I often find I get messages from persons totally unknown to me in response
to postings to this list. I was so impressed by this latest from the
splendidly named correspondent below that I felt impelled to share it with
all for its linguistic resources, analytical incision and more than
hereditary wealth of reference.
Oh, sorry, Charlotte Peters Rock, I forgot my response:
'No'
David Joseph Bircumshaw
----- Original Message -----
From: Charlotte Peters Rock <[log in to unmask]>
To: david.bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: Obliquity in Poetry. The Arcane Art
> Oh get off!
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: david.bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> To: brit poets <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 10:13 AM
> Subject: Re: Obliquity in Poetry. The Arcane Art
>
>
> > This is such a wearisome subject because a bone so much worried at but
as
> > far contemporary Britain is concerned the underlying agenda in this as a
> > cultural debate in poetry is nothing but the simply political. The
> modernism
> > of Eliotics or the New Critics was assimilable because of its
fundamental
> > reactionary conservatism. Likewise, the popularity of poet such as
Shelley
> > with former generations of the General Reader had to be dismantled. But,
> the
> > spread of avant-gardiste tendencies among the Great Unwashed in the
> Forties,
> > Sixties and Nineties beyond the bounds of the Taught and Canonical
> required
> > the Happy Few to re-conscript the General Reader in the sacred British
> cause
> > of suppressing thought in the name of common sense for the simple and
> > unmentionable reason that in Britain all power derives from the
acceptance
> > of a total irrationality, the existence at the heart of things the
Crown,
> > the madness of an hereditary monarchy. Moral or Physical outspokeness
are
> > allowed by the traditional parameters of British society but
> > Intellect-you-all analysis must never wander too far from the confines
of
> > Professorial rooms in Cambridge. I mean, it's ok in astro-physics, on
> > Lucasian Chairs, because that's pure mysticism. And visual Art is useful
> in
> > Advertising designs and modern music makes good sound tracks for horror
> > films but we mustn't have thought getting too close to the Common Noun
or
> > Verb in the Street.
> > So people like Gioia or most of all the Laureate of the Official Cult of
> > Private Misery, Larkin, whose politics were no aberration, are taken up
as
> > Guardian Devils. I'm not saying for a moment that all poetry is
> necessarily
> > political, there are things far more important, beyond all this fiddle,
> but
> > it's cultural reception in Britain at least in recent years has been
> nothing
> > but that.
> > And that at least is as brutally simple as that.
> >
> > Vivat Regina. Long live Firebox. Invite me to your parties, particularly
> > nice ones full of interesting people.
> >
> > From a loyal Subject of the Active Verb of the Royal Noun.
> >
> > Zadek the Priest, whoops, I mean
> >
> > David Bircumshaw
> >
> >
>
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