David, 'the uncertainties of aesthetic these days' might leave you 'always
wondering,' but hasn;t it always been that way? And isn't it in the niches
those uncertainties create that we all write, whatever the aesthetic(s) we
choose (upon occasion, or as our very own singular one)? It seems to me
that without them, we'd be in much greater trouble.
I think about USAmerican poetry circa 1956, for example (no doubt because
I'm teaching that material right now), when there were the various
beginnings of a number of branches of the new american poetry, friendly
toward one another but not really sharing a single aesthetic, plus the
confessionsal, the classicists, the richard wilburists (I guess you could
call them), etc. I remember that I made my choices among them, but that's
the point. Those in the groupd I couldn't really stand nevertheless thought
that what they did was important, central, & fine... (& I've not even
mentioned Great Britain, the fact that The Movement was in the ascendant,
no one seemed to know that basil Bunting was writing some of the finest
poettry in English of the century, nor that David Jones was working on The
Anathemata, nor that there were a number of younger poets trying other
things...).
Still seems to be the situation...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
You know, verse
is a lovely thing.
It issues,
like the vapors,
from the rock
Charles Olson
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