Your argument seems to be that you find Larkin therapeutic and that I
don't. I'll admit to the latter. But beyond what may be a blind-spot or too
easy an identification on one or another of our parts, I think that
consciously or not we all tend to read (especially when it's poets reading
other poetry) for what we find useful in our own practice. Probably what I
mean by boring is "nothing for me here."
Larkin's character is quite beside the point--I probably would have enjoyed
dinner with him far more than with the Pound of the war years and their
immediate aftermath. Comparing his poetry to Pound's, however, seems a bit
silly, regardless of how much one enjoys one or the other--Pound was
instrumental in adding to our possible choices an entirely new way to
conceive of what we do and a whole new set of practices.
Mark
At 11:42 AM 1/18/2005, you wrote:
>Well, yes, I do very often worry about being normal, though my intellect
>might reject that term - but worries are not intellectual. Which might in
>part account for my finding Larkin's poetry very beautiful, very
>frightening and powerful.
>
>I like the essay for saying what seems obvious to me, that there are
>eminent poets who on any reasonable assessment have done far more evil
>things than Larkin ever did. In fact, his petty meannesses, discreditable
>and ugly though they are, are something I just don't dwell on at all, so
>convinced am I that everyone else is AT LEAST as bad as that, though of
>course often in very different ways. Petty evil of the Larkin kind usually
>goes to its grave still in disguise. I hope no-one feels insulted by this
>insinuation - you are a saint, so forgive me!
>
>But I don't really accept the argument of the essay - I mean, that we're
>more disgusted about Larkin because his poems invite an identification
>between author and reader, whereas e.g. Pound's do not. I think Larkin is
>easy to read and Pound difficult to read, but I think it is possible and
>quite permissible to read Pound in the same way as Larkin and to feel that
>large swathes of his poetry written in the thirties and forties invite the
>reader to participate in Pound's own brand of frontier Fascism. It's more
>common to read the Cantos in a quite different way, cooller and more
>pictorial, perhaps (I don't know) something like the approach that Mark
>Weiss brings to bear on Larkin's poetry with such unrewarding results for
>himself. I don't think any way of reading is right or wrong, we read as we
>can't help doing but this has little to do with authors, it has more to do
>with what's worked for us in the past, the kind of things we care about
>and the ways we've learned to reach out for them.
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