I think these "lines" are misleading because they draw attention away from
the individual qualities of poets towards fictive pools of shared
substance, and away from the actual verbal impact of their work towards the
remoteness of genealogical charting. Olson Duncan and Williams are three
poets immensely different from each, and O'Hara and Ginsberg are a fourth
and fifth and whatever any of them might have in common as a "line"or a
development is surely the least interesting thing about them.
I'm aware of course that they declared a partisanship towards versions of
this grouping during their lifetimes, and also sometimes denied it.
Poets (Eliot included) don't found lines, like 19th Century shipping
magnates. (Nancy Cunard possibly excepted?)
I increasingly think that canons, traditions and even influences are
irrelevant to the act of reading poetry. Or, poetry is something that
doesn't have a history. When you read a poem the emotive intellections
involved are not relative.
But I'd like to see the Antin essay. Anyone got the exact reference for it?
/PR
|