grumpy old persons

“… someone is bound to ask: what’s the problem with putting Dylan [Bob] on the front of a literary magazine? The answer is, there wouldn’t be one, if Keats was on the cover of Down Beat.”

My favourite grumpy old man writing the NB column in the TLS, March 3, 2006, p.16. But I think he (it is a he isn’t it?) really meant Rolling Stone or NME, not Down Beat.

I get worried when I start agreeing with this geezer. But agree or often not agree, he brings me joy.

It also fascinates me, as someone also pointed out recently, is how absolutely and terminally boring the poetry is in the TLS. Nearly always the usual suspects, and I can’t read beyond the first phrase, let alone line. It’s not bad, as such, just boring.

Comments

Andrew Burke said…
Hey, I came within a bee's tit of having a poem published there once! Although I can't remember which poem ... perhaps it was so boring it attracted their attention. Anyway, I at least caused a certain amount of friction in the ed committee, which I am proud of!
23/03/2006, 23:42
Jill Jones said…
Wow, you even tried. I'd have never have thought they bother with, you know, those 'colonials'. I wouldn't complain about being there (but would that mean I was boring?). Hey, Andrew, maybe it was another era, diff editor, when they argued over yr poem. Know wot I mean?
24/03/2006, 08:11
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