[Mary McLean]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

John,

See here for some discussion of Governess salaries at the time: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.c...f-jane-austen/

Can't have been fun. Merrill, of course, was absolutely loaded, and by the early 20's, Yeats was essentially a church mouse. But I wonder: who was the richest historical English poet?

The Earl of Rochester was pretty wealthy, although I believe his expenses were considerable...

[ross hamilton hill]

Petra Whiteley is an interesting young UK poet, very symbolic and quite European, originally from Czech Republic(?). Gillian Prew is a young Scottish poet, very dark, dense poetry. She is also an academic (philosophy).
Can I also put in a plug for Gig Ryan, the best Oz poetess, since it's women's week.
All 3 write in free verse but Gig Ryan is so intelligent give her a week and she'd be writing in Mandarin.

[Gail White]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

And the great James Fenton of course.

John, have you ever read "Into the Heart of Borneo", in which Fenton is a principal character?

[Janice D. Soderling]

Actually I was hoping for a more critical response to form and content in contemporary US and UK poetry. That is why I posted in Musing on Mastery rather than General Talk.

Does anyone in this room read any poetry other than their own or what appears on the Eratosphere workshops?

Is the poetry floating out of the publishing houses and clouds about navel fluff, or national politics, or the working class, or weighty existential queries and meditations?

Is contemporary work formal, or humorous, or spread out all over the page, a kind of connect-the-words?

Does it arrive from a publishing house or self-published on a cloud?

Are poets channeling the old masters or assembling structures from refrigerator magnets?

Do poets borrow poetry at the library, or buy poetry from some source--what source?

Do poets actively seek out new work or just routinely "like" on social media?

What poetry do you think gets the most reads--poetry of past or contemporary elite/recognized or the smallish poetry pal constellations?

Do aspiring poets care about anyone's poetry except their own?

[Mary McLean]

Sorry Janice. When I started writing poetry a few years ago I joined the Poetry Society, which includes a subscription to Poetry Review, which seems to pretty much represent the Establishment of UK poetry. I disliked it enormously. Almost all of it seemed to me gimmicky and/or incomprehensible. The society was going through a lot of upheaval at the time – I would say the issue guest-edited by George Szirtes seemed a big improvement over the others that year; but at the end of the year I cancelled my membership. Maybe I’ll try again one day to see if it’s improved under the leadership of Maurice Riordan.

The poetry I like best is what I read here and in form-friendly webzines (Light, LUPO, Snakeskin, Mezzo Cammin, etc), but I do also go to the University library sometimes to read print-only journals like Measure and to check out books by what poets they carry. And I do force myself to include modern free verse in that: Don Paterson, Gwyneth Lewis, Helen Mort and Simon Armitage are some of the ones of that ilk I like better than most. But my favourite (non-Eratospherean) living poets are Wendy Cope and Sophie Hannah.

I rarely buy poetry – this is partly me being cheap and partly my strange inability to read books or magazines I have bought. I’m much more likely to read something I’ve checked out of a library because it comes with a time limit, even if objectively I would much prefer to read a book sitting on my shelf at home.

[Susan McLean]

Other than Wendy Cope, Sophie Hannah, Don Paterson, Ann Drysdale, John Whitworth, and other Sphereans, I don't tend to read a lot of British poets, so I can't speak to trends there. I have a lot of favorite poets that I read often, trying to get my hands on most of their books either through interlibrary loan (free-verse poets) or by purchase (formal poets, who are not carried in most libraries). Among the living free-verse poets I read regularly, I would include Andrew Hudgins, Ron Wallace, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, Tony Hoagland, Billy Collins, Kim Addonizio, Beth Ann Fennelly, Linda Pastan, Stephen Dunn, Allison Joseph, David Kirby, Philip Dacey, and Leo Dangel (some of these write in form some of the time). I try to keep up with the work of most American formal poets, so that list is even longer. Since Poetry is available online, I look through it occasionally to see if there is anything there that I enjoy. Most of the time I don't like what I see there enough to read more of the author's work. I like work that is understandable, funny, or narrative, or that connects with my emotions or experience in some way. Obviously, I like form and what it can do, but I expect the same things of it in content that I expect of free verse. I accept that my tastes are narrow compared to the tastes of some readers, but I don't have time to read everything, so I head for the kind of work that I know will give me pleasure. I would probably read more contemporary British poetry if I knew it better, but there is not a lot of overlap between British and American journals in terms of what they publish. The contemporary British writers I read, I mainly learned about through Eratosphere.

