Apologies for this clumsy interruption. When this list has lots of
activity, the automatic digest becomes very hard to work through. Can
someone tell me how to switch from daily digest to receiving the emails
one at a time?
Drew
On 21/10/2016 00:08, BRITISH-IRISH-POETS automatic digest system wrote:
> There are 19 messages totaling 6100 lines in this issue.
>
> Topics of the day:
>
> 1. World War III (7)
> 2. Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war (12)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 19:00:15 +0100
> From: Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
> Wasn't Greene The Quiet [sic] American?
>
> Unless I'm misremembering this, The Ugly American was a right-wing riposte-novel
> by someone whose name I've forgotten (and can't be bothered to google as it was
> a fairly crappy book).
>
> The Burroughs links passes over my head ...
>
> Robin
>
> (fearing and loathing the 3rdEye)
>
>> On 20 October 2016 at 18:38 Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Graham Greene. You of all folks should know that. Where's an emoticon when
>> I need it? Susan Schultz defined Trump as "in the school of inadvertent
>> Stein."
>>
>>
>> ---Original Message-----
> From: Paul Green<[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 1:26 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
>
> Indeed, Las Vegas. Post-defeat ( or even post-victory) Donald might run for
> years as a stand up act at Cesar’s Palace or the Sands. Burroughs saw him
> coming, of course. ‘The Ugly American….'
>
>
> On 20 Oct 2016, at 18:13, Jaime Robles <[log in to unmask]
> mailto:[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>
>> My turn to go pedantic before going to work: Las Vegas, Paul. Or
>> Lost Vegas, if you prefer.
>> Best wishes,
>> Jaime
>>
>> http://jaimerobles.com/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________
>>
>> QS: Let’s return to poetics.
>> JR: When did we leave?
>>
>> —From the conversation between Quinta Slef and Joan Retallack, The
>> Poethical Wager
>>
>>
>>
>> > > On Oct 20, 2016, at 10:05 AM, Paul Green
>> > > <[log in to unmask]
>> > > mailto:[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>>> The embalming of the candidate was sponsored by the
>>> corporation as a Salvation strategy. His body was to be coated in platinum
>>> before death by golf clubs. His brains interred in a Los Vegas pyramid. Or
>>> Air Force One would crash under the weight of the gold toilets.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 20 Oct 2016, at 17:29, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]
>>> mailto:[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>>>
>>> > > > I think you exaggerate his
>>> > > > importance, now and in the future, whatever one
>>> > > > thinks of his run for the party nomination. A
>>> > > > solid base in Vermont is about as meaningful as a
>>> > > > solid base in, say, Cumbria. Tho he is a senator.
>>> > > > That's where his influence will be. His most
>>> > > > passionate supporters outside Vermont have decided
>>> > > > that he betrayed them.
>>>> There was virtually no difference between his and
>>>> Clinton's positions before the nomination struggle, and there's less now.
>>>> Our systems are very different. The real struggle is
>>>> for mayoralties, governorships, and especially state representatives in
>>>> Republican states, people whose names neither of us are likely to
>>>> recognize. Those governors and state representatives decide who gets to
>>>> vote and who they get to vote for.
>>>> As to the US Greens, it's a nice color.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Mark
>>>>
>>>> > > ---Original Message-----
>>> From: Robin Hamilton
>>> <[log in to unmask] class="">
>>> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 12:12 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> mailto:[log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: World War III
>>>
>>>
>>> Strawman argument, Mark. Of course he won't run
>>> again, for one thing he'd be too old next time around. But his run was
>>> consequential.
>>>
>>> For starters, yes, he'll leverage his position to
>>> try to shift the Dems from within, all power to his sheleighleigh. But will
>>> this be all? We're talking about one really sharp cookie here, for all I
>>> can make out from this distance.
>>>
>>> I really don't know, which is why I'm asking.
>>> Especially you and Pierre and Kent, as all three of you (and Jaime, of
>>> course, and apologies to anyone else I missed) know more than me here. You
>>> maybe best of all, as you have the Glasgow background as well as Stateside.
>>>
>>> But hey, when ever before did the left in America
>>> have someone, anyone, with a rock-solid political base, the way Bernie has
>>> in Vermont?
>>>
>>> I'm kinda sorta reminded of Red Clyde in the 1910-20
>>> period. But oh god, look how that ended. I think, of that lot, Bernie
>>> would be closest to David Kirkwood. I'm mostly Maxton myself, but I think,
>>> in his own terms, Kirkwood made the right choice, and I'd willingly, if not
>>> happily, have voted for him. If I'd been alive at the time.
>>>
>>> Though I am old enough (just) to remember seeing
>>> Willie Gallagher walk past the window of the house my parents and I were
>>> living in, in the early sixties I think it would have been.
>>>
>>> So maybe there is a chance of a left coalition
>>> emerging in America, either inside or outside the Democratic Party.
