Lofty anachronism

Pomelo Brown
"rt"d ture. And having known for a long time that it is absurd to criticise the
conventional literary establishment and then expect its atEntion or affection, I

A A I \

A preliminaryl mustsay,
in canonised literiry cul-

franklp that I am hardly inter-

lon Homllton (ed) The Oxford Componion lo Twentielh

Century Poeiry in English Oxford Unlverslty Pres, S59.

intended function of a literary companion what's it for? (It certainly

doesn't invigorate or augment my writ-

ing activities.)

can also say that canonical inclusion has never been a personal aspiration." However, I am alert to the ramifications of the processes of historicisation. I don't want to sound high-falutin' but I'11 begin with Nietzsctre who began his enquiry into the value of history with a gem from Goethe: 'L a.y case I hate

While this reads a little like the fatherly old an-

'

everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.' Whyquestionhistory?It'spretty mixed-up anyway in these over-docu-

phy, autobiography, factual fiction,

bold and oftennakedlynepotistic news-

mented times

home-video, biogra-

nals of the British Empire buying a drink for a eruption:'Surrealism', he writes, 'would havebulked larger'had the list bunch of quarrelsome been compiled in 1950. This seems a colonials, it is at least an shallow reflection when practically every First World poet writing in Engattempt to redress the lish since dadaism and surrealism has old-fash ioned domi nance been influenced by those movements in some way. o{ 'Englishness' as a There is no heading for modernmeasure of worthiness ism. Post-modemism along with cutup and deconshuctiory gets a mention exclusion of some still-productive poetswho were listed in the 1985'Oxford Cornpanion to Australian Literature'. Defrocked maybe, but still practising. The revjsion is mainly concerned with the 'difference'between US and UK poetry. While this reads a little like the fatherly old annals of the British Empire buying a drink for a bunch of quarrelsome colonialq it is at least an attempt to redress the old-fashioned dominance of 'Englishness'as a measure of worthiness in what is a Britishbased compilation. Hence some dodgy headings like'Asian/American Poetry' under,which a selection of poets and theirbook titles are rnerely listed. More positively, the few Aboriginal Australians are granted individual entries. Apart from the problems inher-

modern poetry'and, according to him, the map changes about every ten years mostly ds a result of 'fashions'. This glibness enables a swift dismissal of at least one enormous poetic

I I t

N THE introduction Ian Hamilton calls this tome 'A map of

paper, magazine and TV profiles and so on. Times when living peacenik and anarchist poets sell their manuscripts to military academiesand writers keep copies of every letter writEn (sometimes writing to the famoussolely for a response) so as to sell the correspondence to State archives. Perhaps it is pointless to question official versions of history when it's re-inventing ibelf in populist ways. While history has been frenetically throwing its empty bottles out the

under 'Language Poetry', dadaism under 'Sound Poetry', 'Vorticism see Blast'. The metaphor of the map becomes a puny clich6 in an age of
over-the-horizon radar, satellite com-

munication, CD-ROM and other

electronic databases. 'Who needs this old map?'is a reasonable question. The editor says 'I want it to be
seen as serious and useful, but I

will not

window it

seems as if Oxford University Press has been trying to save the labels. This is not exactly the ,Oxford

Companion to Old Farts'C20 poetryin

English'but it comes close. It is saved from the expected fustinesg by an attempt to revise the canon with the inclusion of some previously invisible or neglected non-prize-winners and, in relation to the Australian entries, the

ent in a habitual pursuit of history

there's the question of the purpose or

mind at all if it is read for fun, as a kind of documentary-entertainment'. I'd say it's about as much fun as cricket statistics in winter which brings up the nextpoint. He also gives a breakdown of numbers and while there are male poets who are oddly missing there is, yet again, an unfair neglect of women. The overall ratio is 7.5 men to L woman. Although there are only 1 17 Australian poets (constituting about one-fifth of the mostly white poets who registered with D. W. Thorpe's national reference
ABR o 49

recently) and there are unjustly ab-

sented men, numerous Australian

women poets have been denied entry; women who have published often more widely than and have been as publically noted as any of the included. Women whose styles, philosophieg sexual-pref' erences, aggs, ethnicities, politics and poetics differ from each other. Peter Porter, who gave his 'informal guidance' to the editor, appears not to have advised consultation of the very eclectic Penguin Book Of Australian Womens Poetry andyet he entered the co-editors of that collection as if presuming that
the rest, the'others', nafuralty follow. Furthermore, this kind of complaint is incorporated under the head-

ing'Feminist Criticislll'- a few muddled paragraphs which mistake feminism for separatism before teducing to
this:
female poets are now waaing from the sea in which many of their earlier and less fortunate sisters drowned. They are buoyed up by ideological diaersity,

andby the sense of dffirent audiences (women of colour, lesbians, workingclass lt)omen, the old, the young...).

if you're alive, published and under thirty you're not welcome. However, had you been blessed with the foresight of killing yourself before turning thirty, you're in! No buts! Cool!
Finally, there are inaccuracies in some Australian entries. So it can be assumed that there are mistakes as well as further ridiculous preteritions in the other countries'lists. What is exasper" ating is that this kind of intrepidly confident version of poetic history cannot possibly be accurate and, in the end, renders itself ineffective. Despite any revisionist ambitions towards a broad reach, it's just another lofty anachronism.

HERE IS no agenda in relation to young poets. Sorry kids

Pameh Brown's latest poetry collection

Tlis

World/This
this

Place aras p ublished by UQP earlier

yur.

ABR

50