Reception Hall: some books on modern British poetry,
containing a list of books, then a list of popular theories, followed by a description of some of the books.
Introductory
This research relates to a chronology of style which I developed for British poetry from about 1960 to 1990. These books are being interrogated only for their views on the evolution of poetic style. I wanted to describe the whole field of histories of style, as a check on the one I had built up. Because the notion of "style history" refers to a collective practice, real changes in it should have been remarked on by many critics; an eccentric view of it is wrong rather than "personal". The pattern is complicated by the conservatism of most British poets, which would oblige their sponsors either to disguise the fact that changes were occurring around them, or to invent phony versions of change to rebadge their invested poets as "innovatory". Accepting this conservatism, one could also define the poets who innovated as marginal and impertinent.
The search took place in about 1997 and involved full-scale treatments in books in the libraries I use. More views could be extracted from introductions to anthologies, book jackets, or reviews in magazines, but these were too difficult to marshal. Charles Tomlinson's reviews of the British scene in Poetry (Chicago) around 1960 are classics, but that is to name just one set of articles.
What strikes me, after this survey, is how little of the available expertise is in the books. If I spend an evening with Karlien van den Beukel, David Marriott, Simon Smith, and Kevin Nolan (let's say), there is so much expertise there, ready to flow out... but so little of it is in print. In fact, if you want to know the field, you have to get it by personal contact.
Some books about modern British poetry
1960s
(1-2) British Council pamphlets Poetry Today by Geoffrey Moore and Elisabeth Jennings (1958 and 1961)
(3) Morgan, Kathleen Christian themes in contemporary poetry (1965)
(4) Dodsworth, Martin, ed., The Survival of Poetry(1970)
(5) Alvarez, Alfred (certain essays in) Beyond all this fiddle (1968)
(6) Orr, Peter, ed., The Poet's Voice (radio interviews with poets) (1966)
We could add Tomlinson in Poetry; and a legendary article by Denise Levertov in Kulchur (1962). These are the first statements of the corruption of the mainstream thesis.
1970s
(7-8) Anthony Thwaite, Poetry Today (3 editions, 1973-96, for the British Council); and Contemporary British Poetry, 1978
(9) Hamilton, Ian A Poetry Chronicle (1973)
(10) Thurley, Geoffrey The Ironic Harvest (1974)
(11) Tom Raworth's theoretical text of circa 1971 published in 3 parts (mainly, Logbook)
(12) British poetry since 1960, ed. Michael Schmidt and Grevel Lindop (1972)
(13) Lucie-Smith, Edward, notes in his anthology Poetry since 1945 (1970)
(14) Mottram, Eric, catalogues to PCL Conferences 1974 and 1977
(14) Homberger, Eric The art of the real (1977)
(15) Holbrook, David Lost bearings in English poetry (1977)
(16) Fulton, Robin Modern Scottish poetry: context and individuals (1974)
(17) Seymour-Smith, Martin, a section in Guide to Modern World Literature (1972)
(18) Fraser, GS Essays on 20th C Poets (1977)
(19) King, PR 9 modern poets: a critical introduction (1979)
(20) Hobsbaum, Philip Tradition and Experiment in British Poetry (1979)
(21) British poetry since 1970, ed. Peter Jones and Michael Schmidt(1980)
(22-23) Grigson, Geoffrey The Contrary View (1974); Blessings, Kicks, and Curses (1982)
(24) Fisher, Roy interviews (in: Nineteen poems and an interview, 1977; and Gargoyle 24). The most important theoretical statements of the period. now reprinted in Interviews through Time.
(25) Akros 28 (1974) is a survey, of Scottish poetry from 1920-74, at book length; Akros issues 29-44 then provided long surveys of many individual poets. editor: Duncan Glen
1980s
(26) Raine, Kathleen, The poet's journey into the interior (1982) (see also her magazine Temenos, passim)
(27) Easthope, Antony Poetry as Discourse (1983)
(28) Robinson, Alan, Instabilities in Contemporary British poetry (1988)
(29) Weatherhead, A Kingsley, The British Dissonance (1983)
(30) Crozier, Andrew 'Thrills and Frills' (in: Sinfield, Alan, ed., Literature and Society 1945-70) (1983)
(31) Fisher, Allen Necessary Business (1985)
(32) Riley, Peter, interview in Reality Studios 9?
