How interesting Mark: I didn't realise that the world the Opie's describe
crossed the Atlantic outside areas that can be thought of as traditionally
British influenced. I wonder how well it survives now with international
consumer culture?
I get close to tears often here as I see the day by day dismantling of what
the Atlee government did, a destruction actively sought by many in the
current Labour party: while Obama tries to introduce health reform in the US
here local health trusts are being forced to put the running of a fixed
proportion of GP's surgeries out to tender, which auctions are invariably
being awarded to US health care firms, which immediately begin to
cherry-pick patients and treatments; and as the homeless increase a system
of 'bidding' is being piloted for council and social housing properties,
wherein prospective 'customers' have to 'sell' their 'worthiness' for
housing.
On 31 March 2010 21:43, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I think as with anyone it all forms a mind.
>
> I'm profoundly interested in human behavior and in the transmission of
> culture (small c). That there has been a separate child culture in most
> places and most times, transmitted from child to child and largely forgotten
> by those same children as adults, is pretty amazing. In the case of the
> Opies' studies, it was especially interesting to me how much of what had
> been a British urban children's culture made its way into my mostly Eastern
> European and Italian neighborhood.
>
> I'm one chapter away from finishing the London. Earlier today on the subway
> I almost burst into tears while reading it. What he describes in 1902 was
> pretty much the state of things from the beginning of the eighteenth century
> until reforms early in the twentieth century and finally the Labour govt of
> 1944-48. There should be an altar to Clement Attlee on every streetcorner in
> Britain. It was also true of New York in the same period, the New York my
> family migrated to. And it remains the state of much of the world's
> population, including the homeless sleeping on the streets of New York.
>
> How can these awarenesses not have an effect on one's writing?
>
>
> At 04:16 PM 3/31/2010, you wrote:
>
>> People of the Abyss - yes!
>> give us a report on yr reading, Mark.
>> That and John Barleycorn stay in my mind and call me one day to reread.
>>
>> Max
>>
>> As for the Left Forum, I presume you haven't been attending it.
>>
>> And where did the Opies' books lead you...?
>>
>> (None of which is strictly poetryetc stuff, but...)
>>
>> Quoting Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>:
>>
>> > If by choice you mean somehow piques your interest, sure. Nobody
>> > forces me to open a given book. But it's not just poetry in the
>> > curriculum. For instance, I'm reading an early book of Jack London's,
>> > The People of the Abyss, which I'd never heard of, because Trevor
>> > Joyce is going out with a sociologist who was presenting at The Left
>> > Forum and we arranged to meet in the book section there, where it
>> > caught my eye. Or the Opies' wonderful series of books on the
>> > folklore of childhood, which were lying around the house of a
>> > folklorist friend of mine who said "worth reading." etc. Out of all
>> > of which one improvises a world thus far.
>> >
>> > This is very different from reading within a specialization and
>> > forming one's poetic therefrom.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > Mark
>> >
>> > At 11:33 AM 3/31/2010, you wrote:
>> > >But for the writer, Mark, 'accidental on purpose'?
>> > >
>> > >I mean, along the way, many of those 'serendipitous readings' come
>> > >about by choice. I found a copy of Olson's The Maximus Poems (Jargon
>> > >24) in a small bookstore in Halifax, say, & the dedication to 'the
>> > >figure of outside' led me to Creeley? Etc? Which is partly true,
>> > >although, of course, I & my writing friends had already 'found' The
>> > >New American Poetry, but that lucky 'find' was a kind of choice, it
>> > >rather than some of the other anthologies around at the time, which
>> > >didnt offer the same important goods.
>> > >
>> > >Doug
>> > >On 31-Mar-10, at 8:16 AM, Mark Weiss wrote:
>> > >
>> > >>Armand Schwerner called it the "accidental curriculum."
>> > >
>> > >Douglas Barbour
>> > >[log in to unmask]
>> > >
>> > >http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>> > >
>> > >Latest books:
>> > >Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>> > >http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>> > >Wednesdays'
>> > >http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-
>> press_10.html
>> > >
>> > > The secret
>> > >
>> > >which got lost neither hides
>> > >nor reveals itself, it shows forth
>> > >
>> > >tokens.
>> > >
>> > > Charles Olson
>> >
>> > Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University
>> > of California Press).
>> > http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
>> >
>> > "Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's Random House Book of
>> > Twentieth Century French Poetry has a bilingual anthology so
>> > effectively broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside the United
>> > States and also created a superb collection of foreign poems in
>> > English. There is nothing else like it." John Palattella in The
>> > Nation
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
>>
>
> Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University of
> California Press).
> http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
>
> "Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's Random House Book of
> Twentieth Century French Poetry has a bilingual anthology so effectively
> broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside the United States and also
> created a superb collection of foreign poems in English. There is nothing
> else like it." John Palattella in The Nation
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
You say are poems" - DMeltzer
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
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