track of him. -- Alan Halsey %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%