>From: Candice Ward <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: HG my name JG my game
>Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 14:37:50 -0400
>
>Very instructive pairing of critical perspectives here, courtesy of
>Sevanthi. If Graham's work exemplifies "neo-romantic bombast" (as Henry
>labels it elsewhere), surely Logan's work (criticism) exemplifies in this
>instance neo- (or maybe more accurately, para-)critical bombast. Has
>contemporary poetry become so assimilated to economies of scale that
>largesse is indistinguishable from largeness, grandeur from grandiosity,
>"big-picture" perspective from pretentiousness?
>
>A serious question posed with no intent to bait anyone (let alone provoke
>indignant defenses of Gould's or Logan's life/work)--a question about
>size/scale that's obviously related to my original point re Graham and
>intolerance of or toward the intellectual/philosophical poem, which I sense
>as one prevailing attitude in the current poetic culture. What strikes me
>as
>continuous between these two statements by Gould and Logan is not merely
>the
>recourse to "bombast" as a damning term for Graham's work but the expressed
>desire for the philosophic to yield to the lyric.
>
>Why should it?
Actually, Logan's expressed desire (and expressed and expressed) is for
contemporary poetry to have a wider range than just the lyric, and to
encompass larger subjects. I'm not sure why you feel he is incapable of
distinguishing grandeur from grandiosity. He has, for example, praised
Geoffrey Hill, who is as philosophic as they come. In the piece whose url I
posted, he goes into some detail about why the problems with Jorie Graham's
work. As he says, and as Adam Kirsch discusses at some length, it's more of
a question of yielding something worthwhile (meaning, music, *something*)
for the trouble of one's attention.
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