Not sure what to say here Jamie - if I open the door I think I will fall in. Why? Because at base I'm not really talking about the massed ranks - I think I was trying to cop out of an argument that I didn't feel like having, and still don't. The massed ranks reflect what is above them. You see I am not really talking about 'bad' poetry, I am talking about a perfectly fine poetry that nonetheless either does next-to-nothing for me or irritates - and such irritation can go very deep. Don't get me wrong - I am by no means saying that this is my response to ALL mainstream poetry (and here I mean the top divisions), but it is my response to, oh, probably about half of it. However, the other half, the half that I respond to with a degree of positivity, rarely gets my pulse going in the way the poetry I really like does.

It wasn't always like this. My negative reaction really started in the 80's and by the 90's it was galloping out of control. (I don't think I am alone in this chronology - it would be interesting to know if others on the list experienced something similar?) Of course there were earlier poets who I responded to negatively (Larkin), or I considered overrated (Heaney), but they were exceptions - looking back now I think it is fair to say that though most things from the Brit mainstream rarely got my juices going they did not work on me negatively, and there were many I really liked too - Hughes, Plath, Redgrove etc.

My increasing aversion might have begun with that Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion anthology back in '82. This aversion, at the time, had nothing to do with subjects of course, that problem came a decade later, but with a whole host of things which you could, perhaps, put under the umbrella of TONE. That is a gross simplification I know, but at the time that was really the only thing I could attribute my reaction to. I now know that there was a lot more to it than that - all kinds of ideas about poetry and methods of composition that went to produce that 'tone' etc.

One trite example to stir things up a bit, taken almost at random, the opening verse of Motion's 'In the Attic':
       Even though we know now
       your clothes will never
       be needed, we keep them,
       upstairs in a locked trunk.

I would read that and just mentally say 'oh fuck off Andrew'.

Tim A.

On 7 Sep 2010, at 15:53, Jamie McKendrick wrote:

'Gobbledygook'? But, anyway, what you call "the massed second divisions" of any kind of poetry are bound to be tedious, and I guess every poet hopes not to be swelling their ranks.

When you say "this isn't really down to subject matter, but the ways in which such subject-matter is presented", that was really the point I was hoping to make by "Personally, I wouldn't want to outlaw any subject matter...", with the further implication that a poem about ironing is not necessarily a poem about ironing - to adapt a line from Tom Paulin's 'Where Art is a Midwife: "This poem about a bear/Is not a poem about a bear."

Best,
Jamie

----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Allen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 06, 2010 5:46 PM
Subject: Re: "The Conspiracy Against Poems" by Adam Fieled at The Argotist Online

All fair points in your last post Jamie, but I do find the one below 'interesting'. I am as guilty as anyone, if guilty is the appropriate word, of designating an awful lot of mainstream poetry in such terms  as those below. I am afraid that in my experience of having to read  and listen to so much of it I can perfectly understand how such  comments, from me and others, have come about. I suppose I am not  talking about the best of it here (though there are some awful  exceptions) but about its massed second divisions. I can guess what  you are going to say - that the second divisions of innovative poetry  are word strings of gobbildygook (how the heck is that spelt?) or  pretentious arty farting etc. There is truth in both of course.

I could expand on this thing about poems about holidays and ironing  etc but I'm going to have my supper now, then do some ironing. Enough  for now to say that this isn't really down to subject matter, but the  ways in which such subject matter is presented. It will have to wait.

Cheers

Tim A.