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BRITISH-IRISH-POETS  2000

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Subject:

Re: amazed thereabouts again

From:

"david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

david.bircumshaw

Date:

Sat, 19 Aug 2000 02:16:03 -0700

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (216 lines)

Geraldine wrote:

'I always thought MacDiarmid an unpleasant little fraud in
 many ways. '

Yip. Thar's truth, too much truth I fear for some in that. MacGrieveMalt ,
though sometimes a sleighter of speech and a high note, was also a perpetual
self-grandiosity and altogether the wrong kind of fraudster. I mean, there's
fraud positive and fraud not.
(Way back, when the world seemed real, I used to foothill footle about in
the Unions and Labour movement. Well afore the Toy Blairs. I met quite a few
folk, NOT poets, who'd met MacKnifeman in the pre- and post-war days. Their
common impression was of a cold man and an unpleasantness. One said he
reminded him of Hitler! Another, Mosley.)
But now he's Official. A Man Worthy of Footnote. A Canon-ite.
So everything he wrote, no matter how shite, has to be documented, fussed
over, authoritized. By insect-collectors. But no doubt I'm just a Questioner
Who Sits Too Sny on this and, besides which, my opinions aren't worthy of
note.
Which almost makes me want to shout them down some people's throats. Not
ears, throats.
Gosh, not that I would, me.

On Windows (as in cleaner's, not being taken to the trademarks):

I never clean mine on principle that the view's that depressing I might want
to throw myself out if I did.

david (in a very good mood, actually) bircumshaw


----- Original Message -----
From: Geraldine Monk <[log in to unmask]>
To: cris cheek <[log in to unmask]>; british-poets
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 5:16 PM
Subject: Re: amazed thereabouts again


