[New-Poetry] As to ....

[Robin Hamilton]

... language, L.A.N.G.U.A.G.E, and langwig, Ah'll ha nae cursin and blindin 
in my bar.

I still can't work out quite why langpo doesn't quite translate across the 
Pond (it's easier to say why the New Formalism never, pace _The Dark Horse_, 
made it here -- p'raps the same reason why Brits have a different take on 
Robert Frost to USAmericans, since USAmerica never had to endure the 
Georgian Movement) but when I hear the the words "language poetry," I think 
of War On Two Fronts -- trying to establish urban language poetry against 
not only Standard LanguageSpeak  but also couthy rural dialect.

Looking back across mibee forty years, I'm still baffled as to how exactly 
we won that one, from a time when urban language was, by default, "the 
language of the gutter," to Irvin Welsh, Jim Kelman winning the Booker, and 
Tom Leonard taught in Scottish highschools.

(I was actually there at the moment Tom read "Six Glasgow Poems" aloud for 
the first time.)

Sometimes the good win ...

Not that they always do, but.

Walking across Green Park in London in the seventies, David Black remarked 
to me that there was one consolation about writing poetry, if you gave it 
up, anything else was easy, even becoming President of the USA.

D.M.Black (as Bob Grumman surely knows) didn't make it Big Time.

All the tired horses in the sun ...

            :-(

Robin