>>>
>>> Why I worry about the Greens. I may be misreading
>>> the situation, but to me they look all too like the what the Social
>>> Democratic Party was here, in the wake of the hatchet job performed on
>>> Michael Foot by both the right *and* the left (think [St.] Anthony Wedgewood
>>> Benn, may his name go down in the annals of infamy along with that of Mannie
>>> Shinwell ...
>>>
>>> Boy, have I ever got onto my hobbyhorse over this
>>> issue!!
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Robin
>>>
>>> (The English poisoned John McLean!)
>>>
>>> > > > On 20 October 2016 at 15:41 Mark Weiss
>>> > > > <[log in to unmask]
>>> > > > mailto:[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>>>> Sanders won't run again. If the Democrats take
>>>> control of the senate he'll almost certainly be a committee chair, a
>>>> position of considerable power. But beyond that he's a footnote.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > > ---Original Message-----
>>> From: Robin
>>> Hamilton<[log in to unmask]
>>> mailto:[log in to unmask] >
>>> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 10:31 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> mailto:[log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: World War III
>>>
>>>
>>> It's also worth remembering that the Frog
>>> *** has previous in this area -- he's given to using the biggest weapon in
>>> his arsenal, regardless of consequence. Consider, for example, his current
>>> use of Bill Clinton's backstory, used because his poll numbers are falling,
>>> despite the fact that his behaviour accelerates that same fall, together
>>> with his instant reaction to journalistic criticism, which is to sue.
>>>
>>> And of course, he's cheerfully noted that
>>> when (sic) he's President, he'll make this easier to do. Also, to
>>> paraphrase something he once said, "Why have nukes if you're not prepared to
>>> use them?" (and he wasn't talking about nuclear disarmament).
>>>
>>> All in all, I'm with Bernie Sanders in this
>>> area -- a canny pol, as well as (by all appearances) a thoroughly nice man,
>>> together with being reasonably sane in his political views. I wonder how
>>> he'll play it? He's got a rock-solid base in Vermont, and now, national
>>> recognition and a high profile. Maybe the time has come ...
>>>
>>> Any Americans on the list know how the
>>> neo-Wobblies are swinging? My shorthand for the grassroots hard left
>>> activists who cluster around Z. That's a constituency Bernie could draw in,
>>> and I wouldn't be surprised if he's quietly (for obvious reasons) making
>>> overtures. He's probably a bit too soft-liberal for their taste, but not so
>>> much so that they wouldn't (I'd guess) grit their teeth and support a
>>> movement he powered.
>>>
>>> Robin
>>>
>>> *** That's because, looking over one of my
>>> previous posts here, I thought to myself, "My god, Trump! Did I actually
>>> say Trump?" On another list I'm on -- well, I wouldn't have been banned,
>>> but there would have been some surprise. I new arrival plaintively enquired
>>> why no one ever used Trump's name, since he was a candidate for president.
>>> I think someone replied, and gently tried to explain, but mostly it seemed
>>> just the obvious thing to do. There is a fascinating range of avoidance
>>> techniques -- my own favoured Frog, Tr*mp, Tr-mp, T---p ... I could go on.
>>> But "Never Trump!" (TM)
>>>
>>> Horses for courses ...
>>>
>>> Why is it that (they seem to be born that
>>> way?) linguists are, as a group, bred-in-the-bone left? Not just Chomsky,
>>> but his Great Opposite, M.A.K.Halliday, founder of Systemic Functional
>>> Linguistics, who in his younger days was known as the Edinburgh Maoist? It
>>> seems to go all the way down the chain, reaching as far as even baby
>>> linguists like me. The only question being where exactly on the left-cline
>>> do you lie? On that particular list, I'm considered not so much pedantic as
>>> amusingly lightweight. They also grok register-jumping. It could almost be
>>> said that you're not allowed into the club if you don't get this.
>>>
>>> Odd that, but. R.
>>>
>>> > > >
>>>> On 20 October 2016 at 13:48 Pierre
>>>> Joris <[log in to unmask] mailto:[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> That’s silly: Trump is scary in more
>>>> random apocalyptic ways; HC is just a continuation of the same, in some
>>>> departments possibly an improvement on Obama, in one, foreign policy, not
>>>> an improvement though she is unlikely to unleash any kind of apocalypse,
>>>> exactly because her (too close) links with wall street etc. will keep her
>>>> on the straight and narrow as far as the survival of capitalism is
>>>> concerned. And apocalyptic war would benefit only one tiny slice of the
>>>> capitalists for one tiny moment, while 90% & more would lose in case of
>>>> armageddon. p.s. American Presidents are elected for four years, not five.
>>>>
>>>> Pierre
>>>>
>>>> > On Oct 19, 2016, at 6:34 PM, David
>>>> > Lace <[log in to unmask]
>>>> > mailto:[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Thanks, Kent, for drawing more
>>>> > attention to this.
