"My impression is that he's thought hard about WW and his legacy, has 
made a number of lucid objections that haven't been answered"

Jamie, how haven't they been answered? If my responses were 
inadequate why hasn't he said so? I've supplied my chapters and he's 
welcome to address points raised in them. But he hasn't done this, 
instead he's reduced my argument to one based on snobbery. I don't 
see how he came to that conclusion. Besides, he has already said he 
thinks Wordsworth was influential, and that is all I am saying. I don't 
see how my saying this makes me a snob.




On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:50:31 +0100, Jamie McKendrick 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Tim, 
>I'm glad that this far at least there's some common ground. 
>I hadn't thought that either you or Alison were using "conservative" 
politically, but I was signalling how the slide occurs from one sense to 
the other, and I still feel it may explain a certain tone of contempt - of 
which I've had personal experience.
>   What you say about Dada and French Surrealism may bear out your 
earlier point about people liking experimentation in art who run away 
from it in poetry. I like practically everything about Schwitters (a Dada 
reject) and whilst I can enjoy his own stentorian rendition of the Ur-
Sonata, and Jaap Blonk's version too, I don't have that much interest in 
Schwitters as a poet. Though even there I do warm to his playfulness 
and weird wit, and the presence of the person behind them - if that 
isn't too contradictory. (I haven't looked carefully enough at much 
French Surrealist poetry).
>   Whilst there's a parodic element in David L's last mail, I don't think 
his arguments have been " rubbishy and unfair", knock-about maybe. My 
impression is that he's thought hard about WW and his legacy, has 
made a number of lucid objections that haven't been answered and just 
won't buy this version.
>Best wishes,
>Jamie
>  ----- Original Message ----- 
>  From: Tim Allen 
>  To: [log in to unmask] 
>  Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 5:48 PM
>  Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since 
Wordsworth?"
>
>
>  Jamie, yes, of course, i agree very much with what you say about the 
nature of 'taste'. I started to say something like that but cut it out of 
my post because it really is a difficult one, and does tend to go around 
in circles, pretty lengthy ones too.
>
>
>  I also know what you mean about reviewing and you are probably 
right - an avant garde poet is, probably, more likely to receive a 
positive review from an avant garde magazine then a mainstream poet 
from a mainstream mag - the problem is that they hardly exist. I do 
think that situation was more the norm some years back though, when 
the avant scene was this rather closed and self-defensive club, 
something which I reacted against at the time, but things have 
changed. I've written elsewhere about this so won't repeat it here.
>
>
>  As for the 'conservative' thing. Well, no, I have not been talking 
about political conservatism (I would have thought that was obvious, 
but maybe it wasn't). The way these poetry politics relate to real 
politics is a very subtle one, but on the whole my ordinary politics are 
often the same as those of poets who I accuse of writing 'conservative' 
verse etc. For example back in the mid 90's when I was having 
polemical barnies and exchanging letters with Mark Robinson (the editor 
of Scratch) this was one of the real complicating issues.
>
>
>  As for your last bit, about Marinetti etc - yes, and I've said this 
before too, much early modernism was politically right-wing, and when I 
talk about these things I try to refer to the French avant garde of the 
time, Dada and Surrealism especially, as being radical or left-wing 
modernism. Of course WW1 and its effects put the dampeners on a lot 
of the right-wing modernists but gave a huge boost to radical left-wing 
modernism.
>
>
>  cheers
>
>
>  Tim A. 
>
>
>  On 29 Aug 2009, at 13:37, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
>
>
>    Tim,
>      I hadn't meant to reduce this issue "simply" to a question of 
taste, simple or complex as that might be.  Taste, though, is complex. 
Behind a statement such as "I like X's poems and hate Y's" (as you 
don't need me to tell you) there's likely to be layers of history and 
ideology as well as ideas about language and the world, some of these 
received and unexamined. It's when those complex aspects of taste are 
examined with some care that there's a chance of worthwhile criticism.
>       You say quite reasonably that:
>    "In some ways I am not talking about 'quality' at all, I am talking 
about the elevation of particular 'qualities' at the expense of others..."
>    but then add:
>    "- the poetic ideology that turns mediocrity into a value, something 
like that"
>    which looks to me as though you are actually talking 
about "quality" again. Presumably none of us sets out to write "dull and 
mediocre" verse, nor, in general, do critics deliberately elevate what 
they consider mediocre. What does happen, and here I have to agree 
with you, is that there's frequently a gap between the views expressed, 
let's say, informally and those that are in print. (There are a few bold 
exceptions.) It seems to me that in the last twenty years poetry 
reviewing has tended to become much more pally and mutually 
supportive - an effect of having to read together next week? - and this 
has had a debilitating effect on literary culture. But even then - and 
here you may disagree strongly - my impression is that a 'mainstream' 
poet is still more likely to receive a negative review from his or her 
own 'peers' than an 'avante-garde' poet is. (The likelihood that this will 
take place in a forum with a wider distribution is, I suppose, some 
consolation; the downside is that even more people will think your 
poetry's crap.)
