>Keith I was referring to the time and thought it requires to read the text.
Hi Stephen
Well partly I was being flip but I suppose I also meant to put "thought"
between quotation marks as an undefined and in this case suspect word,
indicating a view of poetry which I think leads too easily into a rhetoric
concerning the "difficulty of modern poetry"--a rhetoric all too familiar
and not at all appropriate in all of those pastures despite those who would
use it to chase a whole lot of cows into the same corral. Whew what a mess
that sentence is!
I am not at all sure that 3%--if your number is accurate--is something to
worry about nor do I find anything surprising or frankly all that useful in
the little discourse you wrap around it. I say this with no offense
intended: we've heard all this before and it always leaves me asking so
what? The important questions always have to do with what follows--that
is, either as diagnosis or proposed cure. I had a long discourse written
out hastily last night which wandered through discussions of audience,
patronage, British and US Arts Councils, schemes for public and
community-building performance and publication, lottery funding of poets in
zoos and law firms, Night of Living Tongues, Poetry Slam in the US,
technologies, pedagogies, implications on poetic practice of all of the
above, your I think mistaken reading of Adorno, much else. But looking at
it this morning I'm too bored to send it and have no time to work on it.
In the end I think we simply differ in our definition of and confidence in
what you call "cultural competence." While I suspect you consider yourself
a realist, I find your characterization of the tired masses slogging home
from work just a little bit of a caricature, and ultimately condescending
and defeatist. But that's just that and maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can
draw a few comics on your poems and circulate or dispose of them that way.
Now that part of your story was of great use: I can see the wheels turning
in a couple of listfolks' heads already.
all best
Keith
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