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Lofty anachronismPomelo Brown
A S A preliminaryl mustsay,A franklp that I am hardly inter-I \ "rt"d in canonised literiry cul-ture. And having known for a longtime that it is absurd to criticise theconventional literary establishment andthen expect its atEntion or affection, Ican also say that canonical inclusionhas never been a personal aspiration."However, I am alert to the ramifica-tions of the processes of historicisation.I don't want to sound high-falutin' butI'11 begin with Nietzsctre who began hisenquiry into the value of history with agem from Goethe: 'L a.y case I hateeverything that merely instructs mewithout augmenting or directly invig-orating my activity.'' Whyquestionhistory?It'sprettymixed-up anyway in these over-docu-mented times - home-video, biogra-phy, autobiography, factual fiction,bold and oftennakedlynepotistic news-paper, magazine and TV profiles andso on. Times when living peacenik andanarchist poets sell their manuscriptsto military academiesand writers keepcopies of every letter writEn (some-times writing to the famoussolely for aresponse) so as to sell the correspond-ence to State archives. Perhaps it ispointless to question official versionsof history when it's re-inventing ibelfin populist ways.While history has been freneti-cally throwing its empty bottles out thewindow it seems as if Oxford Univer-sity Press has been trying to save thelabels. This is not exactly the ,OxfordCompanion to Old Farts'C20 poetryinEnglish'but it comes close. It is savedfrom the expected fustinesg by an at-tempt to revise the canon with the in-clusion of some previously invisible orneglected non-prize-winners and, inrelation to the Australian entries, the
lon Homllton (ed) The OxfordComponion lo TwentielhCentury Poeiry in EnglishOxford Unlverslty Pres, S59.
While this reads a littlelike the fatherly old an-nals of the British Empire
buying a drink for abunch of quarrelsomecolonials, it is at least anattempt to redress the
old-fash ioned domi nanceo{ 'Englishness' as ameasure of worthiness
exclusion of some still-productive po-etswho were listed in the 1985'OxfordCornpanion to Australian Literature'.Defrocked maybe, but still practising.The revjsion is mainly concernedwith the 'difference'between US andUK poetry. While this reads a little likethe fatherly old annals of the BritishEmpire buying a drink for a bunch ofquarrelsome colonialq it is at least anattempt to redress the old-fashioneddominance of 'Englishness'as a meas-ure of worthiness in what is a British-
based compilation. Hence some dodgyheadings like'Asian/American Poetry'under,which a selection of poets andtheirbook titles are rnerely listed. Morepositively, the few Aboriginal Austral-ians are granted individual entries.Apart from the problems inher-ent in a habitual pursuit of historythere's the question of the purpose or
intended function of a literary com-panion - what's it for? (It certainlydoesn't invigorate or augment my writ-ing activities.)I N THE introduction Ian Hamil-I ton calls this tome 'A map oft modern poetry'and, accordingto him, the map changes about everyten years mostly ds a result of 'fash-ions'. This glibness enables a swift dis-missal of at least one enormous poeticeruption:'Surrealism', he writes,'would havebulked larger'had the listbeen compiled in 1950. This seems ashallow reflection when practicallyevery First World poet writing in Eng-lish since dadaism and surrealism hasbeen influenced by those movementsin some way.
There is no heading for modern-ism. Post-modemism along with cut-up and deconshuctiory gets a mentionunder 'Language Poetry', dadaismunder 'Sound Poetry', 'Vorticism -see Blast'. The metaphor of the mapbecomes a puny clich6 in an age ofover-the-horizon radar, satellite com-munication, CD-ROM and otherelectronic databases. 'Who needs thisold map?'is a reasonable question.The editor says 'I want it to beseen as serious and useful, but I will notmind at all if it is read for fun, as a kind
of documentary-entertainment'. I'd sayit's about as much fun as cricket statis-tics in winter - which brings up thenextpoint. He also gives a breakdownof numbers and while there are malepoets 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 Australianpoets (constituting about one-fifth ofthe mostly white poets who registeredwith D. W. Thorpe's national reference
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recently) and there are unjustly ab-sented men, numerous Australianwomen poets have been denied entry;women who have published often morewidely than and have been as publicallynoted as any of the included. Womenwhose styles, philosophieg sexual-pref'erences, aggs, ethnicities, politics andpoetics differ from each other. PeterPorter, who gave his 'informal guid-ance' to the editor, appears not to haveadvised consultation of the very eclec-tic Penguin Book Of Australian WomensPoetry andyet he entered the co-editorsof that collection as if presuming thatthe rest, the'others', nafuralty follow.Furthermore, this kind of com-plaint is incorporated under the head-ing'Feminist Criticislll'- a few mud-dled paragraphs which mistake femi-nism for separatism before teducing tothis:
female poets are now waaing from thesea in which many of their earlier andless fortunate sisters drowned. Theyare buoyed up by ideological diaersity,andby the sense of dffirent audiences(women of colour, lesbians, working-class lt)omen, the old, the young...).
HERE IS no agenda in relationto young poets. Sorry kids-if you're alive, published andunder thirty you're not welcome. How-ever, had you been blessed with theforesight of killing yourself before turn-
ing thirty, you're in! No buts! Cool!Finally, there are inaccuracies insome Australian entries. So it can beassumed that there are mistakes as wellas further ridiculous preteritions in theother countries'lists. What is exasper"ating is that this kind of intrepidly con-fident version of poetic history cannotpossibly be accurate and, in the end,renders itself ineffective. Despite anyrevisionist ambitions towards a broadreach, it's just another lofty anachro-nism.
Pameh Brown's latest poetry collection TlisWorld/This Place aras p ublished by UQP earlierthis yur.
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