[New-Poetry] As to ....

[Robin Hamilton]

From: "Steve Moore" <s.allen.moore at mac.com>

>> the same reason why Brits have a different take on Robert Frost to 
>> USAmericans
>
> I feel a bit shy about asking this, as though I should know, but I was 
> wondering if you could explain what you mean by the Brit take on  Frost, 
> just for my own edification. I've never encountered a literary  brit who 
> didn't speak highly of Frost (of course, my experience is  limited).
>
> S. Allen Moore

You're entirely right, Steve, that Brits think highly of Frost [who 
couldn't? he's a wonderful poet] but Frost is *unique in USAmerica, while in 
Britland, he would be part of a tradition.

[Think Thomas Hardy, who for me is the supreme poet in this area.  Apples 
and oranges, admittedly, but for me, there's a range of metrical outreach in 
Hardy that's not there in Frost.]

Then there's how Frost developed out of his encounter with Edward Thomas, 
the two walking the Downs and reciting poetry to each other.

There's a whole matrix in England (Robert Graves, the Georgians) that 
doesn't exist in the States, that would encompass Frost.  And right on to 
Philip Larkin, god help us here.

            :-(

{Geoffrey Hill might be the strongest living voice in that tradition in the 
UK.}

... so Frost *has to be seen differently here (as with langpo -- scan 
J.H.Prynne -- and New Formalism, here as contrasted to there where you are).

But this is my particular take -- there are other Brits on this list who 
would read it differently, I'd guess.

I stand (and would love to be) corrected.

Robin

(Totally personal aside -- if there is for me, as a Scottish poet, a 
USAmerican poet who does something metrically among other things that 
interests me that I can't find elsewhere, it would be John Crow Ransom. 
Which undoubtedly says much about my preconceptions and predelictions.

The closest here to Ransom would be William Empsom, but he's so much drier 
and dustier ...

R.}