(33) Booth, Martin British poetry 1964-84: Driving through the Barricades (1985)
(34) Davie, Donald Under Briggflatts: British Poetry 1960-88 (1989)
(35) Hooker, Jeremy Poetry of Place (1982)
(36) Hooker, Jeremy The Presence of the Past (1987)
(37) Conran, Tony The Cost of Strangeness (1982)
(38) Lucas, John Modern English Poetry from Hardy to Hughes (1986)
(39) Mole, John, Passing judgments: poetry in the eighties: essays from Encounter (1988)
(40) Mathias, Roland, A ride through the woods (1985)
(41) Middleton, Christopher The Pursuit of the Kingfisher (1983)
(64) Tomlinson, Charles, essay in volume 8 of the New Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed. Boris Ford (1983) (this is more or less identical with his essay in the previous edition, 10 years earlier)
(nn) Jackaman, Rob. The course of English Surrealist poetry. (1989)
1990s
(42) Morgan, Edwin Crossing the Border (1990)
(43-44) Moore-Gilbert, Bart, and Seed, John, eds, Cultural Revolution? (1992);
Moore-Gilbert, Bart, ed., Cultural Catastrophe (1994) both include essays on poetry by Robert Sheppard
(45) Allchin, Donald Praise above all: discovering the Welsh tradition (1991)
(46) Riley, Denise, ed. Poets on Writing 1970-91 (1992)
(47-49) Crawford, Robert Devolving English literature(1992); Identifying Poets: Self and territory in 20th C Poetry (1993); intro to Penguin anthology The Democratic Voice(1998)
(50) Fisher, Roy Interviews through time (2000)
(51) Acheson, James, and Huk, Romana, eds, Modern British Poetry (1995)
(52) Barry, Peter, and Hampson, Robert, eds, New British Poetries: The Scope of the possible (1993)
(53) Jackaman, Rob A study of cultural centres and margins in British Poetry since 1950. Poets and publishers. (1995)
(54) Clarke, Adrian (papers in) Millennial Dialogues and Three Papers (1998)
(55) Tuma, Keith Fishing by Obstinate Isles (1999)
(56) Kennedy, David Changed Relations (1996)
(57) Gregson, Ian, British Poetry and Postmodernism (1996)
(58) Bush, Clive, Out of Dissent (1997)
(59) Corcoran, Neil, British Poetry Since 1940 (1993)
(60) Chevalier, Tracy, ed., Contemporary Poets (the St James Guide) (1992); previous editions contain some poets not included in this one; the 1970 issue was edited by Rosalie Murphy, the 1975 and 1980 issues by James Vinson, the 1985 issue by Vinson and DL Kirkpatrick.
This contains essential information about the external careers of hundreds of poets. Each poet makes a statement about their work.
(61) Ludwig, Hans-Werner, and Fietz, Lothar, eds. Poetry in the British isles: Non-metropolitan traditions (1995)
(62) Görtschacher, Wolfgang, Little Magazine Profiles 1949-93 (1993)
(63) Sglefrio ar eiriau, golygydd/edited by John Rowlands (two of the essays are about modern poetry in Welsh) (1992)
(65) Sheppard, Robert, Far Language (1999)
Especially useful ones were: Chevalier; Goertschacher; Mottram; Seymour-Smith; Thurley; Conran; Homberger; Riley P; Fisher R; Akros; Lucie-Smith; Crozier.
Scraping together what these authors say about Style Time, we can identify five principal versions of it:
Theory A In 1959-61 there was a breakout from an old, restricted style, spread through little magazines, and appealing to a new audience created by the expansion of the universities, and as this continued the new thing received a boost from the revolutionary urges of 1968 and the mass radicalisation of the succeeding years. It was severely constrained and deflected by events around 1977-9, notably a hangover of disillusion and a right-wing backlash, victorious in poetry, as not in the visual arts. Since then poetry has been split between a pop-conservative mainstream and the succession of the breakthrough, undergoing complex internal evolution in a cultural margin. Cohesion was as a group of friends, and through shared outlets, while the "style rule" was to innovate constantly, questioning everything and relying on spontaneity.
