Wordsworth's influence comes out of his poetic theory which favours a 
descriptive accuracy. UK mainstream poetry have been like this for 
years--ask anyone. Ok, maybe not so much now as the mainstream may 
have taken on-board some avant-garde notions albeit watered down.



On Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:55:45 +0100, Peter Riley 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Where do you see this influence? Can you give an example of it?  The
>only place I thought I saw it recently was in Dart by Alice Oswald,
>where I thought it had a beneficial effect. Indeed long-term (100-
>years) influence could be more likely to liven things up than
>imitation of last year's prize-winners, as a general rule.
>
>I know that Wordsworth is highly revered by poets such as J.H. Prynne
>and Keston Sutherland and presumably this will have some result in
>their work, though it would be difficult to put a finger on it,
>certainly not in their recent work (though parts of The Oval Window
>maybe...)
>
>
>It was Shakespeare's plays, translated into French, which so much
>excited the French poets, and musicians too, especially Berlioz.
>
>
>
>On 26 Aug 2009, at 18:31, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>
>Peter, no one is saying that Wordsworth should not be admired. My
>point is that his influence has prevailed in UK poetry long past its
>sell
>by date. I don't jink much of shakespeare's sonnets by the way--great
>though he was as a playwright.
>
>
>
>
>
>On Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:01:31 +0100, Peter Riley
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> As one of the poets mentioned on Marks' list (thanks kindly, Mark) 
I'd
>> like to mention that Wordsworth has always been an inspiring
>example.
>> And so has Thomas Hardy. And that neither of them has anything to 
do
>> with the (actually extremely varied and in some quarters quite
>> healthy) poetry which gets labelled "mainstream". It was Donald 
Davie
>> who was mainly responsible for the Hardy--Larkin link, as he was for 
a
>> lot of other misleading pronouncements at a time when the 
Cambridge
>> academy was forcing its way into the contemporary poetry scene as
>> adjudicators. It's like Eliot's silly attack on Milton and Pound's
>> silly attack on just about everybody -- an academic obsession with
>> genealogies which has little to do with how poetry gets written.   
The
>> historical occasion is built into the writing of someone like WW and
>> there are questions of authenticity which cut it off from its
>> "influence" .  Recent writing about him from Cambridge could not be
>> accused of promoting philosophical empiricism.
>>
>> You can get rid of all 20th Century English (not British) poetry if
>> you want to ---we did in Cambridge in the 1960s, -- if you want to
>> write in a certain way you construct a tradition for yourself, tho I
>> don't think it actually helps. And of course it comes back, it has to,
>> you realise that you're deliberately blinkering yourself for the sake
>> of some poetico-ideology. I should have thought the time for that 
kind
>> of exercise was long past.
>>
>> And incidentally, as regards a certain kind of poetical texture and
>> figurative freedom among the French "symbolistes" passing on to
>> America and all that, I think that if you get the full historical
>> perspective on this, you find that what it ultimately derives from is
>> England, in the form of Shakespeare (as against Racine etc.). France
>> had a very rigid inheritance of what we call Augustanism, and an
>> Academy to enforce it, and Shakes was  one of the great liberators
>> from that for the early 19th century poets.
>>
>> Thanks for innarestin chat, everyone.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>> On 26 Aug 2009, at 14:49, Tim Allen wrote:
>>
>> You might not like it jamie, but for as long as the mediocre and dull
>> are held up by the broadsheet hacks and current Poetry Review 
critics
>> as being the best of British while treating the names on cris's list
>> as some kind of eccentric anomaly, a bit exotic and interesting but
>> not really 'it', then names like Whitman and Dickinson are going to 
be
>> shunted around thus. The antipathetic relationship between
>mainstream
>> British poetry and the modernisms and post-modernisms is a fact, so
>> stop trying to pretend otherwise. This antagonism seems to be
>> something particular to the English speaking world, or far more
>> pronounced and stubborn at least. Why?
>>
>> Tim A.
>>
>> On 26 Aug 2009, at 14:00, Jamie Mckendrick wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>
>
>