>>>> >
>>>> > Clinton scares me shitless—pardon my
>>>> > Latin. Trump is scary in other less
>>>> > apocalyptic ways. Five years of him
>>>> > is survivable. Five years of
>>>> > Clinton....will it even go to five
>>>> > before armageddon?
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > -------------------Original
>>>> > Message--------------------
>>>> >
>>>> > Kent Johnson wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Jill Stein, in the article provided
>>>> > by David Lace, does have a very
>>>> > disturbing point.
>>>> >
>>>> > http://www.inquisitr.com/3608819/world-war-3-with-russia-could-start-over-clintons-proposed-no-fly-zone-in-syria-says-historian/
>>>> > http://www.inquisitr.com/3608819/world-war-3-with-russia-could-start-over-clintons-proposed-no-fly-zone-in-syria-says-historian/
>>>> >
>>>> > Here is what a friend (a very
>>>> > respected poet-activist hereabouts)
>>>> > wrote regarding the threat:
>>>> >
>>>> > there is no question that a no-fly
>>>> > zone over syria, calling putin
>>>> > hitler, amassing troops & missiles
>>>> > on russia’s borders, false
>>>> > accusations about hacking & a
>>>> > hundred & one other things have
>>>> > killary with her hand on the button,
>>>> > ready to press, at the behest of the
>>>> > whole fucking kit & caboodle of
>>>> > israel, wall st., arms
>>>> > manufacturers, saudi arabia etc. it
>>>> > is ALL about energy in this entropic
>>>> > world: whether a pipeline goes from
>>>> > russia to europe or whether the us
>>>> > maintains its global domination
>>>> > through the saudi & gulf scumbags
>>>> > who bankroll jihad, ISIS etc. i
>>>> > could go on & on but that’s the long
>>>> > & the short of it… will read your
>>>> > thing you just sent -
>>>> >
>>>> > i’ve been writing, as an homage to
>>>> > ed dorn, what i’m calling:
>>>> >
>>>> > Imperial Abhorrences (& Other
>>>> > Abominations) - here is a recent
>>>> > one, not for posting/publication yet
>>>> > as i’m trying to work them into some
>>>> > coherency:
>>>> >
>>>> > 2016 Mainstream Election Options:
>>>> > [deleted by me, KJ, for now]
>>>>
>>>> > >
>>> >
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 14:04:24 -0400
> From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war
>
> [Message contains invalid MIME fields or encoding and could not be processed]
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 14:07:05 -0400
> From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
> [Message contains invalid MIME fields or encoding and could not be processed]
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 19:24:12 +0100
> From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war
>
> Yes indeedy, I concede all of the instances mentioned, and there were
> others too -- David Rosenberg of Ants Forefoot (anyone remember
> that?), Burning Deck Press, The Gig (Nate Dorward) ..... and some of
> these were of long duration. All very true. There was also an
> outburst of seekers when people suddenly needed thesis subjects. These
> all came and went leaving (for me) a sense of alienation which I think
> I accurately identify as a sense that the British hadn't caught up
> with the world. There was also (probably still is) the force of the
> concept "Eurocentric" taken as a self-evidently retrograde and
> shameful condition.
>
> Exactly as described for the States, the poetry field as defined now
> in British creative-writing and prize culture, which is a large,
> active and ever increasing number of young poets, is very much a "now"
> thing, with a set of parental poets behind it (mainly Larkin, Heaney,
> Hughes, Plath) and that is the extent of the history.
>
> Very good some of it too.
>
> pr
>
>
> On 20 Oct 2016, at 16:54, Kent Johnson wrote:
>
> Speaking of the tradition:
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/19/gun-with-which-verlaine-shot-rimbaud-up-for-auction?CMP=share_btn_fb
>
> >>> Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]>
> 10/20/16 9:50 AM >>>
> It was in a post of yours a some months back, re 'novelty' and
> American poetry.
>
>
> I don't know enough about it to know if you are right about American
> attitudes to British poetry in general, it's just that I have not seen
> it myself. To my mind quite a few avant Americans have always been
> pretty enthusiastic about avant Brits, they have certainly given the
> sort of notice and attention to poets such as O'Sullivan and Raworth
> that were never forthcoming here in their homeland, apart from the
> then small Brit avant community etc.
>
> I've always been interested in the differences between the Americans
> and the Brits but never from any sense of national ownership - I don't
> give two figs where anybody comes from.
>
> I would also have thought that, purely for reasons of access and
> availability, a while back it was a lot easier for us to pick up on
> American poets than for them to pick up on ours.
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim
>
> On 20 Oct 2016, at 14:18, Peter Riley wrote:
>
>> Curiously, I don't remember saying anything like that. I thought I
>> was talking about American poets' attitudes to British poetry,
>> conventional or innovative, which with exceptions I have found
>> consistently negative for the last 40 years. This was very
>> noticeable in the running of the Cambridge Conference of
>> Contemporary Poetry for instance. Our enthusiasm for the new
>> American poetry knew no bounds but was clearly not reciprocated.