Theory B Poetry was formerly in the hands of a little clique defined by education, residence, and loyalty (to themselves), and was restricted by this allegiance. They had a complex game called culture, which involved rhetoric and erudition. Since 1945 (or, 1960, or 1970, or 1980, or 1910, or 1880) the arrival of new cohorts of educated and poetically active people has shattered these restraints and made poetry flatter in style, less demanding, more cheerful, more sensuous, and more diverse.
Theory C There is no set of collective representations of how the parts of a poem should be governed, and so changes to this set are unreal (or inexplicable, or uninteresting). Assessing how innovative a poet is is irrelevant to judging their artistic merits. Fashion is a bad thing. Changes in the course of an artist's career are due to the workings of deeply inner temperament, fulfilling timeless patterns, rather than to changes in the wishes and beliefs of the audience.
Theory D Poetry is a moral act and belongs within the defensive walls of a sanctified religion. Only a self-elected spiritual elite with access to the authorising works of the past can be trusted to control moral welfare, and so to control poetry. History went fundamentally wrong (in AD 449, or AD 1200, or AD 1520, or 1789, or 1914, or 1923, or 1945, or 1960), when it fell into the hands of levelling materialists, and time since then is essentially featureless. Modernity must be stamped out. It involves sex, and machines, and reasoning, and science, and democracy, and free verse. However, the timeless ("perennial") is available in the hands of a precious few masters, who are willing to take responsibility away from us.
This paranoid Christian strain would include Raine; Holbrook; Davie; Thwaite. I would like to add a benign Christian group, to include Morgan and Allchin.
Theory E Several complex theses about the course of Welsh and Scottish poetry, within the aegis-thesis that English poetry became ineffective at some point, and that nationalism is the key knowledge which has made poets effective. This can also involve theories about territorial rootedness, and belonging to a community (i.e. other than the literary one).
This current is represented by Conran, Hooker, and Crawford.
Theory F the detailed account of stylistic succession prepared by Eric Homberger; his book stops in about 1973, and he complains of "balkanisation" making English poetic history impossible to write after that point.
This survey has identified problems in the uneven flow of time which my book (The failure of conservatism in modern British poetry) will hope to shed light on. Theory A is the one the book will work with, and it will use the results of works by Crozier, Görtschacher, Mottram, Thurley, Booth, Sheppard, Riley, Bush, and the collective works edited respectively by Barry and Hampson, by Denise Riley, and by Acheson and Huk. The most effective studies of historical change within a Textmilieu are by Conran, followed by Martin Booth, and in Akros issue 28.
Another group can be segregated because they identify oppositions in poetic theory without supplying a set of dates to go along with them; in this group I put works by Allen Fisher, Roy Fisher, Adrian Clarke, Raworth, Riley (ed.).
Detailed comments
My first analysis was only to do with their approach to periodisation (which most of them don't even attempt), a second attempt added notes on quality and scope.
1940s
DS Savage, The personal principle outside our chronological limit, but I list it because it is so instructive about the 1940s
1960s
(1-2) Pamphlets.
The first three British Council pamphlets are well worth reading (the first being by Spender, in 1946). The photographs of poets are especially interesting. They do catch a few trends because the authors were trying to identify what had changed in a four or five year period; and they had read all the significant books. The poetry world was a "world" at that time, loyal if beleaguered; and it was possible to read everything significant. The resentment of new poetry by a wide range of conservative critics, since, has been partly due to rage at the refusal of poetry to be instantly assimilated and to allow "expert opinions" to be drafted and sold. The poets of that old world were like family dogs, comfortable and loyal, but unlikely to catch any rabbits. The series of pamphlets were succeeded by Thwaite's book (7-8), which has a second edition which is almost a new book. Thwaite is unenthusiastic about new developments and rather regrets events over the past 35 years. He sums up the Movement/ mainstream view of things and so what everyone else has been complaining about for the last 40 years. Why has the Council hired the same "expert" for thirty years on the trot? God knows.
