O.K. fair enough Peter. But if Him-Whose-Name-We-Do-Not-
Mention really wanted to go against the tide of poetry as
projection of oneself why did he bother to have any truck
with Bloodaxe at all knowing full well its love of packaging
and putting poets on the catwalk.
If you don't like the housestyle don't join the house is one
of the first things we all learn in the poetry game. To join
in full knowledge of the facts and then refuse to play by the
rules seems to me not an act of upholding beliefs but an
opportunity for H-W-N-W-D-N-M to play the prima donna,
albeit a faceless one and draw even more attention to himself.
And of course it works because it plays on that most animal
of animal instincts: curiosity. And if that's a bona fide way to
annihilation of projecting oneself then I'm the next President
of the United States. It's a done deal babe.
G.
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 12:35
Subject: Bludaxe
>>>Against the tide of what? Of people who don't mind having their
>photographs taken.
>
>No, no, m'dear, against the implicit belief that poetry is a projection of
>self, which dominates the entire industry. These things mean things---the
>festival circuits, reviews, mag features, blurbs, the poems themselves, the
>covers, the wrapping, mugshots in catalogues... all contribute to a
>currently massively upheld unstated belief that poetry is an expression
>of personality, offering a substitute self which the reader can directly
>inhabit by empathy. Tying the whole world to this, casting the whole
>extent of the globe and its problems aside in favour an enclosive
>constructed world centred on personal confirmation. Most "political
>correctness" is just another version of this. Some people take it very
>seriously. Jack Spicer is said by some to have fallen into a despair which
>led to his death because he so hated this ethic and couldn't escape from it
>in the poetic context he inhabited.
>
>Look for instance at the way Bloodaxe publicises MacSweeney, hardly as a
>poet at all, but as an alcoholic, now a dead alcoholic, offering us the
>vicarious thrill of "being" that life through the poetry without any of the
>immense attached risks. (His death by alcoholism gets into the very small
>blurb on him in the new catalogue; Doug Oliver's death doesn't -- nothing
>so sellable, I suppose, about cancer.)
>
>Actually I don't agree with [whatsisname] at all, I think that when the
>reader actually gets to the poetry it asserts its own ethics whatever
>fantasy commercials you have to pass through in the process. Evidently
>[thingy] feels he can't trust his readers.
>
>
>/PR
>
>
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