[New-Poetry] Taking Kooser's measure

[Roger Day]

http://www.plr.uk.com/trends/chart/chartindex.htm

S is there in 2005 as part of the "classic authors". Where is he o'wise?

On 8/31/06, Roger Day <rog3r.day at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/31/06, Robin <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > From: "Roger Day" <rog3r.day at gmail.com>
> >
> > > In historical terms that's "just"
> >
> > 100 years was the time Sam Johnson said it took to establish a classic.  (He
> > also delivered a contempory judgement on +Tristram Shandy+ -- won't last.)
> > It's still a useful yardstick.
> >
> > > - still, these judgements are
> > > constructed on the wings of fashion and props of statehood.
>
> I narrow my eyes at the incestuously small set of poetasters herein
> involved in this sample taking. The English middle/upper class were
> incredibly stable with little change in the constituency of the public
> or the writers up until the mass-literacy movements of the 1900s -
> which brings us to Yeats. Even for such a small group, poets go in and
> out of fashion.
>
> The post-war boom in literacy is producing a different public. I
> remember an article in the Guardian for public library lending
> figures. None of these writers mentioned above or below were in this
> list, not even S
>
> > Nope -- they're organic (though they may be linked into nationality/national
> >
> > identity/whatever).  (And OK, all statements like that should carry a
> > last-50-years health warning.  Things may have changed.)  There's an
> > incredible -- call it either consistency or inertia -- that begins with the
> > contemporary and later judgements on Chaucer and runs (with occasional
> > exceptions) up to Yeats.  For much of that time, the academic
> > institutionalisation of English Literature (which is post-1900 --the Latin
> > and Greek classics are another matter) simply didn't exist.
> >
> > (Johnson's +Lives+, which mostly reflects what the public [sic!] were
> > prepared to buy to read in 1770 is pretty conservative in the judgements
> > made as to who's important-- Dryden, Pope, Milton, etc.  And is the same as
> > those made in the Norton Anthology of English Literature.  Look at the
> > amount of space given to the say ten writers with most space in Johnson and
> > it's virtually identical to that in Norton [with the exception of Donne].
>
> one wonders at the tight little world of the poetasters.
>
> > But it does turn on the availability (not the simple existence) of texts --
> > you can't judge whether or not a writer is worth reading if you can get hold
> > of their work to read.
> >
> > So however the consensus is established -- and it *does exist, for better or
> > worse -- it way predates English academe.  Which anyway has always had a
> > higher opinion of it's own power than is really the case.  Check out the
> > books which are (and aren't) sold by students at the end of a course, for
> > instance.  You can tell them X or Y is "valuable" till the cows come home,
> > and they'll end up, the minute they no longer have to pass an exam, making
> > their own judgements.  Except the ones who stay in academe.
> >
> > > See the UK
> > > current curriculum and it's institutionalisation of the "canon".
> >
> > I'd rather not.  <g>
>
> By the time students get to university they're infected already ...
>
> > I'm not sure which curriculum you're thinking of here, Roger -- high school
> > or university?  If the latter, it's to a surprising degree student-driven
>
> > Robin
> >
> > >
> > > On 8/30/06, Robin <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > >> Quoth Roger Day:
> > >>
> > >> > Why is Donne major? In Johnson's time, he was considered extremely
> > >> > minor. He's only just been dug out of the wood pile.
> > >>
> > >> Not "just" -- it's coming up to 100 years now.  The turning point was
> > >> with
> > >> Grierson's edition of 1912, followed by his selection in +Metaphysical
> > >> Lyrics and Poets of the Seventeenth Century+ which T.S.Eliot reviewed
> > >> (anonymously) in the TLS in 1923.  After that, it's history.
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> http://www.badstep.net/
> http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
> "From the waist downwards, Bloodnok was tattooed with a pair of false
> legs... facing the wrong way."
>


-- 
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"From the waist downwards, Bloodnok was tattooed with a pair of false
legs... facing the wrong way."