>
>But I'm puzzled about Mark's "past masters" whose names are not even known
>to the authorities of the "other camp" (always those military metaphors!).
>Who are they? I'm more aware of significant father-figures of the poetical
>left being taken up wholesale and uncritically by both the academy and the
>journalism of success-poetry -- from Pound onwards including most of the
>American modernists, the Dadaists, O'Hara, etc etc. Most of the badly
>ignored dead poets I can think of are highly skilled and imaginative
>writers of a distinctly traditional flavour, like Housman. So who are
>these lost ancestors?
>
Hi Peter
Ouch, Housman. Now that's hitting me where I live.
Without pretending to speak for my compatriot, I can sprinkle a few names
right off--say Louis Zukofsky, Mina Loy, and Melvin Tolson just for three.
The first of these is indeed now beginning to attract a little academic
attention beyond the domain of Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport, but I could
demonstrate with a poll that 99% of what must be 10,000 poets teaching in
the vast creative writing program industry in the US--the so-called
AWP--have never read a poem by him. Maybe 40% would recognize his name.
With Loy the academic end of the industry, which I have contributed to, is
a little bigger, and for some obvious reasons; Tolson will get there soon.
But again among those poets actual readers would be about the same. Shall
I go on? No, I think I won't, as I would then have to excavate that entire
creative writing system and I don't have time this morning. They will have
heard of Housman; they read him as undergraduates in 1962. They gave up on
Pound long ago. They mostly read one another, fiercely jealous of Robert
Pinsky, Jorie Graham, and last year's winner of Prize X.
And I am a pluralist. And one-third of my teaching is in a "creative
writing program."
But them's facts I think.
Don't give up on America, Peter. Come on over! Bring your Housman! But
I've also got a spare room.
I owe David Bircumshaw a brief rundown on some recent African-American
poetry. I am just a week or so away from freedom I haven't enjoyed in some
time and will shovel it in then.
all smiles
Keith
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