Wendy, I imagine that Orwell was thinking mainly of "out of style", writing as he was in the wake of Modernism. I suppose when I started the thread I had the idea of soliciting defences of poets whose reputation is generally low today. I partly had in mind a thread from a while back, started (if I remember correctly) by Mark Allinson, in defence of Swinburne. I thought it might be interesting to extend it also to contemporary names who are usually looked down on by intellectual or "highbrow" (there's an old-fashioned word for you) circles (or "literati", to use Shaun's term).
E. Shaun, that's the attitude! I'd like to think that I'm the same, but I have to admit to feeling peer pressure and I'd probably think twice before pulling out a Pam Ayres collection at an academic conference.
Having said which, John, I will admit that undoubtedly from reasons of pure snobbishness I had never actually read anything by Pam Ayres at all. I've googled the two poems you mention and I will say that they're fun; there is a distinctive voice but also it strikes me (unless the versions I found on-line are defective), there's some metrical and syntactical clumsiness; here's a stanza from "I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth":
So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."
"Heaps of Stuff" struck me as much more successful and I can definitely identify with it.
Look forward to the Flann O'Brien poem, which I don't know.
Now anyone going to stand up for Rod McKuen (another poet I confess to not knowing at all, except by misrepute)?
(p.s. to John: excuse my curiosity, do you go to bed very late or get up very early?)
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