(3) Morgan, Kathleen, Christian themes in contemporary poetry. Discusses Nicholson, Gascoyne, Williams, Fry, Eliot, (?) Raine. A reminder that the Christian approach was still the dominant one in 1965, although about to become unfashionable at the centre and begin (or continue) a slow decay in unfashionable households. A valuable book, although most of the poetry it discusses isn't very good. It's too much to expect someone to verbalise the Christian position, which is so extensive and so unconscious; I could ask the secular thinkers to verbalise the secular position.
The main change over the last 40 years has been the slow decline of Christian values faced with hedonistic or socialist ones. Because it took such a long time to happen, we need to remember that its dissemination was uneven, and so that at a particular moment the split between Christian: secular may be a geographical split, or a split between the more educated and the less. Often, of course, it was a vertical split between teachers and students, or parents and offspring.
(4) The survival of poetry, ed. Martin Dodsworth
Curiously dated in its focus on threats to poetry from "mass culture" and commercialism, and its assumption that neo-Christian academic critics represent poetic sensibility in what it is and might be, and have the right to control it. That jurisdictional smugness seems rather nostalgic now it is lost. No hint that there were any "dissident" poets around in 1970. Obviously, dissident poets had to be part of commercial culture; why? because integrity is us and we are integrity. For dating, note the assumption that the problems of American and British poetry were essentially the same, so that essays on the USA had a bearing on the situation over here; this belief in mutuality was about to vanish, as the two poetries diverged at such speed. Probably, they weren't in sight of each other even in 1968.
(5) Alvarez. Collection of essays written for magazines. Great journalism. Only some bits are about poetry, but they are penetrating and exact. A joy to read. Very interesting reportage on Oxford.
(nn) Nuttall, Bomb Culture (1969). I have read this book about 5 times, and I can't emphasize enough how vivid and exciting it is. Thesis includes: beatniks and hippies are directly linked to the modernists; radical art is an offshoot of a certain lifestyle; the dynamic part of modern poetry is its hedonistic and anti-authoritarian message; modernity is embodied in being youthful and using multi-media; there is a group imperative (of the outsiders) at any point which must be obeyed on pains of being out of date; this is always true at any moment, and there is a continuous-filament line going back to 1914 or so, even though the imperative changes all the time; all modern art is conditioned by the fear of nuclear war.
His views include a large role for "the boring and out of date", and people on his side of town are perpetually looking for talent fit to fill this role. A job that must be filled.
(6) Orr obviously, there is no thesis here, but it’s a terribly interesting book. Someone managed to pick the good poets. The book gives a very strong flavour of what it was like being a poet in 1965. A good source to test theories against. Really really enjoyed this.
(9) Ian Hamilton contains very powerful essays on the 1940s and the Movement. Hamilton's ability to synthesize complex stylistic movements in a compact way is incomparable. It is very sad that he hasn't written on British poetry since 1960. His stance in the 60s was that "tough" American confessional poetry was the way to go. No British poetry emerged to occupy this niche, leaving Hamilton as a leader with no followers. The one interesting poet who emerged from that scene around The Review, and its successor The New Review, was David Harsent. Hamilton later became involved in writing biographies, and in reviewing biographies, which set his gaze many many decades in the past, safely away from anything which might interest us.
70s
(10) Thurley a classic work. Covers roughly 1914 to 1972. its real strength is in analysing the weaknesses of the mid-century English tradition, but the chapter on the sixties is fragrant with new hope and spontaneity. Surprisingly enough, Thurley is the only writer on this list who has an overall theory of English poetry (say, 1910 to 1970), integrated with intellectual and political changes, and explaining aesthetic successes and failures. In some ways, this is the best book on this list. His work is classical in its poise and tragic in its theme. T. taught at Essex and may even be linked to the famous Essex School.
