tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710695321433147697.post4451341291526645808..comments2022-03-05T07:36:43.357+13:00Comments on Jack Ross: Opinions: Irony and After: New Bearings in NZ Poetry (2007)Dr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710695321433147697.post-48231235623937270202020-01-19T13:38:38.683+13:002020-01-19T13:38:38.683+13:00Re what is moving and shaking and so on I think a ...Re what is moving and shaking and so on I think a way these days is to see a kind of grid of writers. It used to be that the American in London T. S. Eliot was virtually No.1 although Joyce for prose was No.1. Elliot may have revised his view but Williams Carlos Williams 'was not a poet'. But I like Williams and Eliot and many others of many kinds of writing. And I think that by the way is part of Alistair Patterson's legacy and influence, and Michelle Leggott (I recall her urging everyone to read all the poems in I think the 2nd Poetry NZ Review, and not only that to re-read them sorted into categories and in different ways: I was amazed at her dedication.) And once a poet is 'established' and they come to such launches and urge such things etc it is good. <br /> And the idea of mixing Britney Spears with Celan. Jorris* was wrong. He starts (or started, then) to sound like the worst of the pompous liberals and or academics. So open to things and very good in his writings: what nonsense. He isn't, or wasn't.** A lot of those from that direction lose touch. The Holocaust becomes something holy, like an artifact. This leads to a situation where we can criticize Israeli and US actions (use of drones in Gaza to kill just about anything that moves for example -- see 'Vertical' by Stephen Graham.) Your poem was good, very good. And Celan is almost too obscure, too wrapped up in himself. Come on. People suffer all over the world. Britney Spears suffered also and may well still do. Doctors do not judge their patients if they are good people. Simple as that.<br /> But as I started to say, in evaluating these things I like to think of it as grid and a kind of development, with all kinds of writers in different modes looking from different angles. Hierarchies are out. <br /> Barthes and his 'Writing Degree Zero', Baudrillard but also good old basic epistemology do indeed sit behind the hurt. We can use these ideas theories as Macassey does and Hamilton (both in superb poetry). But there are no 'this is right, that is right'. 'Poems for the Millennium' is very good as is 'Pierre Joris (ed. and translator) of Celan's volume of poems he called 'Breathturn').<br /><br /> Poets novelists and others of every discipline and aspect of life will always compete. But they can also cooperate and help each other. So part of the judgments made of writing by critics can be envy or too much sympathy. Especially with literature it is never totally objective.<br /><br /> Well, Jack, I was looking for a poem by Szymborska called 'Conversation with a Stone' as a poet called Frances Samuel has a poem that quotes a line from her poem called: 'Conversation with a Stone'. Which is the eponymous poem of my book. But I had never seen her poem. Dialing Google and then looking for my book of that name brought me here. So the internet etc and records are all still working!<br /><br /><br />*And it is all the more puzzling as the two vol. book he co-edited called 'Poems for the Millennium'<br /><br />**I like Jorris and Rothenberg's writings & I have 'Breathturn' and to be fair to his co-editor he sent me a supporting email when I was somewhat ranting about something immediately post 9/11. But then that event threw everyone all over the placeRichardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710695321433147697.post-90365199168075932052020-01-19T13:38:31.342+13:002020-01-19T13:38:31.342+13:00This was a great review / essay and it remains int...This was a great review / essay and it remains interesting (with or without the mention of the venerable myself) still. (I did read it I think in the Poetry NZ issue at the time.) Bloom did another book that followed 'Anxiety...' and his views are a bit more mellow. At one stage he was the critic many loved to hate and kind of admired for his energy and dedication to literature. It is a trap to try to read his Canon! I saw some poor fellow had started with Shelley and gave up, sad, that he couldn't get through it and I suppose he abandoned the attempt. Bloom's Freudian thing, his agons etc, are an interesting method (and his enthusiasm can be infectious as well as his cranky old codgery way of referring to people he knew: 'I argued with W. H. Auden on...we got on well though on other things.' Something like that.<br /> But the system is a bit formulaic. <br /> Manhire is a good poet of course. But I and I think you know Patrick Evan's comment about his 'failure of nerve' (although I admire that poem I have read so often I have to say: it could be casually read (as I probably did) as just a 'postmodern' to surreal poem, like the one about children dying which is actually a hard poem to read.) I suspect you have read that book of NZ Lit in Penguin by Patrick Evans. It is good but he doesn't spend enough time on such as Manhire, but one of the poems he wrote about I used as a starting point for a poem I called "My Voyeur".<br /> Perhaps Manhire was aware of Blooms book and this is his 'take' on the theory, a little satirical? But it is interesting.<br /> Tracey Slaughter, Scott Hamilton and Liz Macassey are certainly good, very good poets and writers. All of them under-estimated somewhat. <br /> (As I know Scott and Liz I have studied their work more closely, and both Macassey's book and Scott Hamilton's 'To the Moon...' are superb. <br /> .Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.com