> Hi cris et al,
>
> An awful lot of messages to get through and my spine's
> in mega fall-out mode so forgive omissions
> and slapdash readings but a few points
> to various missives addressed either directly or indirectly
> to me.
>
> Firstly, thanks cris for taking the trouble to elucidate where
> you were coming from and where you anticipate it all may go.
> I can get much more excited about  'memory palaces'
> than anything to do with 'britishness' per se.
>
> But obviously many people went for the purely literal and I
> couldn't honestly see that going further than what Elizabeth
> James so unashamedly pointed out as 'a friendly opportunity
> for a nice snoop, which I'm enjoying' - well good for Elizabeth,
> an honest reply to my straightforward question 'what's the
> attraction'.  Elizabeth is invited to peruse my mountainous
> collection of holiday snaps in my lilac and green boudoir anytime
> she likes.  (I'm not being cynical, not sneery, I'm being
> straightforward). Elizabeth like yourself  answered my questioning:
> questioning which I didn't and still don't think was without
> a genuine curiosity and purpose.  I'm still amazed by the
> popularity of this thread in its literal sense.  I can't help it.
> I just am.  O.K. so I'm the person that turned down the
> blockbuster film  who said no one would be interested.
>
> And that brings me to the second part of this letter.
> Just because this thread has proved to be popular
> does not make my questioning malicious sneery  or
> cynical: it was a response.  Peter, Alison, pardon me
> for living and having the audacity to open my trap when
> what comes out isn't what you want to come out  (this
> is not a cynical response it's a pissed-fucking-off
> response ).
>
> Alison,  To jump from what I said in order to lump me with
> MacDiarmid's sneer at the'mere being' of women' is
> beyond my comprehension.  And why are you giving such
> credence to such a comment that isn't worth light of day.
> I always thought MacDiarmid an unpleasant little fraud in
> many ways.  So thanks for the comparison (now I AM
> being cyncial).  Do you really really think that a straight
> down the line question about why this theme has got
> everybody so excited (and don't forget the majority of
> respondents have been men) is a sneer.  I thought it
> was a question.  And only last week we had a lovely
> uninterrupted swop on the beauty of the semantic field
> of cosmetics.  Not a sneer in sight.  So gorgeously
> girly and trivial (attempt at humour).  As for Sparty
> Lee I remember many yawns and groans from them that
> weren't there (and I certainly weren't thunk gad) and unless
> my memory fails me, I'm sure you your good self put a very
> cutting little missive on... which I read and thought very amusing
> and apt at the time.  But maybe I misread the sentiment.
>
> Which brings me nicely to Peter.
>     All I can say Peter is will you please stop putting your own
> 'simpering' 'sniping' 'sneering' 'cynicism' onto me.   At least
> I presume these adjectives are flung in my direction.  What
> alternatives?  Alan Halsey's highly-praised limerick (which was
> so playful that you'd have to have zero to the bone humour not
> to read it for what it was -and as the main recipient was cris -
> who hasn't - god forbid- taken umbrage - it surely can't be him-
> for crying out loud, Alan doesn't  write a fookin funny limerick
> if he's angry or disturbed.  Get real.  So that leaves Tim Allen.
>
> Well I think we're all getting used to Tim's posts by now.  He's
> not going to wrap up his earnest and angry  passion in tinsel.
> Why should he. His postings are far too impassinioned to be
> truly cynical.  We of all people/poets  should know that. (for
> all I know Tim will come back and blow my head off for saying
> this - but at least I know he'll not do it gratutiously or out of
> some petty grudge or misunderstanding - he'll do it from his
> angry human heart).
>
> We all have our voices.
>
> So one and all but Peter and Alison in particular:  We questioned
> something. That was all.  And if you see it as sneery, leery, cynical,
> then we might as well go home  And home is where the heart is
> ( and no I'm not being bloody bastard cynical I'm being fucking
> straight straight straight... I'm a fucking killer...I've never been
> anything but....catholic upbringing and all that...Lancashire humour
> ...you know where terms of endearment are 'fuckface' and 'gobshite'.
> I'm not cynical 'I'm fed up all round' (who said that before topping
> themselves? - no prizes for that one).  Carry on comrades.....
> at the end of the day all I can say is ...I only asked,
> Yours sneery, cynical,snipy fucking lost my humour with an
> excrutiatingly painful (goody say most of you) neckspine. over
> and out.
>
> Geraldine
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cris cheek <[log in to unmask]>
> To: british-poets <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wednesday, August 16, 2000 11:39
> Subject: re: amazed thereabouts again
>
>
> >Hi Geralidine,
> >
> >oh gawd. I know Mr. Bromide's original snippet mentioned geographical
> >whereabouts but my little invite (barring the quote from his
> >provocation) didn't reiterate that at all and I hoped the suggestion
> >would introduce some deft handling as indeed it may well prove to do.
> >So I wasn't seeing contradiction so much as deepening ambiguities  -
> >underpinned by postings from Australia and Sicily and so forth. Well
> >exactly, how can one have any sense of 'britishness' whatsoever' else
> >explode its absurd constructions? There is an awkward paradox in the
> >naming of this list, but hey why not have some wicked fun with that
> >fact?
> >
> >I see these windows as liminal, both 'on' and 'off' in local and
> >translocal contexts. Much possibility for syntactical composition to
> >be exploited thereby. I'm gonna type in a couple of quotes from
> >Steven Johnson's 'Interface Culture - How New Technology Transforms
> >The Way We Create and Communicate'.
> >
> >'If Matteo Ricci could recall an entire biblical treatise by
> >spatializing the language, turning words into architecture, then
> >surely the transformation of bits and bytes into a virtual space must
> >augment our data-recollection skills. The relationship seems simple
> >enough: spatial information is easier to navigate than textual
> >information, and windows are just a tool for seeing that space, like
> >a looking glass or a microscope.
> >
> >Although the explanation sounds plausible, it doesn't correspond to
> >the way most of us use windows in our everyday computing lives. The
> >window actually has little to do with remembering where something is,
> >the way we might remember where we last saw the car keys, or the
> >route to a friend's house. Spatial mnemonics are an essential part of
> >the modern graphical interface, of course, but they're mainly
> >concentrated in things like the menu bar and the location of desktop
> >icons such as the trash can . . .
> >
> >[the] shift from modes to windows was a massive advance in ease of
> >use - so massive, in fact, that it is now difficult to imagine a
> >digital world without windows. Creative transformations of this
> >magnitude tend to have secondary effects on those of us living under
> >their spell, particularly when the conventions are so familiar, so
> >second nature that they become transparent to us. (Think about the
> >way those "memory palaces" shaped the structure of Dante's
> >'Inferno'.) For cyber-philosophers like Sherry Turkle, the windowed
> >imagination is emblematic of our larger "postmodern" condition: the
> >unified field of traditional post-Enlightenment thinking fractured
> >out into a hundred points of view, each of them equally valid. The
> >passage from the fixed system of the command line to the more
> >anarchic possibilities of the window follows the same route traveled
> >by Western Philosophy: from the stable, unified truth of Kant and
> >Descartes to the relativism and ambiguity of Nietzshe and Deleuze.
> >The window, for Turkle, is a way of thinking in multiplicities, as
> >all good postmodernists are supposed to do. "multiple viewpoints,"
> >Turkle writes, "call forth a new moral discourse . . . The culture of
> >simulation may help us achieve a vision of multiple but integrated
> >identity whose flexibility, resilience, and capacity for joy comes
> >from having access to our many selves."' Johnson does go on to
> >critique this lewd dystopic prancing through Sven Birkerts
> >consideration of the window not as a sign of "multiple selves" but
> >rather of attention deficit disorder.  The ideas laid out here though
> >might feed into what I hoped underlay the point of suggesting
> >'whereabouts'.
> >
> >Now  -  as to 'doorways', o but there's the bell . . .
> >
> >love and love
> >cris
> >--
> >
>



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