PhD student and poet Henry King has written an intelligent comment on his blog about the Swift-Bonney fracas of late. He makes an extremely important point about my trying to keep a space open for poetries, poetics, and styles, that resist the full demands of one kind of late modernist avant-gardism, practiced by a small group of mainly British Marxist poets. Almost any other sort of broad-minded person would recognise my work as falling, on the broad spectrum, closer to Donald Allen than Allen Tate - my recent book launch was supported by a third gen New York School Poet, David Lehman, and arguably the UK's leading British avant-garde poet, Denise Riley, my friend and mentor.
My own work combines an interest in the disrupted lyric and abstract lyricism. In America, I have edited a section for New American Writing, and also been published several times in Jacket. In short, I am hardly a "mainstream" poet in the sense that, say, Sean O'Brien is. Indeed, my antholo…
My own work combines an interest in the disrupted lyric and abstract lyricism. In America, I have edited a section for New American Writing, and also been published several times in Jacket. In short, I am hardly a "mainstream" poet in the sense that, say, Sean O'Brien is. Indeed, my antholo…