tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587090106923596284.post6038313330035317165..comments2023-04-20T18:18:11.438+01:00Comments on Gists & Piths: George Ttoouli - Reading Elisabeth's Bletsoe's Landscape from a DreamUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587090106923596284.post-67298786924162041172008-03-30T03:41:00.000+01:002008-03-30T03:41:00.000+01:00You're certainly right about the connection betwee...You're certainly right about the connection between poem length and new technology. If longer poetry is to make a genuine 'come-back' - it hasn't been in vogue for well over a century now - its first important sightings will be on the internet. The internet is a vast and as yet more or less untapped area for change in the way we write, publish and read. Habits change slowly, but poetry is gradually beginning to shift in new directions. Even if the only evidence we have for that is this blog post ... but it's a start. <BR/><BR/>"If you say it, they will come." Or something along those lines. <BR/><BR/>And there are all these new online poetry magazines springing up and challenging old perceptions of what poetry is and how we should approach it, just by virtue of having these new and potentially 'unlimited' spaces at their disposal. <BR/><BR/>Is Geoffrey Hill inscrutable? I suppose he must be, at times. But I think <I>he </I>knows what he means, even if no one else does. The same cannot always be said for other inscrutable poets, sadly.Jane Hollandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15590668593487445482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587090106923596284.post-72108352299972942052008-03-17T08:34:00.000+00:002008-03-17T08:34:00.000+00:00George, yes, totally agree (though why is being a ...George, yes, totally agree (though why is being a raving leftie necessarily a bad thing?). The question of the medium length poem - or, perhaps more correctly, the longer poem: because where is the middle in a potentially infinite scale between the smallest haiku and the longest modernist epic? - is certainly tied to a particular economic epoch, but is equally neglected or sidelined because of a certain critical hegemony too (which is intimately related to that same economic structure). If Bloodaxe, Cape and Picador favour the 'prize-winning poem' (hateful phrase), we can also see Shearsman, Reality Street, Salt etc taking risks with more complex poetic structures in their own books. I'm thinking here of Reality Street's edition of Allen Fisher's 'Place', Salt's publication of Rachel Blau DuPlessis' ongoing 'Drafts' project, and Shearsman's engagement with the 'open field' contingent in late modernism (Bletsoe is one exponent of this, but Shearsman also publish Colin Simms, Toby Olson, Michael Haslam, Laurie Duggan, Lee Harwood, and many others who have, throughout their careers, resisted the mainstream ideal of the well-made poem that's over before it's begun, using the poem as a space of exploration and discovery, rather than dogmatic reassertion of ideas that the reader already knows). <BR/><BR/>Simon Turner, G&PThe Editorshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06264669059410810775noreply@blogger.com