Yes, agree with all of that Michael. Like you I first found myself having to use such words when wearing my review hat.
With regard to your last paragraph where you talk about the difference between the 'essentially traditional poetry of Lars Gustafsson and the 'definitely experimental, innovative , or whatever' work of Lisa Samuels can you point to the markers of difference, and then, are the markers on a spectrum (I've got spectrums on the brain today) or do they point to a completely different use of the artform?
On 21 Apr 2016, at 13:28, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Hiya Tim ...
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> You are right of course. Within one's own praxis, whatever that is, there are only perhaps a few days when conscious of attempting an experiment; and these may be the least valuable days, since most experiments are failures. On the other days the practitioner is most likely doing more of what they do; a work that grows and evolves rather than leaping randomly about. So from the practitioner's own point of view, this work is not literally an experiment, for the most part. Even if, in hindsight, the practitioner's work as a whole comes to be seen as strikingly original or experimental. Even if the practitioner in question is a composer of "British experimental music" or "linguistically innovative poetry".
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> This makes me think about terms for groups of artists. They are terms of convenience, and the people they most convenience are the audiences, the students and academics, the promoters and sellers. The artists themselves generally don't have much need for such labels, and usually when saddled with one are painfully aware of all the ways in which it isn't particularly appropriate. (It's really with my reviewer's hat on that I feel the need for a term.)
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> Such terms can either be coined anew ("modernism") or they can deploy a word that already exists and adapt its meaning ("romantic") - not completely, but somewhat. The sight of a ruined priory above a waterfall on the Scottish borders is romantic. Anna Laetitia Barbauld isn't romantic in precisely the same sense as the Scottish view, nor is Samuel Rogers, or Wordsworth (maybe Byron is!), but still the word Romantic is useful as a way of connecting them to each other and at least it isn't totally un-apt. That's the most I would aspire to in the case of "experimental".
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> It's important too that any such term is value-neutral and that it encompasses not only the startlingly original pioneers of the genre but, just as important, the enthusiasts who write in the same sort of style yet without the same originality or urgency. Just as "Romantic poets" covers the full gamut from genius to slavish dabbler, so must the term I require.
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> For a term to be of any use to me I need to be able to use it without in-depth assessment of whether the poetry is good or not. I need a way to name what I can see from the most superficial assessment of style and manner. I want to be able to say, for example, that such and such a mag publishes experimental poetry. That's a useful and meaningful thing to say, entirely leaving aside the merits, originality and inventiveness (or not) of individual contributors.
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> Today I happen to be reading Lars Gustafsson (Swedish poet who died last week, recent Bloodaxe selection) and Lisa Samuel's Tomorrowland. I admire both to distraction, but the former I should call essentially traditional poetry (for all its originality and excitement), and the latter definitely experimental, innovative, or whatever. As a reader I find the encounter with these texts involves totally different approaches and expectations. Anyway, I'm rattling on, I think you and I are in agreement about the existence of this very clear distinction, it's only the choice of terms that we're still debating.
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