Original Message:
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From: Trevor Joyce [log in to unmask]
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:46:55 +0000
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What should poets talk about?


Tim:

>I find something wrong with this idea that because we are poets we
>should be talking about poetry, that anything else is tangental. The
>deadest times on this list are when people are making tentative
>attempts to talk about poetry, almost self-consciously. When poetry
>is treated as a separate catagory to anything else that pops up
>here, such as politics, philosophy, theory etc, it ends up as boring
>and tedious and soon peters out. That's my experience of this list
>anyhow.

Yes and no. Certainly I'd agree that any attempt programatically to
filter out reference to 'politics, philosophy, theory etc' would be
pretty tedious. But surely it's quite possible to talk, centrally,
about poetry, and to allow this contextual hinterland to figure also
in the conversation? You seem to pose a false dichotomy between
'tentative attempts to talk about poetry, almost self-consciously'
and 'anything else', with the latter being infinitely preferable.

What I look to this list (and others) for is an informed discussion
of contemporary poetry, situated precisely within that broader
context of activities and understandings. I don't rely particularly
on this list simply for accounts of politics or social movements
elsewhere, though they can be interesting and highly informative. But
I can get that through other channels, sometimes via b/c
correspondence. What I'm most interested in, through this list, is to
hear and attempt to understand other poets speak about how their own
poetry, and that of others, functions within that complex of (often
hostile) contexts; how can poetry, precisely qua poetry, transform
itself to embody an equally complex response to that world.

I don't see that happening very much on any list these days. I've
only intermittently listened in over the last few months, and seen
here, as elsewhere, conversations that match to a significant extent
your dichotomy between 'poetry' and 'everything else'. But I don't
accept the necessity of the distinction, and I refuse to be
distracted from the centrality (for me) of poetry, by the hubbub of
voices telling me I should be talking about something else. Tell me
instead how to 'talk about it' better, through poetry.

Best,

Trevor

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