Doug
If I can extend this further, what I was inching towards was the simple
point that wealth and power do not equal literary excellence. If I can shift
the perspective away from the US, if we look at the writers of the late
British Empire (c. 1875 - 1925) we find that almost none of those of the
first order are from the dominant class (the upper-class English) we have
many Irish, some very fine Americans, a Pole even, etc and only a few
English (Lawrence and Hardy I'd say)
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: (no subject)
> Doug
>
> I was suffering partly from late-night irritation in the post you refer
to,
> but also I was simply trying to put a non-US centric perspective on
things.
> I recently saw a post elsewhere where a writer was congratulated for
> importing work from the 'periphery' into the 'centre'. The work concerned
> was translations of poems from such unknown places as Russia, Japan and
> ancient Greece (!) - these forming into the 'periphery' into unremarkable
US
> English. I deeply hope the post was a joke.
>
> I could mention other writers of not so political an ilk - Ungaretti,
Celan,
> Bobrowski, Cavafy, Saba, Machado, or take a Russian of the emigre
> persuasion, the wonderful Khodasevich. And I'd guess the greatest post-war
> _American_ poem of all remains Neruda's Canto General, altho' I know that
> _is_ political. For sure, the US has produced many good poets,
particularly
> women, that I regard as its real distinctiveness, but so much US poetry is
> college copycat. One the vilest things I have seen was a supposed elegy
for
> his father by a well-known US poet that was no more than a rip-off of
> Lorca's great lament for the bullfighter. This poem was anthologised in a
> prestigious collection of post-war US poetry.
>
> I'm sure too that there are writers in non-European languages equally
worthy
> of praise, I am limited by my ignorance there not I hasten to add a
> Euro-centricism. You'll notice I mention no English writers in this
context,
> I'm not lapsing into nationalism.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
> David Bircumshaw
>
> Leicester, England
>
> Home Page
>
> A Chide's Alphabet
>
> Painting Without Numbers
>
> www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
>
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 3:02 PM
> Subject: Re: (no subject)
>
>
> > David
> >
> > I'm definitely not jumping on Frederick's pro-US bandwagon (I have my
> > problems with US policy, as do we all; not the reaction to the fall of
the
> > towers, but the way an administration I find definitely troubling has
been
> > able to turn that horror to their advantage in order to continue its
> > ideological attack on a large number of its own people while also more
or
> > less ignoring the rest of he world unless it's 'onside'), but I wonder
if
> > you have encountered (or encountered then) all the great postwar US
> poetry?
> > I will say that a lot of the poetry that actually made it to GB through
> the
> > mainstream venues wasn't to my eyes & ears all that interesting or at
all
> > the best of what was happening, but a lot of other writing was (well,
> > admittedly, it was highly influential on my own).
> >
> > Not to take anything away from the writers of Russia, or an Octavio Paz,
> > that you mention, but... -- is it that so many US poets of the time did
> not
> > appear to be 'political' in the way the writers you mention seem to be?
> >
> > Doug
> >
> > Douglas Barbour
> > Department of English
> > University of Alberta
> > Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> > (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
> >
> > I can always
> > go back to
> > fertilization,
> > kimonos, wrap-
> > arounds and
> > diatribes.
> > Lorine Niedecker
> >
>
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