>i suspect you are right, Rebecca, and that is a problem as I see it. Even
>in the twenty-first century (not to speak of the 20th), poets are mad and
>possibly suicidal? and this idea is not discouraged by most educators and
>the popular media.
I'm always reminded, with comments like this, that it goes back quite a
way, & think of Guy Davenport's wonderfully sassy essay, 'Have you got a
poem book by e.e.cummings?' )I think that's the title; it's in the
magnificent Geography of the Imagitation), in which he tears his hair over
the way Time magazine (& others) psychologize poets, & therefore name
Lowell THE poet of the 20th century. Where's this necessity of poets being
'mad'? And why? Is imagination really 'sick'?
Etc.
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
How, but thru a monstrous 'specialism', the so-called authority
of erstwhile 'professionals', have we come to leave
_breath_ out of images and _images_ out of breath, anyhow?
Roy Kiyooka
|