A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015. Группа авторов

2a.2 Anthologies: Distortions and Corrections, Poetries, and Voices

       David Kennedy

      Anthologies of British mainstream poetry have tended to generate considerable controversy. This is because they are not really concerned with poetry per se but with poetry as a mirror of the nation and its moral life. The convergence of nation, morality, and poetry dates from Robert Conquest's New Lines (1956). Conquest argued that the anthology's nine poets represented “a genuine and healthy poetry of the new period” and “a new and healthy general standpoint.” His narrative of recovery from recent sickness was reinforced by references to “corruption,” “a debilitating theory,” and “a condition,” and by dismissals of poetry dominated by “the Id,” “unconscious commands,” “sentimentalism,” “unpleasant exhibitionism,” and “sentimentality.” These generalized terms stood in for any detailed esthetic argument because, as Conquest was forced to admit, the New Lines poets shared “little more than a negative determination to avoid bad principles.” At the same time, the poetry's “empirical […] attitude” was “a part of the general intellectual ambience (in so far as that is not blind or retrogressive) of our time.” “Ambience” is another generalized word that echoes Conquest's use of “atmosphere” (three times), “moods,” and “mood.” The implication is that if you have to ask for clearer definitions then you are part of the problem.

Conquest's introduction established some important aspects of mainstream poetry anthologies. First, there is a dismissal of the recent past and a hailing of the present as a site of changes, shifts, trends, or emergent groupings. Second, there is the editor presenting a generalized account of insider knowledge. Finally, this generalization removes the burden of having to justify the selection as a unified whole. This pattern was largely reproduced in subsequent anthologies but with greater focus on history and politics. For The New Poetry (1962), Al Alvarez redefined the restraint of Conquest's poets as “the gentility principle” and demanded that poets wake up to history and engage with “the forces of disintegration.” Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion's The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (1982) dismissed “The implication of The New Poetry that a correlation necessarily exists between gravity of subject and quality of achievement” (13). They argued that poetry had not developed in that direction and offered Seamus Heaney as their exemplary poet: someone whose work derived from “The Movement virtues of common sense, craftsmanship, and explication” (16) but had developed into oblique, refracting fiction‐making. And just as Conquest had buttressed his argument