âWho the FT Palgrave does he think he is?â asked the poet JH Prynne on a letter about an anthology editor who had annoyed him. Well, hereâs who FT Palgrave was someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/pinks-22-a...
F.T. Palgrave, the most successful poetry anthologist ever
This was spotted on a printed calendar in the house recently and we were all bemused. Is there some sort of central template they are all using?
I think the Seventies was a moment of sea-change for school anthologies -- lots of new, more inclusive compilations intended for classroom consumption date from around then. I never encountered Palgrave in the 80s either, though by then Hughes and Heaney had cornered the market with The Rattle Bag.
When Sam Altman expresses views about the future of education and the role of AI in it - as he did this week in his very silly "Age of Intelligence" post - I think it's important to realize he is absolutely full of shit 1/
I think the probably unique thing about Palgrave was the extent to which he dominated at school level -- a comment by my aunt on the post notes that he was *the* poetry book at every school she went to in the 50s / 60s. So for many people who only read poetry at school, the pattern was set.
'Palgrave excluded âblank verseâ as unlyrical, however, meaning that the book was entirely made up of rhyming verse â which I suspect may have influenced the enduring belief in Anglophone culture that poetry âought toâ rhyme.'
âWho the FT Palgrave does he think he is?â asked the poet JH Prynne on a letter about an anthology editor who had annoyed him. Well, hereâs who FT Palgrave was someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/pinks-22-a...
F.T. Palgrave, the most successful poetry anthologist ever
I must admit I never really encountered The Golden Treasury growing up (in our school it was always The Rattle Bag) but having my Mum's copy - complete with Wirral Grammar School bookplate - got me curious about Palgrave, and then at some point I discovered the Norfolk connection (little known here)
A purely speculative thought! But it does strike me that Palgrave even excluded blank verse lyrics by the Romantics (e.g. Tintern Abbey by Wordsworth, whom FTP otherwise loved), which one could argue are the start of unrhymed lyric poetry in English, and therefore much later 'free verse'...
One for the people who are horrified by climate activists pretend-damaging art.
âWho the FT Palgrave does he think he is?â asked the poet JH Prynne on a letter about an anthology editor who had annoyed him. Well, hereâs who FT Palgrave was someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/pinks-22-a...
F.T. Palgrave, the most successful poetry anthologist ever