What we guess from Thurley is no less than that the goal of irony, detachment, and non-commitment is favoured by the professional classes because they are going to sell their analytical skills to the highest bidder and so cannot afford to have opinions. Thurley traces the history of detachment (the ironic harvest) as it affected the course of modern English poetry, suggesting that this overriding teleology was accepted uncritically and needs much deeper examination to recognise its full impact. He provides an underpinning for a traditional Left position, that the educated were supercilious, incapable of artistic creation because they were incapable of emotional commitment and regarded it as "provincial". If you have opinions, your employment opportunities are restricted. The craving for "detachment" may be simply the carrying-out of the basic imperatives of possessive individualism, always calculating the odds and always preparing to abandon a loyalty group because some other group offers better conditions. People who write "virtual" poetry wouldn’t accept that they represent possessive individualism, but can we trust them?
Thurley favours existential poetry, in the sense of poetry to which the writer is emotionally committed, and in which his or her existence is at stake, without the guarantee of success; a poetry of risk and endurance. He correctly identifies the academic tradition of irony and withdrawal as the enemy of this strain, and writes the history of existential poetry, fragile because the forces in play were so much greater than the powers of the poets to affect Fate. This seems like a puzzling abandonment of the powers of fantasy and virtuality. However, much of the most interesting modern poetry (written after Thurley finished his book) also follows these existential rules; Denise Riley and Michael Haslam, for example. We can take it that Prynne is an existential poet, and that the writing of his poetry enacts risk and strain, where commitment and integrity are the values he most seeks.
(11) Raworth, theoretical texts not clear if these are instructive about anyone's poetry except Raworth's but they are so fascinating to read.
(12) British Poetry since 1960 a critical survey (ed.Lindop, Schmidt; 1972) interesting sectoral design, an early attempt to deal with the fragmentation of the market consequent on its expansion. The method chosen is striking, because it became widely accepted, but not till later on. Some points awarded for this, although the book missed almost everything of interest. Does not identify any neo avant garde. Makes The Group prominent – an interesting misreading of the dynamics of the scene. A responsible volume which we can respect, although it is in urgent need of supplementing by surveys written with the benefit of hindsight. It does not identify any poetry boom or any breakthrough into innovative creativity happening during the decade; a sign perhaps of a specific pessimism which later emerged as conservatism. Strengths: covering diverse fields and not being tendentious. The chapters are: the Group; the Movement; Cautious Vision (recent British poetry by women); The Liverpool poets; Poetry in Wales; Scottish poetry in the 1960s; Poetry in the North-east; Geoffrey Hill; Jon Silkin; Charles Tomlinson; The Small Magazine; interview with Peter Porter; A view of English poetry in the early 1970s.
Includes a list of "significant" works published during the decade, quite acceptable in its selection.
(13) Lucie-Smith wonderfully informative notes, the more helpful because you can compare them with the poems beneath. This was a formative book for me, where I got my idea of the cultural field. LS was a voracious reader, at that time, and a very sharp writer. These are invaluable (and this is the best single anthology to read), but their close addressing of each poet does not allow a stylistic chronology to emerge. His views are somewhat fashion-oriented, but this is preferable to being self-preoccupied. Seymour-Smith regarded Lucie as a figure of fun, for some reason, but this is a great anthology and has never been replaced.
(nn) Raban, Jonathan, the society of the poem a reportage on the kind of people who write poetry, and the milieu in which the poem comes about. Inevitably dated, because these milieux change so quickly; reportage is perhaps unacceptable to academics because of this volatility, they would rather have stability than accuracy. The book was not followed up because there was no readership for this kind of thing, not because the material was uninteresting or unimportant.
(14) Eric Mottram two essays. These were first issued as "catalogues" for poetry events at the Polytechnic of Central London, in 1974 and 1977; one has been reprinted in the book edited by Barry and Hampson. They are classic statements of the "British Poetry Revival" (BPR) thesis, which goes beyond a thesis to be an all-subsuming view of poetics and even of what "culture" and "the life of ideas" should be.