>>
>> I suggest we not start a discussion as to whether the "experimental"
>> can claim the "left field" as its own.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 19:43:42 +0100
> From: Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
> And well you should, Mark. :-)
>
> Being who I am, and unwilling to Leave Well Enough Alone, I nipped across to
> Wiki to see what they had to say.
>
> The entry on The Ugly American is ... interesting.
>
> It's pretty much obvious that the entry plays down both the CIA and the Graham
> Greene links, and I assumed the worst.
>
> Usefully (saving me having to do too much work) there's a nice unfolding of some
> of the background in a recent bio of RFK:
>
> _______________
>
> In Kennedy's handwritten notes from the November 3 meeting on Cuba, he listed
> the participants, mostly familiar names from State, Defense, and CIA, like
> Bissell. But a new name also pops up, identified by RFK as "Ed Lansdale (the
> Ugly American)." Kennedy's inclusion of the nickname is significant. To run the
> new secret war on Castro, Kennedy had seized on a figure straight out of a
> novel; indeed, two novels. Edward Lansdale was a legendary CIA operative whose
> covert machinations had been instrumental in suppressing a communist uprising
> and electing a democratic leader in the Philippines in the early 1950s. A cross
> between a Boy Scout and a street hustler, at once corny and cunning, the
> gung-ho Lansdale was the model for both Graham Greene's The Quiet American
> (1956) and William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's The Ugly American (1958). The
> portraits, especially Greene's, were far from uncritical (Greene's
> Lansdale—Alden Pyle—is a well-meaning menace), but the subtleties seem to have
> been lost on RFK, whose weakness for hero worship sometimes eclipsed his
> discernment. Kennedy handpickcd “the Ugly American” to overthrow Castro. Within
> the CIA, Lansdale was seen as a loner, a free spirit who did not take orders
> well—and a bit of a con man who promised more than he could deliver.
>
> Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life (2013)
>
> https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ofXSLln9a3QC
>
> ________________
>
> I stopped reading the Wiki entry and shifted to the CIA links the minute I
> clocked the downplaying of Greene. Really, if you want to play dirty ops, don't
> be so obvious about it, boys, was my thought.
>
> Really, the Wiki entry should be scrutinised and probably amended/challenged.
> [At the least, someone should read the whole damn thing. I've a habit of
> shooting off on a tangent, and I never did get back to it, so in its entirety,
> so it may not be as bad as I'm assuming.]
>
> I've gone as far as I can be bothered with this (the easy stuff), but maybe this
> is getting to verge on Dispatches territory -- want to direct one of your hound
> dogs towards the issue, Kent? Not really my scene these days, as no one is
> speaking in Cant.
>
> Robin
>
>> On 20 October 2016 at 19:07 Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Oops. I take it back.
>>
>>
>> ---Original Message-----
> From: Jamie McKendrick<[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 1:54 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 19:04:19 +0000
> From: Paul Green <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
>
> http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/ah-pook-is-here.html
>
>
>
>
>
> On 20 Oct 2016, at 19:00, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
>
> Wasn't Greene The Quiet [sic] American?
>
> Unless I'm misremembering this, The Ugly American was a right-wing riposte-novel by someone whose name I've forgotten (and can't be bothered to google as it was a fairly crappy book).
>
> The Burroughs links passes over my head ...
>
> Robin
>
> (fearing and loathing the 3rdEye)
>
> On 20 October 2016 at 18:38 Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> Graham Greene. You of all folks should know that. Where's an emoticon when I need it? Susan Schultz defined Trump as "in the school of inadvertent Stein."
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Green<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 1:26 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
>
> Indeed, Las Vegas. Post-defeat ( or even post-victory) Donald might run for years as a stand up act at Cesar’s Palace or the Sands. Burroughs saw him coming, of course. ‘The Ugly American….'
>
>
> On 20 Oct 2016, at 18:13, Jaime Robles <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> My turn to go pedantic before going to work: Las Vegas, Paul. Or Lost Vegas, if you prefer.
> Best wishes,
> Jaime
>
> jaimerobles.com<http://jaimerobles.com/>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________
>
> QS: Let’s return to poetics.
> JR: When did we leave?
>
> —From the conversation between Quinta Slef and Joan Retallack, The Poethical Wager
>
>
> On Oct 20, 2016, at 10:05 AM, Paul Green <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> The embalming of the candidate was sponsored by the corporation as a Salvation strategy. His body was to be coated in platinum before death by golf clubs. His brains interred in a Los Vegas pyramid. Or Air Force One would crash under the weight of the gold toilets.
>
>
>
>
> On 20 Oct 2016, at 17:29, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> I think you exaggerate his importance, now and in the future, whatever one thinks of his run for the party nomination. A solid base in Vermont is about as meaningful as a solid base in, say, Cumbria. Tho he is a senator. That's where his influence will be. His most passionate supporters outside Vermont have decided that he betrayed them.
