At 1:34 AM +0000 12/30/02, david.bircumshaw wrote:
>I'm certainly not trying to belittle what SALT
>does, nor would I descry those small presses, although their position is
>'marginal', rather than 'tangential' (!).
!! Descrying those small presses might indeed be an interesting
idea... Well. Let's face it: all poetry is culturally marginal. I
think that is its tremendous freedom. Whether poets want to
acknowledge that freedom (it is I know well a difficult pleasure),
let alone pick it up and run with it is another question.
At 1:34 AM +0000 12/30/02, david.bircumshaw wrote:
> all I was trying to talk about was the
>situation in England as it seems from the 'inside', just as Jon I think was
>saying how it is in the US.
The same sort of rough diagram can be drawn for Australia. I spent
an annoyed afternoon arguing against one in Quadrant not long ago. I
wonder, though, and increasingly, what the point is? This as an
inveterate complainer about my own culture...
Sometimes - not always - it strikes me that the point might be, like
Dostoevsky's undergound man with toothache, to distil a perverse and
malicious pleasure from groaning. Poets can be especially good at
this. One can draw one map, and then another map, changing points of
reference all the time. The maps illustrate all sorts of
unsatisfactory landscapes and everyone can feel satisfyingly freer to
groan.
But why draw a diagram that takes all its points of reference and
notions of significance from the very aspects of the culture that
offend you? Why not draw another map with other significances? In
such a map, small presses might loom disconcertingly large and the
defining landmarks might be poems themselves rather than, say,
reviews. Reviews might be glittering connective tissue rather than
strange clots. There might be no centre at all. Etc. But I am
suddenly feeling all postmodern. I'll go have a cup of tea and calm
down.
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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