> Sorry, but I do think that a certain form of Prynne criticism will have a
> damaging, energy-absorbing influence on some of the best critical minds of
> the generation.

whom? perloff? sheppard? middleton? fisher? p riley? i've seen
a lot of badly written criticism by people who love Prynne, I
assume the badness is not the influence but the not being one of
the best critical minds of the generation; so perhaps I'm leaving
no room in my tautology, if so sorry-gee.

Perhaps the list isn't dominated by Prynne criticism,
> again it's not a question of headcount, but the impression one gets when
> people let things go, don't respond, or as you say, refuse to be 'bated'
> (don't understand this).

I'm glad that it's a list with a lot of *fondness* for Prynne,
a certain shyness (newly bated by Peter) for just liking bits;
things get let go for some of those reasons too; refusing to be
bated is it's more fun to fill one's life with enthusing, in
private oneself, or backchannel; if a moment feels like a public
moment, with a head of steam, I'll enter, as many will; only then.
>
> I think many people still don't get the point about Prynne criticism and
> canon-formation, JHP's deliberate limitation of his print runs, the
> nurturing of a discipleship unaccountable in terms of poetic technique.

But this list is proof that one don't need the rings from his fingers
to read him, esp with the quite large run of A Various Art; people
do and can get hold of it, and *a lot* of people hold it against
Prynne that his not publishing reduces his availability so much;
that's why I prefer the company here, at last I get to talk outside
that circlem, with folk who also have reservations.


>
> I had to laugh at the 'you and Andrew' - I haven't been involved with AE
> for about five years, and me and Andrew disagreed about most things.

Fair enough, I think if you had agreed, Andrew would have changed his
position in order to remain Andrew Duncan Lone Voice of His Generation;
but you did associate with him in your VVV remarks, which you only
qualify now, wholeheartedly.

 the personal heresy of criticizing the London sub-establishment...

but almost anywhere else, it's not heresy, it's ammunition for
those not reading it at all; anyway, fair enough, the controversy
he stirred up got more of it read, I think, than an encomium.

I can only imagine that thinking it was a
> breath of fresh air means no prior experience of concrete poetry as such,
> perhaps because in the UK this was primarily Scottish.

Well, imagine again. I thought of it as a breath of fresh air
specifically in that decade of British practice; exactly because
the put it all behind us and get on with really awful discursive
verse wasn't working; I like Floating Capital only next to VVV;
the fact that these poets are part of a culture that explores
words textually (nothing defining, just exploring) adds resonance
to words in verse-print.

 Ian Hamilton
> Finlay's passage in and out of concrete about 1962-68 says more about the
> modernist conception of the image than any 'concrete' since, it
> effectively ended concrete as a socially-engaged set of ideas, and pointed
> usefully towards the later L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.

No it doesn't; no it didn't; no it didn't; not for everyone. I'm
just as interested in Cendrars, Apollinaire, poets who raised more
ideas, and the largeness of the questions means they're harder
to close down with one's own answers; Apollinaire's discipline
and achievement as a lyric poet, for example, adds something to
the poetry of concrete poetry, the poetry rather than the image.
I like Finlay's work a hell of a lot, but I can't agree at all;
I know few who seem him outside the whole concrete movement,
but rather as bringing in more to it. I'm with Perloff in
Radical Artifice on some of the problems of the fetish of
the word over the sentence that LangPo overcame, in the
teeth of even Finlay. Oddly, the wavy lines and clouds of
matter in VVV xerox art has sentence, through lyricism, of
sound.

 20-30 years later it really is
> like a kid who won't stop wailing, few ideas behind it, potato prints in
> typeset. Kindergarten scenes. And the senior-statesmen figures need to be
> grown-up.

We all need to be for "need to be grown-up" to carry weight;
Andrew's review showed him stuck in fear of childhood, someone
who if adult was never child; do you mean in deportment,
meanwhile what of the creativity lost, the child is the father
of the man; childish, selfish behaviour is another matter.

> don't understand what the 'page art' was in aid of.
> Seems like the laziest kind of expressionism, and if it's not even to be
> accountable...

In continuity with Floating Capital, as I'm suggesting.

> 'Ideology' relates to state apparatus - a term from base-superstructure
> marxism relying on a firm distinction between state fictions and Truth -
> not sure that we should use it of a mailbase group.
>
Fair enough, dominant mood, then, or evaluation.

> Apologies if the tone grated. No intention to damn anything, but to get an
> active criticism going,

But has it? I just feel a little queasy, as Doug Oliver
tends to say in his boxing imagery way, best wishes, tho

Ira




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