> There was virtually no difference between his and Clinton's positions before the nomination struggle, and there's less now.
> Our systems are very different. The real struggle is for mayoralties, governorships, and especially state representatives in Republican states, people whose names neither of us are likely to recognize. Those governors and state representatives decide who gets to vote and who they get to vote for.
> As to the US Greens, it's a nice color.
>
> Best,
>
> Mark
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> class="">
> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 12:12 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
>
> Strawman argument, Mark. Of course he won't run again, for one thing he'd be too old next time around. But his run was consequential.
>
> For starters, yes, he'll leverage his position to try to shift the Dems from within, all power to his sheleighleigh. But will this be all? We're talking about one really sharp cookie here, for all I can make out from this distance.
>
> I really don't know, which is why I'm asking. Especially you and Pierre and Kent, as all three of you (and Jaime, of course, and apologies to anyone else I missed) know more than me here. You maybe best of all, as you have the Glasgow background as well as Stateside.
>
> But hey, when ever before did the left in America have someone, anyone, with a rock-solid political base, the way Bernie has in Vermont?
>
> I'm kinda sorta reminded of Red Clyde in the 1910-20 period. But oh god, look how that ended. I think, of that lot, Bernie would be closest to David Kirkwood. I'm mostly Maxton myself, but I think, in his own terms, Kirkwood made the right choice, and I'd willingly, if not happily, have voted for him. If I'd been alive at the time.
>
> Though I am old enough (just) to remember seeing Willie Gallagher walk past the window of the house my parents and I were living in, in the early sixties I think it would have been.
>
> So maybe there is a chance of a left coalition emerging in America, either inside or outside the Democratic Party.
>
> Why I worry about the Greens. I may be misreading the situation, but to me they look all too like the what the Social Democratic Party was here, in the wake of the hatchet job performed on Michael Foot by both the right *and* the left (think [St.] Anthony Wedgewood Benn, may his name go down in the annals of infamy along with that of Mannie Shinwell ...
>
> Boy, have I ever got onto my hobbyhorse over this issue!!
>
> Best,
>
> Robin
>
> (The English poisoned John McLean!)
>
> On 20 October 2016 at 15:41 Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> Sanders won't run again. If the Democrats take control of the senate he'll almost certainly be a committee chair, a position of considerable power. But beyond that he's a footnote.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robin Hamilton<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 10:31 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
>
> It's also worth remembering that the Frog *** has previous in this area -- he's given to using the biggest weapon in his arsenal, regardless of consequence. Consider, for example, his current use of Bill Clinton's backstory, used because his poll numbers are falling, despite the fact that his behaviour accelerates that same fall, together with his instant reaction to journalistic criticism, which is to sue.
>
> And of course, he's cheerfully noted that when (sic) he's President, he'll make this easier to do. Also, to paraphrase something he once said, "Why have nukes if you're not prepared to use them?" (and he wasn't talking about nuclear disarmament).
>
> All in all, I'm with Bernie Sanders in this area -- a canny pol, as well as (by all appearances) a thoroughly nice man, together with being reasonably sane in his political views. I wonder how he'll play it? He's got a rock-solid base in Vermont, and now, national recognition and a high profile. Maybe the time has come ...
>
> Any Americans on the list know how the neo-Wobblies are swinging? My shorthand for the grassroots hard left activists who cluster around Z. That's a constituency Bernie could draw in, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's quietly (for obvious reasons) making overtures. He's probably a bit too soft-liberal for their taste, but not so much so that they wouldn't (I'd guess) grit their teeth and support a movement he powered.
>
> Robin
>
> *** That's because, looking over one of my previous posts here, I thought to myself, "My god, Trump! Did I actually say Trump?" On another list I'm on -- well, I wouldn't have been banned, but there would have been some surprise. I new arrival plaintively enquired why no one ever used Trump's name, since he was a candidate for president. I think someone replied, and gently tried to explain, but mostly it seemed just the obvious thing to do. There is a fascinating range of avoidance techniques -- my own favoured Frog, Tr*mp, Tr-mp, T---p ... I could go on. But "Never Trump!" (TM)
>
> Horses for courses ...
>
> Why is it that (they seem to be born that way?) linguists are, as a group, bred-in-the-bone left? Not just Chomsky, but his Great Opposite, M.A.K.Halliday, founder of Systemic Functional Linguistics, who in his younger days was known as the Edinburgh Maoist? It seems to go all the way down the chain, reaching as far as even baby linguists like me. The only question being where exactly on the left-cline do you lie? On that particular list, I'm considered not so much pedantic as amusingly lightweight. They also grok register-jumping. It could almost be said that you're not allowed into the club if you don't get this.
>
> Odd that, but. R.
