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Interestingly David Keenan is a big fan of the Cantos - he just replied to something I put on Twitter which ,bearing in mind the general tenor of this thread, I think most agree with.

I’m teaching people who want to do English degrees. It’s just a bit annoying to see them and their interests being dismissed.

Yeah, I don’t know why I bother, any idiot can do it.

I agree it fades away quite gracefully.

I wish he’d left more of the later ones as fragments because I enjoyed that final section - quite wistful in places and the sense of a leavetaking in a paradise of his own making. Also he put the economics to one side and concentrates on nature, beauty, the past and his own stupidity. I’ve...

My own experience is seeing more and more kids picking undergrad apprenticeships and accelerated degrees, take up for non stem degrees dramatically decreasing and at A level, fewer kids taking things like English I feel that there may come a time when to study Lit at A level will be as rare as...

John Martyn and his echoplex - Live at Leeds probably him at his best.

Just have the fragments left to read. I found Thrones quite hard going - lots of repetition of his ideas and the obscurity (for me) of his references- I’ve been using the Cookson Guide to the Cantos. Also the poetry itself seemed less rhythmic- more like lusting and strange shorthand. There were...

Just finished Monument Maker and, yes, it’s probably too long but I think many on here would really like it. This is more like the Keenan who wrote Hidden Reverse about Coil etc. Very much in the searching, mystical territory. If one were being unkind one could say it has David Mitchell (Cloud...

Arrived today.

It’s one of those things that get kind of sneered at now because the ideas have been assimilated into popular culture criticism but at the time were quite radical. I remember watching a tape of the show and feeling it was a real shift in how to consider images in and out of context. My...

The Norton Anthologies are always good - decent notes and often cheap to pick up second hand. Faber Book of Modern Verse is also pretty decent. Agree with Luke on his recommendations. Bloodaxe have done some good contemporary anthologies - Staying Alive is one I think.

When you can bring on Kante at half time and totally change up the tactics - that’s strength in depth.

The problem with really big books (and I know this is obvious) is just how long they take to read and how that pushes aside all the other things you suddenly discover you want to read. The time investment in a 800 page novel is enormous- I’ve just reached page 569 on the new Keenan and there’s...

Can I, at this point, draw attention to the remarkable restraint I have shown thus far?

Lockdown meant her being at home to see the parcels from bookshops arrive - the extent of the influx laid bare. Not good.

This is the poetry/art/ music case. It’s frankly ridiculous

Massive bone of contention with my wife. This is just one of many book cases - I am pathologically incapable of culling them.

I don’t know that one. I’ll stick it on the list.

“…she's got big plans that don't include you…” I do like that album a lot.