Here are my unfirm answers, Jon.
On Nov 26, 2005, at 3:12 PM, Jon Corelis wrote:
> [The following is prompted mostly by my experience of going to more
> poetry
> readings than I used to. These questions deal with explosive
> issues, and I
> want to make it clear that I don't personally have any firm answers
> to them.
> The fact that I feel as uncomfortable writing these questions as
> most people
> will feel reading them I take as evidence that they are important
> and ought to
> be discussed.]
>
> If a poem deserves respect as a moral statement, does it therefore
> deserve
> respect as poetic art?
It might, but not because it deserves respect as a moral statement.
=no?
> Is it possible to write a bad poem deploring the Holocaust? If the
> answer is
> no, what are the implications for aesthetics of the claim that a
> poem's
> quality can be assured by its choice of subject matter? If the
> answer is yes,
> then if someone showed you a bad poem deploring the Holocaust and
> asked what
> you thought of it, how honestly would you answer?
Yes, to the first. Depends, to the second. On what? On who wrote it
(age, stage
of writing "career," background--e.g., his/her relationship to/
experience with
Holocaust, etc., how honest/blunt/kind/sympathetic/etc. I feel at the
time).
Context (public gathering, party, class, private meeting, street
encounter, etc.).
> A member of a poetry workshop reads a poem about the damaging
> effects of
> sexism. The poem is a deeply felt expression of a personal
> experience which
> clearly deserves compassion and respect. The group immediately
> starts talking
> about the problem of sexism, about other poems on the theme, about
> how writing
> poems about it can contribute to a solution. But nobody raises the
> issue of
> whether the poem is good as poetry or not. There is apparently a
> general tacit
> agreement that it is not appropriate to judge such a poem by the
> same critical
> standards as a poem about flowers or sunrise or rivers. Is this
> something to
> worry about or not?
Worry about? No. The good/bad question can be sent to the back of the
line.
> At more than one open mike reading I have been to, someone reading
> a poem they
> had written was so moved by it that they broke down in tears. The
> audience
> response (myself included) was to applaud particularly loudly in
> sympathetic
> support. Would a folk singer who was moved to tears while
> performing one of
> their own songs be given a similar audience response? Would a
> pianist?
> Would an artist standing sobbing before one of their own paintings?
Would? Possibly. Should? No.
> A poet at a reading delivers several impassioned poems denouncing
> the Iraq
> war, then goes into the parking lot, climbs into their car, and
> drives alone
> home. Is there anything wrong with this scenario? Is there
> anything wrong
> with the fact that it would almost never occur to anyone to wonder
> if there is
> anything wrong with it?
No to both.
Hal "Those who cast the ballots decide nothing.
Those who count the ballots decide everything."
--Joseph Stalin
Halvard Johnson
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