>
> On 20 October 2016 at 13:48 Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
>
> David,
>
> That’s silly: Trump is scary in more random apocalyptic ways; HC is just a continuation of the same, in some departments possibly an improvement on Obama, in one, foreign policy, not an improvement though she is unlikely to unleash any kind of apocalypse, exactly because her (too close) links with wall street etc. will keep her on the straight and narrow as far as the survival of capitalism is concerned. And apocalyptic war would benefit only one tiny slice of the capitalists for one tiny moment, while 90% & more would lose in case of armageddon. p.s. American Presidents are elected for four years, not five.
>
> Pierre
>
>> On Oct 19, 2016, at 6:34 PM, David Lace <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, Kent, for drawing more attention to this.
>>
>> Clinton scares me shitless—pardon my Latin. Trump is scary in other less apocalyptic ways. Five years of him is survivable. Five years of Clinton....will it even go to five before armageddon?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------Original Message--------------------
>>
>> Kent Johnson wrote:
>>
>> Jill Stein, in the article provided by David Lace, does have a very disturbing point.
>>
>> http://www.inquisitr.com/3608819/world-war-3-with-russia-could-start-over-clintons-proposed-no-fly-zone-in-syria-says-historian/
>>
>> Here is what a friend (a very respected poet-activist hereabouts) wrote regarding the threat:
>>
>> there is no question that a no-fly zone over syria, calling putin hitler, amassing troops & missiles on russia’s borders, false accusations about hacking & a hundred & one other things have killary with her hand on the button, ready to press, at the behest of the whole fucking kit & caboodle of israel, wall st., arms manufacturers, saudi arabia etc. it is ALL about energy in this entropic world: whether a pipeline goes from russia to europe or whether the us maintains its global domination through the saudi & gulf scumbags who bankroll jihad, ISIS etc. i could go on & on but that’s the long & the short of it… will read your thing you just sent -
>>
>> i’ve been writing, as an homage to ed dorn, what i’m calling:
>>
>> Imperial Abhorrences (& Other Abominations) - here is a recent one, not for posting/publication yet as i’m trying to work them into some coherency:
>>
>> 2016 Mainstream Election Options: [deleted by me, KJ, for now]
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 20:16:10 +0100
> From: Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
> Thanks! New to me ...
>
> R.
>
>> On 20 October 2016 at 20:04 Paul Green <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/ah-pook-is-here.html
>>
>>
>> > >
>>> The Burroughs links passes over my head ...
>>>
>>> Robin
>>>
>>> (fearing and loathing the 3rdEye)
>>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 23:26:06 +0200
> From: Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war
>
> Well, I don’t know of many, if any, poets of my generation (and that’s the langpo generation) who, even when making a living in academe, have done much writing on pre 20C lit. Most of us have concentrated on writing on our direct predecessors (or at most, back to the originators of modernism), be it to exalt or bury them, and on our own generations. Though there must obviously be some who have have written on Milton or Shakespeare (if I were to do so I’d probably write on Marlowe) or… oh, Chuck Stein just came to mind with his marvelous Homer translations…
>
> &, news flash: Just out in the University of Alabama Press' Modern and Contemporary Poetics series, edited by Charles Bernstein & Hank Lazer: Imperfect Fit: Aesthetic Function, Facture, and Perception in Art and Writing since 1950 by Allen Fisher. with a foreword by yours truly.
>
> Pierre
>
>> On Oct 20, 2016, at 6:50 PM, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Well, I have to strongly differ with Pierre here. I never said that some of the LangPos aren't knowlegeable; I said that serious discussion of pre-20th century English poetry is almost totally absent in their poetics. This is not debatable; it is the record. One could say that this is consistent with their early avant-garde stances (long ago dissipated down the air-conditioning vents of the institutional habitus), but it is the way things were and are. Almost none of the poets Pierre lists, below, had any direct relation to Language, so not sure how they enter the argument. All praise to the great and catholic Robert Kelly indeed.
>>
>> And I never said the LangPos don't know or care about contemporary UK avant poetry. Indeed, they were among the first to reciprocate, following certain NAP figures, like Dorn. I said the English tradition, which is what Peter was talking about, as I understood him.
>>
>> Just to clarify, then...
>>
>>>>> Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]> 10/20/2016 11:37 AM >>>
>> Have to agree with Mark here. Kent’s blanket condemnation was over the top. I agree that creative writing programs (as separated from English departments) are much to blame for historical ignorance, though it is only natural that young wannabe poets look to their just-elders, living poets for inspiration first & only in a second or third moment (if they are serious about their art) start looking at the tradition(s).
>>
>> As Mark says, the language poetas are not to blame here — most of the ones I know are very knowledgeable when it comes to the older traditions. Many others of our contemporaries should be mentioned too: quickly: Robert Kelly is one of the best-read poets I know (check out his write-through of Shelley’ Montblanc, among many other works), the same goes for the likes of Gerrit Lansing, Anne Waldmann, Jerome Rothenberg, George Economou, Ed Sanders, both Howe sisters, Chuck Stein, Don Byrd, among those I know personally well enough to make such a judgment.
