I thought it was interesting, confused, good-humoured, proletarian,
wicked, thrashing around all over the place, contradictory, at times
out of control, and the piece of verse quoted in the middle of it was
great stuff. It would have been good to know where it was translated
from and by whom. There's a booklet called "The Linguistic Training of
the Mediaeval Irish Poet" by Brian Ó Cuív (Dublin School of Celtic
Studies, 1983) which I found very informative. for at one time the
poets I was in contact with we did see such things as the Bardic
tradition to be relevant to what we wanted to do with contemporary
poetry. But that training of course involved a rigorous discipline,
in fact was thoroughly 'academic', and so might not match very well
with study of the American post-Poundian avant-garde.
I don't think these letters should be put in a publicly available
website without the author's permission just to mock them. I realise
that the correspondence has been very difficult for Jeff.
And the whole thing nothing to do with Seamus Heaney, who is about as
"bardic" as a piece of toast. This seems like an extreme case of what
in my experience usually happens to pro-/anti- Heaney discussions.
Before you can count ten they are bitter personal attacks on both
sides. It has to be realised that there a lot of people to whom Heaney
is of great importance in a personal and emotional way. He is more
than admired, he is worshipped, and I've heard people say that they
cannot thank Heaney enough for the difference he has made to their
lives, though exactly what and how has never been made explicit. Of
course they are not going to discuss Heaney's merits, they are just
going to be appalled that anyone can doubt them for a second, and see
such questioners as miscreants.
PR
On 8 Apr 2009, at 11:16, Jeffrey Side wrote:
Tim, I've just read it. I'm arranging to have it put with his other
rantings in
Jacket magazine to show the world just how sad he is.
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