Dear Peter,

I've re-read through the emails under this header, and I'm not sure 
quite which aspects of preceding discussions you are picking up on.

It is possible that some poets put less of a priority than others on a 
structural conception of 'the' reader's assumed competence, but this 
does not mean that poets and poems do not ask for readers, hope for 
them. As Gerard suggested, nothing about a conception of the priority of 
world over imagined readership denies that readers are imagined and 
solicited. Where's the disdain? It seems to me that the persistent 
feature of disdain within the readership for and against modern poetry 
is for any kind of poem that isn't readily reducible to anecdote, 
information, confessional experience, identity and so on: in effect, the 
expectation that poetry can readily be reducible to communicative prose. 
I do a lot of work attempting to tease out ways of approaching different 
kinds of writing, poetry and poetics, to make them more accessible for 
new kinds of reading, for new readers, not least in making the 
possibility of reading poetry and poetics available for people who have 
been trained to distrust poetry before they have even begun to read it. 
There's a pre-existing and structural disdain for poetry that is a 
genuine obstacle for many people encountering poetry, but I don't think 
this is the disdain you mean....

Perhaps you could clarify a little?

Drew


On 26/10/2017 00:39, Peter Riley wrote:
> Disdain, nothing but disdain. Disdain for the structure (“reader”) that makes you possible. Disdain for what carries and rewards you. Disdain for your own capability.