Because Mottram supplied a whole world-view, it had a spherical shape, and can’t really be equated with two essays as extents of print; in fact, it’s hard to define just where I got my knowledge of the Mottram world (or, world-M), and it’s possible that my understanding differs a great deal from other people’s versions. Simply, where an exciting essay might occupy your thoughts for a week, Mottram’s system connected so many ideas and included so many cultural objects that people sank into it for a decade, or even longer. He had that "collect the set!" style of marketing; this also applied to traits of style, he transmitted a set of rules by which any poem was obviously "OK" or "not OK". The traits were "aspirational items".
Mottram does tend to rush in with two boxes of shirts and get people to put on either the "modern and exciting" red shirt or the "bourgeois and conservative" green shirt. People found this very comforting; they were given a whole cultural syllabus and explicitly told what they were supposed to like, and they believed the promise that they would be "advanced and with it" if they covered the syllabus. In return, they wanted other people to put on the green shirts. But they just wouldn't. Obviously, they hadn't been paying attention!
(14) Homberger, Art of the real: English and American poetry since 1939. a classic work. This covers both sides of the Atlantic, and is very carefully and precisely periodised. The information on the milieu of the text is detailed and convincing; he concentrates on literary opinion rather than on politics, and does not step aside from the continuous history of the centre to deal with poetic alternatives. Covers American and British poetry in the same frame of discussion; Homberger was perhaps the last American who had an expert knowledge of British poetry. Strength is in its sense of the "society of the poem", as it existed in English faculties, in Britain and the USA, in this time. There was a very big overlap between academics writing articles, poets thinking about the poem, students acquiring literary values, and reviewers in the quality press. The convergence of opinion brought about by "group feeling" gives the book its robustness as a description of what was normal, and how desires and dissatisfactions too were normalised. This method no longer works in a field with multiple competing norms, as he complains, saying that the new "balkanisation" of British poetry is making an overview impossible. Does not deal with eccentrics. I suspect that each of the "balkan" societies might be treated with equal success. However, the academic world was very articulate, and left printed records of what it articulated; sources for any other "world" are much less satisfactory. Homberger is not painting an ideal picture of what poems might aspire to, but describing the norms within which real poems were written; his account is satisfactory in a way which none of the other works here listed is.
If you can't "get Balkan", you can't review poetry today. You won't even know what's going on.
(15) Holbrook, lost bearings in English poetry amazing in its mixture of emotional projection, moral condemnation, illogicality, poorly worked out arguments, and tautology. An unusually bad book. Holbrook's position is related to that of Raine, and the teacher and poet Peter Abbs (who has also edited books on arts education). The core thesis is one of anti-modernity; people are brutalised by the sensational content of the media they are exposed to as they grow up, and this is why there are totalitarian states, political violence, modern architecture, traffic jams, and so forth. Holbrook is probably the extreme of moral guardianship. A deep layer of his rantings is a view of the nature of evil which does not bear examination, but which invests Holbrook with the high office of the one who understands evil and can ward it off. Thus any poem which disobeys his precepts is a challenge to his official status, and makes him writhe in pain. The reference to Leavis in the title explains where he is coming from. There is an institutional offshoot of holbrookism because of his books about how to teach creative writing; teachers use these books, and one can spot poets who have been victimised by his theories and write according to them. (His anthology for schools is recommended.) He has a hatred of Ted Hughes as one of his major theses, but has no favoured modern poets as an alternative. It is not apparent that he has read any poets later than the ones Leavis recommended in Scrutiny.
Questions about the relationship between imagination, insight, art, and moral development are core issues for humanity, but no-one could claim that DH's book makes sense.
Holbrook's problem is that children are enthralled by sex and violence, and he wants to give them freedom while taking it away. And what about adults? Enthralled by sex and violence.
There has been a war over the control of virtue and corrupting influences, over the right to hold power over adolescents, which has raged for decades and left many traces in the landscape of poetry. However, it is almost completely unimportant. The media are far too powerful for poetry or "creative writing" to make any difference. Poetry doesn't have the power to corrupt people, so there is nothing to fight over. History and aesthetics have been neglected while people fight these boring power struggles.
