Henry, Henry, Henry.
How I have adored you over the years. But you still try to yank discussions
of taste back from the cultural and communal to the act of Discerning
Judgment. You wait there with your sword of Damocles, your shibboleths,
your this's your that's, asking "Is it original?" with the earnestness that
so becomes you. You echo yourself, "Does it move me, charm me, make me
laugh, cry...?"
Henry, being moved and charmed and laughing: these all happen WITHIN a
community, where taste is formed. Ideas of worth (and categories of
judgment such as "original" and "authentic") are founded and forged in the
very communities you wish to stand outside of as an original genius. You
cannot escape the prisonhouse of the rest of us, I'm sorry dear Henry.
Gabe
At 03:15 PM 9/5/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>I think that if you want to search for what's new, or good, or important in
>poetry (why not?), you have to avoid these CATEGORICAL TRAPS, like:
>
>-- who's inside or outside the "academy" [remember, the academy is not a
>thinking animal]
>-- who's popular around certain cliques or journals [ the buddy system is
>not shaped by independent judgement]
>-- rationalizations made (for writing) based on these previous 2 categories
>[this is a minor industry in itself]
>
>You have to start from scratch, in other words:
>-- you have to develop a feel for a language and its poetry over a long
>span of time, and recognize certain "flowerings" (Elizabethan,
>Metaphysical, Restoration, American Renaissance, Homer, dolce stil nuova,
>etc) that continue to serve as instigators, models, benchmarks.
>-- you have to ask, what is this poetry I'm reading doing with the
>contemporary language we speak? How is it addressing both
>poetry-in-itself, and more basic or immediate human concerns? What is it
>trying to say and how is it saying it? Is it original? Does it strike me
>as authentic? Does it move me, charm me, make me laugh, cry, enlighten
>me? Does it present anything really new? Is it facile, complacent, glib
>"writing" writing?
>-- you have to ask, am I responding to poetry in an immediate way, or is my
>interest driven and mediated by my own relation to PO-BIZ?? Do I need to
>take a bath?
>
>Henry
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