Dear Geraldine and Cassie, I've enjoyed your responses, thinking about what poetry is and isn't for. I wish I could add something original but will settle for sharing a couple of quotes that've left me with food for thought. The first is by Peter Riley, from an interview in Nate Dorward's magazine and republished in Jacket. The second is by Philip Mead.
"Actually the self-wreck of the Pound enterprise is for me one of the principal signs that you
cannot run poetry as a substitute university, a substitute religion, a substitute
politics . . . - if it has any right to exist it must find its own purpose, not serve as a
short-cut to more rigorous and practical disciplines. The sense of "importance"
has to be left out of the equation, otherwise the whole thing runs into inhumanity
and waste." (Peter Riley)
(and)
"What I probably should have said was that the usefulness of poetry lies in its uselessness.... (the) word 'vindication' looks a bit like a flashing red light to me with all its moral and foresnic associations. Or, it seems to be the tip of a whole moral ideology ... floating below the surface there. 'Gatekeepers'? 'Valid'? 'Better'? 'Selves'? etc. This is exactly the sort of thing that imprisons and offends the free reception of poetry. You can twist and torture poetry into doing what you describe - it's like Toad in Wind in the Willows, it'll say and promise anything if you badger it enough, but as soon as you leave the room, it'll climb out the window and tear off down the road." (Philip Mead)
Best,
Ralph
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