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Is Carmine Starnino an Enfant Terrible?

Poetry magazine is one of the oldest, most respected, and significant magazines devoted to poetry in the world. The September 2008 issue has a few lively letters, by and about Canadian poets, that are worth reading in full. In the UK, there tends to be radio silence when it comes to much North American poetry, so it is good to see the Canadian-US border opening to more convivial mutual dialogue. Evan Jones, a good younger Canadian poet studying for a PhD in Manchester, writes to defend Al Purdy, the quintessential free-verse rowdyman of Canadian poetry, from his detractor(s).

And, Nicholas Bradley describes Carmine Starnino, one of Canada's leading younger poet-critics, as Canada's literary enfant terrible. Eyewear would like to weigh in on these controversies in the following way: a) Al Purdy is over-rated in Canada, but under-rated elsewhere, and it is likely he is as important for North American poetry of the 20th century as a Robert Creeley; b) Carmine Starnino is an infant no more, and increasingly less terrible - his critical interventions were a broom that Canada's niceness required - and, as he has developed his argument, especially in The New Canon, his major anthology - his position has become both more impressive, and less abruptly confrontational. Starnino became infamous mainly for being honest about his likes and dislikes, and failing to curry favour with the powers-that-be, taking on canonical reputations built on sand and trumped-up reps.

Where, for instance, is the poet-critic in Britain willing to ask (perhaps incorrectly) the true merits of a Paterson, a Raine, or a Duffy? Imagine the poet who would critique them all heavily (along with Prynne, and every other hero of the moment), and you would have someone of Starnino's ilk; then imagine the poet was writing at least as well as, say, anyone else under the age of 50, in formally flexible style. He's becoming formidable.

Comments

What about Derek Hines Todd?

I think his re-rendering of Gilgamesh one of the best book length poetry texts i have read, yet there seems little about him online.

I reviewed a CD produced by Tony Lamb called Eight Poets - In Their Own Voives and he was the stand out of the lot. His reading was flawless and one of the best live voices i have heard, yet nada on him.

All the poets on the CD lived in Cornwall and these are a few lines, which make the oldest myth in the world, totally up to date:

"Fill the sky to choking
with a reedbed

..a blind of shafts
..the very air woven by

his merest gesture to fable...
the crush of gravity's paint

..till void reabsorbs
..a smash and grab of years
...a protector, got drunk,

stayed drunk

..back flip...the map
marking time
...washed up as far south

as man or god can go
..like the madam who ran the roadhouse

..our lady of times edge
..we find him there

pushed to the worlds prow,
barely more than a beat
in the days narrative"

We can see there is a very high content of original wordplay, the uniqueness of which, the internet makes it much easier than before to analyse; as we can google in parenthesis any amount of text and the holy grail of this is getting a zero return for two words placed next to each other: if they fulfill the Horace maxim of using common words which when placed side by side are arresting and fresh.

"Aroma of shadows" for example. Two plain words which return a zero on google, and thus this act of IT assistance, is a contemporary aid we can use as we compose, and often we find that what we think is original returns far more than we would guess and vice versa.

I found that - over time using it - this has helped hone my instinct for guessing what wordplay will return as unique, and if we google Hines's efforts see he is.

Try it out with any poem and you soon get a sense of who can be proved to be inventive. This is the joy of the net, it offers us ways out of the purple prose specualtions we once had to take for fact.

Look at the huardian books blog for example with their new makeover. When it first appeared two and a half yrs back, the sidebar was chosen at random by the editor; then at the end of last yr, it went on comment-responses, whereas now, it goes on most viewed, which means it is a truly democratic reflection of what writers there are being read and who isn't.

But i am with you on the whole English poetry establishments ignoring any but a small circle of the favoured ones, but the joy of the net is now these old ways are collapsing into irrelevance.

Take publishing for example.

One can publish a book now from Xlibris in America for 400 quid sterling, top of the range poetry package, and unlike some English publishers who have difficulty getting on Amazon and other sites, as this company is 40% owned by Random House, the customer/author who signs up there, automatically appears on all major internet book sites.

Few in England are aware of this company and for traditionally poetry publishers, one suspects they would not be wanting to broadcast the fact, as it effectively means they are cut out the picture and as the average book sale of a potry book is so small, it seems clearly logical and obvious that the whole topography will radically change from a small gate at the top of a pyramid/slush pile, of one person choosing from thousands who and how the future of Poetry pans out in print -- to a far more democratic setup in which ppl who wouldn't get picked for political/personal reasons by a publisher, can get their work out on an equal footing.

400 quid to get yr own book out, is cheaper than sending out all the stamps and getting back all the rejection slips, and as Hamilton Emery at Salt stated in Jane Holland's shop window a few weeks back, the old method of building a reputation on publishing credits in magazines, is all but defunct as everything hasd shifted online, and the natural extension of this is that the gate-keepers doing the picking, are losing out as the young poets who have only every known online methods, increasingly DIY.


And i think we are seeing this now in the early twenties ppl who would have been not even have been just approaching their teenage yrs as the internet boom kicked off.

But Hines, what do you think?
And another tutor i rate is yr old tutor at Concordance, Gary Geddes, who remionded me of Longley in the way he had zero airs and graces, and who i first heard the - i think - Ginsberg line about the realese of a new volume of poetry being like dropping a feather into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

At least now we do not have to be told we are shit by publishers, as we can just do it ourselves.

There is a fella here called James Kelly who is the last of the wandering bards, and has a voice like human birdsong who few outside Ireland will know of, but who all the major poets here do, and he sells his chapbook on his travels and has probably sold more of his books than most living poets bar the big sellers, as that is how he survives, and just meeting ppl like this, gives one a perspective we do not get elsewhere, and now this American company for the first time offers not only parity with any normal publisher, but surpasses the one man banders due to Random House owning it, it will be extremely interesting to see what happens next.

grá agus síocháin

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