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>>> On Oct 20, 2016, at 6:20 PM, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Kent: Interesting. I suspected the blanket ignorance among the young, but I don't have that much contact with them. As to the Language poets, I have had my own issues with them, but I do know that several of them are deeply knowledgeable about earlier writing and conversant with a lot of what's going on in the UK and Ireland. For the most part they don't write about it, tho.
>>>
>>> Re: the Rothenberg anthologies, we owe a tip of the hat to Jeffrey Robinson, who co-edited Rothenberg's Romantics volume. Jeffrey has lived in Glasgow for the past several years. He organized the recent jamboree there.
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Kent Johnson
>>> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 11:53 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: Re: Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war
>>>
>>> I should mention one big exception to the disregard for "tradition" among LangPo figures (though like Palmer her relation to the group is complicated):
>>>
>>> Susan Howe's work on Dickinson and other pre-20th century sources, most of them American.
>>>
>>> The exception makes the rule, maybe.
>>>
>>> Also, in further response to Peter's somewhat wholesale framing of American disregard, there is the extended anthology project begun by Rothenberg and Joris which brings forth a range of English writers--not least of the Romantic period--as precursors to the new. This is a singular case, granted, but its influence had been significant.
>>>
>>>>>> Peter Riley <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> 10/20/16 8:18 AM >>>
>>> Curiously, I don't remember saying anything like that. I thought I was
>>> talking about American poets' attitudes to British poetry,
>>> conventional or innovative, which with exceptions I have found
>>> consistently negative for the last 40 years. This was very noticeable
>>> in the running of the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry for
>>> instance. Our enthusiasm for the new American poetry knew no bounds
>>> but was clearly not reciprocated.
>>>
>>> I suggest we not start a discussion as to whether the "experimental"
>>> can claim the "left field" as its own.
>>>
>>>
>>> PR
>>>
>>>
>>> On 20 Oct 2016, at 11:00, Tim Allen wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes to that Jaime, but at least arguing over Shakespeare is harmless,
>>> I think. For me I'd rather walk the dog but would gladly sit back and
>>> be entertained by a TV programme about it.
>>>
>>> Just want to remind you American folks that Peter's views are his
>>> alone and that his negative opinions about some Brit left-field poetry
>>> are just as forceful, only he kind of blames Americans for that too,
>>> for tempting people like me away with your 'novelty'. I always found
>>> much more to like in C20 American poetry than British until around
>>> 2000 when it somehow tipped the other way. My influences are mainly
>>> French anyway.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 23:34:07 +0200
> From: Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: World War III
>
>
> Funny, I published Burroughs' ah-pook-is-here in issue 4 (if I remember correctly) of SIXPACK magazine in 1972 or 3 in London. At that time that’s how I saw the job of my magazine: to mix the new Brits & the ‘Mericans.
>
> Pierre
>
>> On Oct 20, 2016, at 9:16 PM, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks! New to me ...
>>
>> R.
>>
>>> On 20 October 2016 at 20:04 Paul Green <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/ah-pook-is-here.html <http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/ah-pook-is-here.html>
>>>
>>>> The Burroughs links passes over my head ...
>>>>
>>>> Robin
>>>>
>>>> (fearing and loathing the 3rdEye)
>>>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 23:00:47 +0100
> From: David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war
>
> Peter wrote:
>
>> Exactly as described for the States, the poetry field as defined now in
> British creative-writing and prize culture, which is a large, active and
> ever increasing number of young poets, is very much a "now" thing, with a
> set of parental poets behind it (mainly Larkin, Heaney, Hughes, Plath) and
> that is the extent of the history.
>
> Very good some of it too. <
>
> I'd roughly agree with the boundaries described, except perhaps for the
> younger writers Larkin is beginning to fade. This is a world stranger than
> an antique map, one where Helen Ivory is a major writer and the Laureate a
> cloud-capped statue.
> I haven't had the fortune to encounter the very good some of it though.
> What comes across to me is a poetry which carries the marks of contemporary
> middle-class British English: its flatness, its evasion, its restriction,
> its muffle utter; while over the road the performance inclined seem to
> inhabit a sound world engendered by the spirit of John Hegley upon the
> Waters of the Estuary.
>
> Back to reading the Snatches in Oxford Book of Mediaeval Verse. :)
>
> Ich wille bere to washen doun i the toun
> That was blac and that was broun
>
>
> On 20 October 2016 at 22:26, Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Well, I don’t know of many, if any, poets of my generation (and that’s the
>> langpo generation) who, even when making a living in academe, have done
>> much writing on pre 20C lit. Most of us have concentrated on writing on our
>> direct predecessors (or at most, back to the originators of modernism), be
>> it to exalt or bury them, and on our own generations. Though there must
>> obviously be some who have have written on Milton or Shakespeare (if I were
>> to do so I’d probably write on Marlowe) or… oh, Chuck Stein just came to
>> mind with his marvelous Homer translations…
>>
>> &, news flash: Just out in the University of Alabama Press' Modern and
>> Contemporary Poetics series, edited by Charles Bernstein & Hank Lazer: *Imperfect
>> Fit: **Aesthetic Function, Facture, and Perception in Art and Writing
>> since 1950* by Allen Fisher. with a foreword by yours truly.
