T.S. Eliot: ‘I do not deny that art may be affirmed to serve ends beyond itself; but art is not required to be aware of these ends, and indeed performs its function, whatever that may be, according to various theories of value, much better by indifference to them. Criticism, on the other hand, must always profess an end in view, which, roughly speaking, appears to be the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste.’
Anthony Howell: ‘The millennium seems to be wishing upon us the restoration of mawkish and short-sighted values – perhaps not the values of patriotism, fidelity, grace and tradition that preoccupied swathes of nineteenth century verse, but in many ways the appeal is the same. It’s an appeal to the emotions.’
Peter Riley: ‘Steve Ely pursues atrocity. Bloody, proud… holds five of his projects, all well blood-stained, one of which, “Werewolf” (formerly a Calder Valley Poetry pamphlet) has notes in which we can possibly locate a belief structure for his enterprise.’
Peter Riley: ‘To disagree with the blurbs, she is not a shaman and does not “restore to us abandoned mythologies” (the tales are just not on that scale). John Burnside’s very serious statement, “…right dwelling is not just a theoretical or ideological concern; it must also be rooted in the gravity that structures everything, rich in the old pagan knowledge…” is impressive but rather pre-emptive and box-ticking. ‘
Peter Riley: ‘We begin with a run of women poets from the richest use of centrality to way out over yonder. After that poets are clustered according to quite vague notions of subject and style.’
Peter Riley: ‘A lot of the comment on new books below hopes to show that while the centre maintains a certain stability in a continuity with ancestral poetry, it can also be unstable, and offers a great variety of possibilities to the practitioner, and there is no wall round it. In fact its edge is permeable.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘Slat is a brilliant example of entrepreneurial individualism applied to the kind of problem normally “solved” by corporate, state intervention. Clearly this annoys some people, who prefer the dominant collectivist approach to every problem. When “something must be done” they automatically turn their eyes to the state. ‘
Karl O’Hanlon: ‘An image leaps out of nature:
a buzzard, its despot bosom
dripping eel guts, vexed by gulls.’
Part 4, sec 3: ‘The hinterland looks beautiful. I stride forward, in the tutelage of Whitman, to embrace the wholeness. A place in the sunset of two half-defunct traditions. The globe’s circumference girdling my own uncertain stomach. As for the crossroads where I meet Mrs Charlotte, we acknowledge that our paths are culturally coincident but historically, religiously, divided. She’d been present at an early, raw encounter: between ‘savages and Christians’ as some stories had it, interpreting one tale from the vantage of another.’
Nick O’Hear: ‘When the EEC was formed, the Common Agricultural Policy was created. This was primarily devised to assist French agriculture and protect it against competition. Consequently. there is no sanction against the EU for legislating against GM or chlorine treated chickens. Not everybody wants to eat these foods but that is not a good reason for banning them.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘There are smells too, pungent ones. If you’ve lived near a chicken farm you’ll know what I mean. Late summer there’s muck-spreading, of course, which is exactly what it sounds. And sometimes you’ll drive past a field which emanates the stench of something unspeakable — just as well, since you’ll never know what it is.’
Jona Xhepa: ‘The place of listening seems significant: an art gallery in the city centre on a Sunday afternoon. As if the audience is poised for assessment through listening in the mutual scrutiny between listener, musician, notated piece. We are emboldened to place the sounds in front of us for scrutiny in the same way our scrutiny is placed on paintings. Time is punctuated by members of the audience leaving, not diminishing the act of patience by doing so, within the undercurrent of continued heed.’
Georges Limbour: ‘However, as soon as the first white-painted houses appeared, as though sensing it would have been dangerous to go further, they stopped and scattered amid the cacti and fig trees. I entered the village. A woman rooted to the spot by the pitcher she carried on her head raised the edge of her cloak to her eyes. ‘
After the snowbird, comes the whale pt 4, sec 2: ‘I didn’t know then, but later learned, that the Episcopal church is part of the Anglican communion and represents a kind of church aristocracy. Or rather that it does not represent a proletarian Christianity. Episcopalian priests were often humanists whose religious outlook lived within a world view that included and even incorporated non-Christian cultures. Hudson Stuck, ‘Archdeacon of the Arctic’, for example, invariably carried Shakespeare on his expeditions.’
The function of criticism.
T.S. Eliot: ‘I do not deny that art may be affirmed to serve ends beyond itself; but art is not required to be aware of these ends, and indeed performs its function, whatever that may be, according to various theories of value, much better by indifference to them. Criticism, on the other hand, must always profess an end in view, which, roughly speaking, appears to be the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste.’