H. seems like the converse of Horowitz; both link "wish to control youth" with "promise of access to the transcendent". (Were they contemporaries?) There is some kind of link between youth and the transcendent. Before you have possessions you have ideals. Today, what seems striking about both men is irrelevance and authoritarianism.
The belief that an image has a developmental value is very stimulating for young poets. But it leads to over self diagnosis, and radical adjustments have to be made when starting to write poetry which might interest other people. Other people don't automatically find your self precious.
(16) Fulton, Scottish poetry. By the editor of Lines Review. Quite unenlightening on its chosen subject. Loyalty does not help insight. Fulton certainly knows a great deal more about the subject than I do, but the question is why he can't put this knowledge on paper.
17 Martin Seymour-Smith, British section of A Guide to Modern World Literature (1973 and 1985)
This is a most incisive and well-informed work, but the format of dealing with individual poets the whole time precludes the development of a time-plan or of a set of generalisations. It is very useful for poets born up to about 1928; Seymour-Smith lost interest, to a certain extent, after 1960. His account of the mid-century is the best there is. Why was mid-century poetry so bad? We have lots of people telling us, "because it wasn’t American". This doesn’t explain anything, even though the Revival was saturated in American ideas about technique, and American optimism (I could go on). So the question has to be posed again. It must be related to the weakness of British visual art in the same period. It could also explain the artistic penury of the mainstream at the present day. Why is Andrew Motion so feeble? Why is Sean O’Brien so feeble? Seymour-Smith’s probing is merciless but enlightening.
(18) Fraser, GS, Essays on 20th C Poets A gifted stylist. Deals with individual poets and ignores poets arriving after about 1955. Strong on Scottish poets born 1900-1930.
(19) PR King, 9 modern poets. Forgettable.
(nn) Glyn Jones, Eagle has two tongues an object of special affection for me, as it first taught me what Anglo-Welsh literature was. This is not strictly about poetry, but it's a must-read. Jones' affection for his subject is a lesson to all of us. How I wish there was something equivalent for Scotland.
(20) Hobsbaum, Philip. Tradition and innovation in modern Br poetry. Didn't find this too enlightening. H is undoubtedly a great teacher and his views have been influential in several cities where he has led discussion groups. The essay on Berry is the most salient thing here. He seems to be slightly in a besieged position. He was a friend of G Wilson Knight, an odd strain in English poetics. During the 40s, Knight proposed a return to Christian values and a stronger monarchy, to be sustained no doubt by elaborate theatrical displays of royal virtue... (source: book on Mannheim)
(21) British Poetry since 1970 (ed. Jones & Schmidt) "since 1970" shows a very significant narrowing of vision since its predecessor of 1972. It’s hard to see it as anything except a symbol of cultural conservatism, grinding the void because it is about new poetry and simultaneously denies the existence of anything new. The atmosphere it gives off is one of vindictiveness, exhaustion, cold rage.
The mismatch between the book and the wonderful poetic scene of the 70s, which we can all check by reading the books, is too extraordinary. Discovering the new poetry of the seventies is an experience thousands of people had in the nineties; as historians, we really have to inquire into the state of mind of the critics who denied, at the time, that anything was going on at all.
There are no surveys, as in the previous volume; the poets treated are RS Thomas, Sisson, WS Graham, Davie, Larkin, Tomlinson, Gunn, Hughes, Hill, Heaney, IH Finlay, Edwin Morgan, Christopher Middleton, Roy Fisher, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Scupham, Andrew Waterman. Most of these began publishing in the 1940s. The book does not treat any of the poets who began publishing in the 1960s, except Heaney. As for the 1970s, it gives them a chapter, but only chooses colourless and insignificant poets. So the thesis is effectively "the continuing story of poets who began publishing in the 1940s and 1950s". This identifies a rift around 1960; which is also what all the supporters of the new poetry identify. 20 years later, the faction whose view stops in 1960 is still powerful, although increasingly criticised.
Reading this takes me back to a period of exhausting trauma. I don’t think BP since 1970 has any strong points; I experience it as a kind of crime. Once you abandon the terrritory staked out by Mottram, there isn't very much left.