Susan

[Charlie Southerland]

To answer some part of your question, Janice. There may be the teeniest swing back towards formal poetry here in the US but it is almost unnoticeable given the truckloads of free verse which has been dumped upon the journal world here. To me, it seems that there is a real aversion to formal poetry. I attribute that to laziness, not preference of art. I also believe it is a business decision on the editors part, even the university journals tilt heavily to free verse. In the recent past I was just as guilty in my preference for free verse, not due to laziness but to ignorance. The post-modern public generally doesn't have a clue what it takes to write a good formal poem, much less to comprehend it. We are called "rhymers" by our free verse brethren in such a derogatory way. I think the best free verse writers (Billy Collins not withstanding) do incorporate rhythm and meter in their work. Rhyme is more subtle, folded into the guts of their work so that their readers aren't consciously aware of it or their readers don't mind it if they are running internal mind tricks on them. I don't submit free verse to journals so I am not up to speed on the paying markets for it.

I see much more formal poetry in the UK. Some of it is just as dreadful as some of my work, but there are a good many talented formalist writers there. I don't think free verse has the same hold there as in the US, but I could be wrong about that. What I do see are the local poetry societies making concerted efforts to engender formal competitions which pay at least a little bit more than anything going on in America. I suspect education has something to do with that as well. It is natural to assume this given the UK and Europe have been the cradle of formalists from the beginning. Americans seem to be intimidated by their across the Pond brethren. There is a little snobbery involved and not a little resentment of it. I don't care who writes the good stuff, I just want to read it. Buy it when I can. More later.

[Maryann Corbett]

At the risk of revealing more than I intend, I'll have a go at these questions, but I can only speak for myself.

Does anyone in this room read any poetry other than their own or what appears on the Eratosphere workshops?

Yes. I try to read the magazines I subscribe to and the contributors copies I get, though the process can take a while. The magazines are mostly US and only rarely UK. I also read Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and the Rattle site daily, and when I get an e-mail from poets.org, I read that too.

And I've now been on the receiving end of unsolicited submissions, which was quite the adventure.

Most of the books I buy are either by poets whose work I already I know or are older, well-reviewed collections. (For example, I'd like to score a cheap copy of Mark Jarman's Unholy Sonnets.)

Is the poetry floating out of the publishing houses and clouds about navel fluff, or national politics, or the working class, or weighty existential queries and meditations?

All of those, and it varies from magazine to magazine and issue to issue.

Is contemporary work formal, or humorous, or spread out all over the page, a kind of connect-the-words?

The spread-out-all-over-the-page thing is rare in my experience. Formal work exists out there beyond the Sphere, but slant rhyme and loose meter are more common.

Does it arrive from a publishing house or self-published on a cloud?

I'm reading stuff that publishers produce, so I can't say.

Are poets channeling the old masters or assembling structures from refrigerator magnets?

Most of what I see channels contemporary speech and tries to create of it something memorable or elevated.

Do poets borrow poetry at the library, or buy poetry from some source--what source?

I use the library and interlibrary loan. And I buy. Mostly used, through Amazon, but sometimes from used bookstores.

Do poets actively seek out new work or just routinely "like" on social media?

Poetry Daily is a good way to be introduced to new work. Talking to others (online or in person) about what has impressed them lately is another good way.

What poetry do you think gets the most reads--poetry of past or contemporary elite/recognized or the smallish poetry pal constellations?

I can only say what I read, and I wish I had more time to go back to the poetry of the past. The new sort of overwhelms it.

Do aspiring poets care about anyone's poetry except their own?

Yes. Other poems often trigger our own.

Now everybody else can tell me how totally weird I am.

[John Whitworth]

Come Janice. I read the other poets in Quadrant. Joe Dolce is very good for one. He has a website. And Jennifer Compton too. And Victoria Field, a wonderful poem lately about her daughter's first period. Not something we dads can share, as a rule. And the great (and fat) Les Murray of course.

And back here in Blighty I'm a big fan of James Fenton, as you should be too, though I don't know if he has written much lately. But I've bought his books, paid money down. And I read any poems that appear in The Spectator.

Poetry Review isn't very good now, I'm glad to say, since they won't take me at any price.

I like to feel that what I do is in some sort of mainstream. And it is.

Gail, no I haven't. Tell me more.

[ross hamilton hill]

Wagner was the first to realize a melody could extend over time beyond the confines of one song, this translated via Eliot into the long poem that had a melodic theme that was not immediately apparant, this is for me the real attraction of free verse, very few poets have managed it, to my mind one is 'From Gloucester Out' by Edward Dorn, and to a lesser extent Whitman. I think Eliot succeeded in Prufrock but failed in Wasteland, Wastelend is too influenced by Pound. Van Morrison also initiated it in song with Astral Weeks, (written by a poet, not Van). Most use free verse because it frees the subconcious but in doing so many forget both music and coherence and such poems have no appeal beyond their intellectual content. This has dogged poetry in both the US and UK, and elsewhere.
This is not off topic I think formalists should understand and read free verse, so much of it is wonderful. It's everywhere now and has been for a hundred years.