Dear Harriet
Of course you are right. I'm not saying poetry does not have social
aspects or social agency. At the same time, I do think writing a
poem is an egocentric
activity (I don't mean this in any derogatory sense) which is
primarily a response by the self (and yes, a self assertion, or even
a means of survival for the self). It is everything else later. Of
course, this is technically speaking a purely Romantic attitude to
poetry, and has all those drawbacks. But when I think about poetry
and why I write it, that is what I always come back to, and if it has
any social potency, it emerges from that impulse. Anything else is
just icing or boils, really.
Which is not to say that the icing or boils don't have their own
interest; it's just that they're of secondary importance. To my
mind, such as it is...
best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Editor, Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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