There is a little section attributed to "younger poets" but this is really a police operation, denying their status while failing to present their ideas or even mention them by name. The whole book has the sinister air of a conservative coup; there is quiet in the streets because the ringleaders are in prison. Because of the atmosphere of secrecy and hiding of tracks, because of the large-scale crime which seems to be embodied in it, response by the audience to books like this took the form of an investigation, in which all kinds of evidence was used as evidence of the real intent. The book's chosen section of recent poets bears an amazing resemblance to the relevant section of the Carcanet list. This is a whole sensibility, gathered in certain anthologies, and never acknowledged as being on the map by any other critics or magazines. Their cultural design seems to be the image of an adolescent as approved by a middle-aged clergyman. The image of a young poet who does not use any techniques new since 1960. Special poetry which no-one likes but which does not offend conservatives and can be used to keep exciting poetry out of the anthologies. Muzak, essentially, free of controversies and rich in memories of older poems. There is a whole complex of sociolinguistic techniques which are hard to learn and which someone like Motion is a master of.
P since 1970 is a kind of blueprint for Under Briggflatts. Rather than facing a broad wing of conservative opinion, we are perhaps dealing with a few deluded individuals. This also concerns the geography of polarisation; if we take 50 individuals, it does seem to be by hazard that they divide into two groups of 25, and not, say, 10 groups of 5. An even spread across the spectrum is perhaps less expected than the bell curve, the normal distribution. I think that significant events, like the publication of a defining statement such as this book, create discontinuities of opinion, bringing shape to the naturally amorphous pool of responses. Where factions form for self-defence, the geography acquires stability. And so we can talk about it. All the same, the pool is healing itself all the time, and the results of any divisive event gradually disappear; the features are fading all the time, even as we look at them.
I do accept that polarisation is a vice, where you consciously intervene in your feelings you would try to become less polarised and more tolerant.
I think there should be some kind of war crimes tribunal on the 1970s, to clear the air and discharge stored and rotting grievances. While the dispositions of the 1970s have drifted away, this does not mean that there is not a powerful conservative faction, even today.
In retrospect, one can perhaps attribute the polarisation to a few sick individuals like Davie. He wanted to defend his investment, and since it’s been liquidated the whole fuss has lost its original meaning. I want to resist the forces of group loyalty asking me and you to step beside one party or another. At the same time, the affect has been re-incorporated by the readership as an aesthetic reward; readers enjoy loyalty, trials, uncovering of evidence, defiance, reprieves, etc., as part of the drama. They project aspirations and conflicts of their own lives onto poetry, and poetry succeeds by projecting these dramas for them. Poetry had to respond to a time of social revolution, and this was bound to alienate those who were afraid of change. In order for some poets to shine as symbols of freedom, there had to be grey and sinister Fogey Ogres like Larkin and Davie for them to be oppressed by.
We can’t make a rule that "social issues are banned from poetry because there is not total agreement about them". We also can’t ban poetry which projects the social fantasies of conservatives by showing a world in which there are no issues. That would be unfair.
It is possible that any discussion of aesthetic ideas makes differences visible and conduces to conflict within the room where the discussion is happening, so that some people might want to forbid discussion, and feel a hostility to ideas. This brings us to the inevitable media treatment of poetry, namely that they want to dismiss all aesthetic differences as "squabbles", while simultaneously exaggerating any conflict they find because quarrels are "good copy". Maybe they want poems to be homogenised, like newspapers. I need to discuss ideas, but this process only works if accompanied by other rules of manners, that you do not get angry and do not hate your opponents or insult & humiliate them. Thought is not a continuation of warfare by other means.
Our whole legal system follows the adversarial pattern, as the best way of getting both sides of an issue properly heard and expounded. Our whole culture is based on law, and the ritual adversarial pattern is something people adopt unconsciously when arguing about poetics. I believe this is the right way to explore the truth. It only works if you have the ability to climb out of the debating position after the debate, as lawyers do when a case is closed. When polarisation seizes up, it damages the quality of discussion. The game quality is necessary for proper intellectual debate, and perhaps this is why the aesthetic domain is so important.