Quote:
Originally posted by Barbara Thimm:
modernist? sounds quite languagy to me .... can't have been very successful over here?
what do you like about this poem? have you tried something similar? do you know of any contemporary British poets trying something like this?
just curious.
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No British modernist was very successful in England, which is why no-one reads WS Graham, Bunting, Roy Fisher, Denise Riley etc etc... Poets influenced by them languish mostly in small presses. Instead, we have to put up with the likes of Andrew Motion and (for God's sake what do people see in her?) Wendy Cope. The English prefer their poetry like their tea: milky and lukewarm.
What I like about it is, first, the very condensed language (it can be unpicked: Rome is Catholicism, Wren is Anglicanism as represented by St Paul's cathedral). Secondly, it describes very accurately what a Quaker meeting is like (I should know, I've been to enough.)
I'm not sure I'd even try to imitate a poem like this. I do, however, believe very strongly in the basic modernist principle of
condensare or concision: every word should count.
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Steve Waling