>Some of the early punk groups (in the UK) really couldn't play music (at
>first) and for a short time some of their productions succeded in expressing
>a particular attitude at a certain cultural moment.
The cultural moment vaguely called The Sixties saw a great expansion in the
validity of arts for opposite reasons. Film, jazz, and folk music, for
instance, it was successfully argued, are as legitimate arts as opera, the
novel, or theatre, not because the practictioners of the former have a
consciousness as valid as anyone's, but because film, jazz, and folk music
require as much talent and discipline, and are as capable of giving as much
pleasure and understanding, as are opera, the novel, or theatre.
>
>> All people need in order to dignify themselves
>> with the title poet (or Poet) is the feeling that they are much sensitive
>> than the common run of people
>
This is why open mike poetry readings often, and this may be said without
hyperbole, verge on being group therapy sessions, and sometimes go over the
verge. Over the door of my poetry academy, if I had one, would be a motto
from T. S. Eliot: "Poetry is not an expression of personality; poetry is an
escape from personality."
>very pert. And buried in that notion, in that verb 'dignify', that noun
>'title', is, paradoxically, a profoundly elitist notion of the Poet as a
>superior being, a sub-fusc Romantic ubermensch.
I've noticed the same paradox: a poet is special, but everyone is special,
so everyone is a poet. The poetry community has become like the small town
Midwestern school system described by Garrison Keiler, where "all the
children are above average."
>Now there is almost no other
>walk of life to which such an attitude could be taken, imagine trains being
>driven by people who didn't know how to drive them, shoes being repaired
>likewise, locks fitted, food prepared, dentistry applied etc etc.
The image that has often come to my mind is of someone with no talent for or
training in singing inviting people into the bathroom to hear their
discordant bellowing in the shower. And of the audience, in all sincerity,
applauding it!
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