>      Your reply to Alison raises other questions:
>    "One of the weird things about this conservative ascendancy (and 
this  
>    is something I've talked about before) is the way it isn't seen to 
be  
>    conservative at all by people who run away from any hint of  
>    conservatism in the other art forms."
>    One thing I find pervasive and deeply irritating in British poetry 
conflicts is the way something like "conservative ascendancy" means 
both poetic and political. I'm not assuming either of you, here, are 
claiming this, but it seems a conflation that happens frequently. And 
not just here - Silliman's "School of Quietude" is surely (pace Poe 
again) meant as a political taunt - these folk just lie down and lick the 
boots of power. I guess a straightforward association of 'mainstream' 
with the 'establishment', literary as well as social, leads to this 
assumption. Just a quick glance at the ugly politics of Modernism in the 
English speaking world - practically everyone but Joyce - should be 
enough to put that notion to flight - and elsewhere too: Marinetti, even 
Ungaretti... I mention this facile conflation of poetry and politics 
because I think it lies behind a certain amount of vituperation and 
contempt.
>    Best wishes,
>    Jamie 
>
>
>      ----- Original Message -----
>      From: Tim Allen
>      To: [log in to unmask]
>      Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 11:02 AM
>      Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since 
Wordsworth?"
>
>
>      No Jamie, I am certainly not talking about that quite obvious 
higher percentage of poor poetry to good poetry at any one time etc, 
and I don't think David B. is either. I wish I was. I really do wish it was 
as simple as that. But I'm not silly - of course the phenomenon you talk 
of exists, it just doesn't happen to matter all that much. In some ways 
I am not talking about 'quality' at all, I am talking about the elevation 
of particular 'qualities' at the expense of others - the poetic ideology 
that turns mediocrity into a value, something like that.
>
>
>      I've been thinking, talking and writing about this stuff for years, 
and yes, it wears you down. I've tried to ignore it, but then something 
like this discussion on Wordsworth brings it back. But one thing I have 
always tried to do is not simply shunt the problem aside as one of 
taste. Very tempting to do that, but I refuse.
>
>
>      You should know yourself that in the backrooms and pubs and 
cafes literary inclined people who are into poetry express all kinds of 
extreme and sweeping views to each other. Most of them do not put 
these views and opinions into print, their comments just become part of 
the more vague field of discourse that lies behind much of the stuff 
spouted by published critics. I know intelligent and well read people 
who think high profile poets A and B are just poor poets, and I know 
intelligent and well read people who think they are very good poets. 
This situation is not surprising, and not unusual, even though the 
polarization does seem a little too extreme and a little too wide-spread 
to be normal. However, I've experienced a problem with this, because 
most of the people who hold these views don't put what they say into 
print, or if they do they generalise away from 'names', which leaves 
those of us who do put our opinions into print looking nasty, and worse, 
we rarely get backed up openly by those who we know share the same 
views. And a lot of the time their views are even more extreme and 
entrenched. I for example happen to think that poets A and B are 
talented and good at what they do, even though I have a big problem 
with what they do, but I get the raised eyebrow for even saying that.
>
>
>      Cheers
>
>
>      Tim A. 
>
>
>      On 28 Aug 2009, at 15:21, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
>
>
>        Wouldn't this, or something like it, be the experience of poets 
and readers in any age after books are published in quantity. For Pope 
there's a mire of dunces out there, and for the Romantics poets would it 
be any different? Who, apart from scholars, reads much of the poetry of 
Tom Moore and Walter Scott, two of the most read poets of that age? 
Time and received opinion have mostly weeded out the Dennises and 
Brewalls from what all but a few of us bother to read. You referred 
earlier, Tim, to "the mediocre and dull" who are held up for our 
admiration: we may have different ideas about who they are and who 
they aren't, but are any of us likely to find more than five or six 
contemporaries whose poems we really admire? About the rest, whom 
we don't, any holding up of their virtues is going to look like a waste of 
space.
>        (This obvious point isn't offered compacently - I can see the 
danger of things having been effectively weeded out before any but a 
few have had the chance to read them.)
>        Best wishes,
>        Jamie
>
>
>      =
>
>
>  =