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>> On Oct 20, 2016, at 6:50 PM, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Well, I have to strongly differ with Pierre here. I never said that some
>> of the LangPos aren't knowlegeable; I said that serious discussion of
>> pre-20th century English poetry is almost totally absent in their poetics.
>> This is not debatable; it is the record. One could say that this is
>> consistent with their early avant-garde stances (long ago dissipated down
>> the air-conditioning vents of the institutional habitus), but it is the way
>> things were and are. Almost none of the poets Pierre lists, below, had any
>> direct relation to Language, so not sure how they enter the argument. All
>> praise to the great and catholic Robert Kelly indeed.
>>
>> And I never said the LangPos don't know or care about contemporary
>> UK avant poetry. Indeed, they were among the first to reciprocate,
>> following certain NAP figures, like Dorn. I said the English tradition,
>> which is what Peter was talking about, as I understood him.
>>
>> Just to clarify, then...
>>
>>>>> Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask]> 10/20/2016 11:37 AM >>>
>> Have to agree with Mark here. Kent’s blanket condemnation was over the
>> top. I agree that creative writing programs (as separated from English
>> departments) are much to blame for historical ignorance, though it is only
>> natural that young wannabe poets look to their just-elders, living poets
>> for inspiration first & only in a second or third moment (if they are
>> serious about their art) start looking at the tradition(s).
>>
>> As Mark says, the language poetas are not to blame here — most of the ones
>> I know are very knowledgeable when it comes to the older traditions. Many
>> others of our contemporaries should be mentioned too: quickly: Robert
>> Kelly is one of the best-read poets I know (check out his write-through of
>> Shelley’ Montblanc, among many other works), the same goes for the likes of
>> Gerrit Lansing, Anne Waldmann, Jerome Rothenberg, George Economou, Ed
>> Sanders, both Howe sisters, Chuck Stein, Don Byrd, among those I know
>> personally well enough to make such a judgment.
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>> On Oct 20, 2016, at 6:20 PM, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Kent: Interesting. I suspected the blanket ignorance among the young, but
>> I don't have that much contact with them. As to the Language poets, I have
>> had my own issues with them, but I do know that several of them are deeply
>> knowledgeable about earlier writing and conversant with a lot of what's
>> going on in the UK and Ireland. For the most part they don't write about
>> it, tho.
>>
>> Re: the Rothenberg anthologies, we owe a tip of the hat to Jeffrey
>> Robinson, who co-edited Rothenberg's Romantics volume. Jeffrey has lived in
>> Glasgow for the past several years. He organized the recent jamboree there.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kent Johnson
>> Sent: Oct 20, 2016 11:53 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war
>>
>> I should mention one big exception to the disregard for "tradition" among
>> LangPo figures (though like Palmer her relation to the group is
>> complicated):
>>
>> Susan Howe's work on Dickinson and other pre-20th century sources, most of
>> them American.
>>
>> The exception makes the rule, maybe.
>>
>> Also, in further response to Peter's somewhat wholesale framing of
>> American disregard, there is the extended anthology project begun by
>> Rothenberg and Joris which brings forth a range of English writers--not
>> least of the Romantic period--as precursors to the new. This is a singular
>> case, granted, but its influence had been significant.
>>
>>>>> Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> 10/20/16 8:18 AM >>>
>> Curiously, I don't remember saying anything like that. I thought I was
>> talking about American poets' attitudes to British poetry,
>> conventional or innovative, which with exceptions I have found
>> consistently negative for the last 40 years. This was very noticeable
>> in the running of the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry for
>> instance. Our enthusiasm for the new American poetry knew no bounds
>> but was clearly not reciprocated.
>>
>> I suggest we not start a discussion as to whether the "experimental"
>> can claim the "left field" as its own.
>>
>>
>> PR
>>
>>
>> On 20 Oct 2016, at 11:00, Tim Allen wrote:
>>
>> Yes to that Jaime, but at least arguing over Shakespeare is harmless,
>> I think. For me I'd rather walk the dog but would gladly sit back and
>> be entertained by a TV programme about it.
>>
>> Just want to remind you American folks that Peter's views are his
>> alone and that his negative opinions about some Brit left-field poetry
>> are just as forceful, only he kind of blames Americans for that too,
>> for tempting people like me away with your 'novelty'. I always found
>> much more to like in C20 American poetry than British until around
>> 2000 when it somehow tipped the other way. My influences are mainly
>> French anyway.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Tim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
|
