Comments on Reading the Maps: Time to go solo?

just got around to actually writing this ages afte...

2009-03-17T21:54:00.000+13:00

just got around to actually writing this ages after the fact -

& this is a small quibble but i think important as part of a wider conversation about how hierarchies of media (or, and if i may go there - gender?) are assumed -

re the statement:

"After Sally McIntyre's thoughtful prose describing her take on Nigel Bunn’s photograph 'Untitled 2'..."

this is quite wrong - i mean, sure, one of the things i write is art criticism, and any fiction i've written is a bit of a nod to that personal history of looking and reflecting on looking -

but in fact the photo and the piece of writing were written entirely separately and came together quite accidentally, if confluentually.

thanks.

the writing in this magazine seemed to try too har...

2008-07-21T18:02:00.000+12:00

the writing in this magazine seemed to try too hard to be intellectual, yet was in reality very boring. it is sad anyone would find the writing "difficult" because they would be falling into the trap the authors would want, obscurity equalling intellegence when in fact the writing lacked depth. I liked Jo Contags image....otherwize, yawn.

The difference between Shakespeare etc and myself ...

2008-06-18T00:14:00.000+12:00

The difference between Shakespeare etc and myself is that I am poet.

Egotism is essential to life.

2008-06-18T00:13:00.000+12:00

Egotism is essential to life.

'I just get on with EYELIGHT and my life - I don't...

2008-06-17T10:29:00.000+12:00

'I just get on with EYELIGHT and my life - I don't care what anyone thinks. It doesn't matter.

Bach and Shakespear were virtually unknown or appreciated widely until many many years after their deaths.'

Overweening EGOTISM from the Taylor of threadbare suits!

For the record Brett has been perhaps correcting m...

2008-06-17T00:23:00.000+12:00

For the record Brett has been perhaps correcting my deliberate word inventions - one mispelling mentioned was partly his fault as he didn't allow me time to proof read my book properly (this needs to be done not only by the author but but others and then returned to the author - - the mis-spelling arose as I used OCR scanning initially and it sometimes doesn't come out right and I didn't seem to have time to proof read.

The last "Percutio" was excellent and Brett's poems were great...a lot or almost all of what Bill touches seems to been always interesting and challenging - I don't know who reviewed it...I wasn't in it ... Brett deserved the accolade however.

I agree with Jack it is pathetic that critics are still concerned with "difficulty' and so on... that issue (if it ever was one in literature in the 20th/21st Centuries) really died in the 60s or earlier.

A huge amount of NZ literature is compounded of participant in what I have long called:

"The great conspiracy of dullness."

We need a another Pope and a Dunciad and some several sharp Swifts... (we already have a swift sharp!)...

But we need indeed myself and Bill Direen etc (and other Titus writers -and others who have such talents elsewhere) as we want ability, ingenuity, imagination, creativity, power with language, and the courage to experiment and inventiveness.

There is almost no one in this country or possibly the world who has the ability to appreciate great writing such as my own (Richard Taylor's) or that of Bill's or Maps or Jen Crawfords etc

I just get on with EYELIGHT and my life - I don't care what anyone thinks. It doesn't matter.

Bach and Shakespear were virtually unknown or appreciated widely until many many years after their deaths.
Some are known in their lives but being known etc is only transient - art, high art, its value and richness; is in the process and the doing and perhaps the completion not in the dribbling responses of cynical and half-witted critics.

obamalamadingdong and all his hatefilled lil obama...

2008-06-16T10:36:00.000+12:00

obamalamadingdong and all his hatefilled lil obamazoids better prepare. They have sewn the seeds and come Nov. will reap the whirlwind. I don't know WHAT the political landscape of America will look like after then, but it will be VERY differant then the one the heads up their asses crowd at obamacentral delude themselves into believing exoists today or ANY day. We have had an UTTERLY unqualified conman shuved down our throats by rank misogyny and outright disregarding of the electorates will. They think they are royalty and don't have to listen to the pesants. Me thinks they should study French or Russian or A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N history to see what happens to royalty when the oppresed citizenry has had enough. AND WE HAVE! to even contemplate the likes of obamalamadingdong and ms.dong defiling the White House is disgraceful and an insult to the men and women who have fought and died over two centuries to first birth and then keep the American experiment alive. THESE PEOPLE DO NOT BELIEVE IN OUR CONSTITUTIONAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT!!! They do NOT believe in the sanctity of one citizen one vote. They are, as they have already proved, willing to do and say anything to anyone to accomplish their goal. And the good of the country is NOT their goal. FIGHT THEM RIGHT NOW OR GET LOST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

A couple of points about this, Maps.First, the rev...

2008-06-16T09:31:00.000+12:00

A couple of points about this, Maps.

First, the review isn't "anonny mouse" -- if you check online at
http://www.critic.co.nz/about/reviews/566?review_type_id=4, you'll see the author's name at the bottom of the page.

Second, do you have any idea what s/he's talking about in that final paragraph? Does anyone else?

"Apart from the odd poem or mixed media work, I was sufficiently enlightened by this publication." Isn't there a "not" missing in there somewhere?

The passage continues with the assertion that there's "nothing ground-breaking" about "this publication", despite the admission above that "it is beyond me"! Is it an entrance qualification to be syntactically and conceptually challenged before one can set up as an online critic these days?

Nice to have it noticed, though, I suppose. I thought it was a very cool, very good-looking piece of work, with a multicultural, multilinguistic perspective which hasn't been seen in this country since (at least) Michael Harlow's Frontiers in the 70s. But maybe I'm prejudiced.