Login
|
Join PoetrySoup
Home
Submit Poems
Login
Sign Up
Member Home
My Poems
My Quotes
My Profile & Settings
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Soup Mail
Contest Results/Status
Contests
Poems
Poets
Famous Poems
Famous Poets
Dictionary
Types of Poems
Quotes
Short Stories
Articles
Forum
Blogs
Poem of the Day
New Poems
Resources
Syllable Counter
Anthology
Grammar Check
Greeting Card Maker
Classifieds
Member Area
Member Home
My Profile and Settings
My Poems
My Quotes
My Short Stories
My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder
Soup Social
Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us
Member Poems
Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Random
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread
Member Poets
Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100
Famous Poets
Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War
Poetry Resources
Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Email Poem
Your IP Address: 3.20.205.228
Your Email Address:
Required
Email Address Not Valid.
To Email Address:
Email Address Not Valid.
Required
Subject
Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
Eric Mottram on the American literary and cultural scene during 1965-66 while he was the recipient of the American Learned Societies’ award for a year. (begun in the last post and to be continued) January 2, 1966: Dear Wignesan, [...9 lines suppressed] One thing I can I’m afraid say for certain: it is highly unlikely that Laughlin will do Bunga Emas [An Anthology of Contemporary Malaysian Literature: 1930-1963]: he is blocked with reproducing his past books which turn out to be so excellently judged that reprints are needed. Can I see the Soyinka review? (Much as I hate Peace News’s guts at the moment): contrary to your thought, Tom McGrath did not send a copy, the b---d. He has not replied to my letters either and is hanging on to my Burroughs article when I want it back to try to find a home for it over here. [...4 lines omitted] As for your comment on my own pitiful lack of confidence and hubris, you are not the first to say that, and someone over here said exactly the same thing last week. With which I am tired. But I do see that I am in danger of being left far behind by activating loafers. Your choice of politics or university is so enviable I could weep. It’s probably that my birthday, just ‘celebrated’ makes life hateful. I must make decisions I can’t make about my future career. If only it were as easy as just accepting the jobs offered here. What happens is I don’t think about it and go on writing, thinkong[sic], reading, talking to people. The reception of my TLS piece was decent here - even among Negro writers who saw it. Which is a test. The response to the Stand piece on Williams has yet to come although Roy Fisher wrote me nicely about it. Now I have just finished another marathon on Arthur Miller for next year’s Stratford Theatre Studies. No more commissions now so I must get on with my books. Only a jazz piece to do, but it’s nearly done. You seem to think I lecture etc here - not at all: my fellowship strictly says no lectures except one-shot occasions. So I turn down offers, although I am doing a summer course at Buffalo in July, when my grant technically ends: it’s a very lucrative affair and should be interesting working with postgraduates on American nineteenth century writers. I did one lecture recently on Auden as Ang[l]o-American poet for NYU. Mostly I listen to others, which is good for me. Already a third of my visit gone and I have to book my cabin home this week! Good old tempus. But at least the reading for the Negro article - masses of it which did not go into the final thing - will come in useful. I’ve just read Stepanchev’s American Poetry Since 1945 and it is one of the worst books of criticism I have every[sic] read; fortunately it is short or I wouldn’t have bothered to finish it. It claims to be a survey and treats the poets like bits of literary history - and even then has nothing on Koch, O’Hara etc and their crowd (a little and useless on John Ashbery), nothing on McClure, Snyder, Ferlinghetti or Corso or Whalen, and inadequate on Duncan. And Ginsberg treated simply as a ‘popular poet’ who sells well for inexplicable reasons. You’d never guess from this book that the poetry scene is rich and wildly varied: I have been to a number of good readings by a variety of poets and the younger men still come on, as Sandburg might say. The avant-garde theatre too: last night I saw a production of Gertrude Stein’s Play I Play II Play III and Ruth Krauss’s A Beautiful Day - at Judson ‘Poets’ Theatre: both were brilliantly done, with a flair and a certain vigour which I liked very much. The Columbia Contemporary Music Group puts on programmes which would make the Third blush for shameful conservatism and the experimental cinema has two regular theatres for its stuff, much of which is admittedly pretty awful but some of which is really new and realized: mostly in the field of combining film with stage and happening ideas. The new Tulane Drama Review will give you an idea. In painting and sculpture, the pop, op and abstract expressionists and hard edgers are still pouring stuff out. Recently, at the Jewish Museum, they had a show of Tinguely’s mobile sculptures, and Kenneth Koch put on a play which used them - actors in the production included the painters Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, Joe Brainard etc. and the writers John Ashbery and Arnold Weinstein. I was lucky enough to get a seat - the performance was oversold many times. So while establishment poetry, theatre, etc. is as businessman-bound as ever it was here, the new thrives as nowhere else. The trouble is that politically America is imperialistically nineteenth century and socially it lives in the past era of charity. As for the integration of Negros - what a joke! Nothing substantial really has happened at all. And yet jazz is greater than ever: the new names - Shepp, Ayler, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders - are unknown in England but soon will be. I heard Mingus the other night and it was just pitiful repetitions of old successes - he seems temporarily to have lost the gift. But at the New School they had the New York Art Quartet in a programme of advanced jazz (tiny audience) which was superb. Incidentally, you would be interested in the Free University over here, set up to counterattack the other universities as a Marxist and progressive evening affair, with lectures on subjects the universities don’t make available. There seems to be a strong case for such a thing in London. For instance, who gives a course there on Marxism and Existentialism - and after all it is here that the crucial enabling beliefs and actions lie, it seems to me too. Well, enough. Best wishes for everything. Yours sincerely, Eric » [From Dept. of English, New York University.Letter addressed to 28, Cheniston Gardens, London W.8 and re-directed to 33, Mimosa Street, London S.W.6] (c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 1990/2017
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required