Hi Peter, just back from holidays (i wish), time to do some unpacking.
>There are of course people who produce and publish quantities of completely
>impenetrable and unassimilable language and then are amazed and resentful
>that professional book-trade machinery does not take it up and distribute
>it all over the world.
The assumptions about what is 'completely impenetrable and unassimilable
language' need a dusting surely? Reader's Digest - it's truew!
>Of course there are no readers for most ("postmodern
>+ linguistically innovative" two terms I heartily detest) poetry which
>despises the very concept of readership,
Is not its problem (speaking as one in whose life, and sentences to boot,
language has mostly behaved reprehensibly), an encouragement towards
enfranchising of 'readership'? Leaving the classic 'consumer' in a queasy
position - at least 'some of the time, and the living is'.
Which introduces your jibe about > 'feeding a bookshop poetry market with
poetry of very low intellectual substance' >. Isn't that another set of
presumptions which feeds into 'readership' and 'real book trades?
>There's nothing necessarily
>wrong with writing like that and it may have some kind of future (though
>it's been going on for about 80 years now without getting anywhere much)
>but if that's what you opt for I think you have to accept the position
>you've put yourself in: a very small and highly specialised market
>completely remote from the real book trade.
Where is the boundary of this 'real book trade'? Does it include, let's say,
Massumi - Stein - Acker - Perec - Bataille - Welsh - Wittig - Beckett -
Burroughs - Sinclair - Moore . . . Is it what's to had at Airports and
TRain Stations and so on, in which case Sinclair - Welsh - Burroughs
probably squeeze in, is it what seels 'well' (what kind of edition figure
might we put on this, or is it well considering what it is, how it's
designed etc)
to wit are Graphic Novels not part of it, are books of critical theory /
contemporary philosophy and so (some of which sell hugely) not part of it?
What happens to the Hawkings, and Dawkins and so on? Or are you only
referring to poetry? If so, then to return to Lawrence's nitpicking, just
'cause I'm in the niggling mood and you're liking to give a good answer -
what is a poem?
Is a poem a process or a product? Just testing
love and love
cris
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