But Rupert -
surely Lawrence was focussing absolutely on that theme when he said e.g.
this:
"Sheila Murphy takes risks. One of them is, it seems to me, the way she
broadcasts the works rapidly, where others might wait - this is a guess and
I may be wrong; but I see her broadcasting in contexts where i know others
too are getting the work out quickly
And the bit you quote seems a good example of a piece of a poem that doesn't
come off. My question was about *your use of language. I didn't say you hadn
't identified a worrying piece of writing.
I have tried to analyse what is going on when she misses like this and
haven't really got very far. So I have great sympathy with anyone who tries.
I haven't even become sure that there is one kind of failure so that "when
she misses like this" may be wrong."
Some suggestive lines of approach that I have stored up in my mind for when
I can read more of her poetry.
If anyone is guilty of widening the focus it's me. But I didn't - and
don't - see anything wrong in that. Tendentious quotation marks are
interesting. They import a commentary into the text which invites collusion
and therefore exclusion, a sort of sotto voce "if you understand where I'm
coming from". They chime for me with a discussion I once had with Tim
about social classes and the behaviour we call cutting someone. Also with
Silliman's often-expressed belief in the value of writers forming
themselves into identifiable groups, the "Language Poets" et al - a line of
thought I have long resisted, but am coming to feel less secure about.
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