I didn't mean to suggest poets should have a union or to
start a debate closed v. open shop rules, what I want to say is
that I don't believe taking pot-shots as various poetry initiatives
or at performance poetry makes a lot of sense. Promotion
of an art, any art, is important in the culture for it's very livelihood
(in economic and vital senses).
Charles Bernstein, for example, who takes issue with National
Poetry Month, appears to be a tireless and energetic promoter of
poetry. The poets/poetics he promotes may different from the
Academy of American Poets' initiatives, but that's another debate.
The National Poetry Slam, The Berkeley Poetry Walk, UBU
website, Poetry in Subways, Cowboy Poetry Festival,
Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival, Bill Moyer's Fooling with Words,
Pinksky's Favorite Poem Project, Project, About.Poetry.com,
etc, are all doing the same kind of basic good. Keeping poetry
in the public eye. I seriously don't believe that many of the
people on this list with .edu on the end of their email addresses
would even have jobs in education had not many other people been
willing to expend time, effort and resources to go out and to sell
poetry to the public. Poetry would ebb away gradually, being
not more than a tiny tidepool in public consciousness. Some of the
efforts might be misguided or ill thought out, some may strike one
a simply silly, some may be too loud or too crass for one's taste,
one effort may focus too heavily on 'mainstream' poets v. avant-garde.
(Speaking of the avant-garde, historically they've never been
slouches at promotion or even self-promotion. Think Switters, Brecht,
Mayakowsky, Ginsburg and The Beats...) Richard Howard's piece in
the Harpers (or The Atlantic?) some years back argued for a quieter,
more genteel art, surviving amiably in the libraries and faculty lounge
readings, in comfortable chairs and in parlors of the educated elites, etc.
That's death. Where would the contemporary artworld be now if they
left the caretaking of the art-making itself solely in the hands of
museum curators? In short, the benefits of the promotion spill across
aesthetic lines. All poetries benefit in the society when any one form
of the art is pushed forward.
Finnegan
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