>
>As to the rest--the reason there is passionate disagreement about poetry is
>that poets tend to be passionate about what they do--that one meets your
>truth test. And I'm not sure that's a bad thing. That the arguments are
>repetitious is because neither side (poetic practices these days do in fact
>fit into a couple of broad types, altho not too comfortably) thinks that
>what the other side does is interesting enough to be worthy of attention.
>But there's an imbalance--one side has the power to keep the other largely
>unheard. Hence my a b and c, which have nothing to do with the reading or
>writing of poetry but everything to do with the culture of poetry, which
>you seem to regard as irrelevant and to be disposed of by what you take to
>be a stroke of logic. Whitless and uneducated as I am that seems to be a
>questionable judgement. Reduce the rest of the social world while you're at
>it and maybe we'll have world peace.
>

Mark, I never said anything about world peace; I'm not even very interested
in your supposed imbalance between the marketable & the marginal in poetry.

I merely expressed my interest in a minimalist definition of poetry,
and its possible effect on criticism, reception and talk about same.

It's a new idea for me.  I throw it out there for consideration.

Here again are the parts of the idea:

1. Definition: "Poetry is rhythmic and/or measured language."

2. All other compositional or performative elements are
stylistic additions to this simple basis.

Criticism will interpret and evaluate a work on its own merits with
reference to #1 and #2 above, not by spurious contrast with rival schools,
or by circular arguments with reference to some ideal poetry-as-it-should-
be, or by cultural/social/political arguments based on some concept of
ideal reception. The proper role of criticism is to evaluate the work on
its own merits.

The minimalist theory of poetry is not an attempt to reduce the complexity
either of poetry or criticism.  Clearly, poetry as we know it is a layered
fabric of originality, imitation, parody, contrast, and cross-fertilization,
between poet and poet and school and school.  However, an independent,
disinterested criticism would initially assume the uniqueness and originality
of the work under consideration, and evaluate it as an addition, in every
sense of the word, to the simple, minimalist definition of poetry.  If the
work then proved to be a tissue of borrowings and 2nd-rate echoes of a
previous work, then that too would be made clear - or at least the critic's
opinion about it would be made clear.

The advantage of the minimalist approach is not that it completely
renovates criticism and theory.  What it does is rule out tendentious
debates based on prescriptive formulas: "what poetry SHOULD be".  The
minimalist definition SAYS what poetry is, and allows each poet,
songster, rap artist, even Ganesh Tripoli, to make of it what they will.
It unveils the tendentious basis of battles over style for cultural
hegemony.

Henry


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