Dear Randolph,
I take your point: my remark about "absolute bollocks" was verging on the
uncalled-for. I've tried to keep the tone courteous but have been accused
of "tenacious...quibbling" and "sarcasm" ("ubiquitous" to boot) and of being
a "past-master" at "cherry-picking lines" (not sure that's such an insult). Am I
wrong to see these as introducing an unpleasant personal note? I don't see
any "quibbling" at all in what I've written - just a response to a blog I
disagreed with and only in my first mail was there any sarcasm at all. Mild
enough given the occasion. For the rest I've tried to explain myself quite
candidly. Anyway I'm happy to substitute "utterly misinformed" for the
offending phrase.
Baudelaire as a poet - and even the history of his reception - interests me
intensely, and I don't like to see him, or for that matter Wordsworth, Whitman
and Dickinson, shunted around like pawns in a specious manouvre to vilify
contemporary British poetry.
Back on topic, Lawrence seems to me the only really notable English poet
knocking about the fringes of early Modernism. You can't get much less
parochial than that: Nottingham, Sardinia, Mexico... Not much later in
Scotland there's MacDiarmid to contend with (2nd book, Sangschaw 1925)
and later still W.S. Graham. None of whom seems tainted by an empiricist
smog, even if there are worse climates about.
Best wishes,
Jamie
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