Even "democratic" poetry deserves to be treated with respect doesn't it?
I believe in equality in the arts and in poetry: that all forms should
be given equal weight, that is, each poem has a unique form which to
me has equal value to all other forms, given or otherwise. That anyone
has the right to call themselves a poet; it's their practice that
matters, and practice is as wide as the sea and as deep. It's respect
not dignity that matters. That people want to call themselves poets is
healthy sign, that we are involved in something which still attracts
people whatever their motive, that we should be encouraging people
rather than throwing barriers up [1]. I would be worried if people
were actively distancing themselves from poetry; that's a sign of
decay, ask any political party. That poetry itself has equality with
all other art forms, that it has the right to slug it out with *any*
other art form rather than having any a priori claims to being a
"better" genre.
So there I am.
Roger
[1] I was in the audience for a discussion in Cheltenham once, and
Brian Patten was part of the discussion group. One of the younger
members of the discussion wanted to pursue poetry as a full time
career. The amount of patronising waffle from Patten towards the
younger poet left me gobsmacked.
On 11/16/05, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Rambletone wrote:
>
> > You can get past this, dumbo, either by saving the
> > post to Draft and knocking out the extra line-spaces
> > there, or by typing a combo of keys in Word to avoid
> > this happening. (I can't remember offhand what this
> > is, but it's come up before on the list -- I think it
> > was Roger Day who pointed it out.)
>
> Yes, dumbo does know about these tricks, but basically I couldn't be arsed,
> perfection is tedious, like heaven: 'singing of morals in Latin and Greek'
> as a Douglas Dunn poem has it, not that I wouldn't mind that, but not 24
> hours a day, too much man!
>
> Anyhow the reason why I posted poor victoria's little poem, democratically,
> was to point out that artistic ability is not the only criterion, vixen's
> poem is certainly not good, technically, linguistically, but she means it,
> so it matters, it's genuine, as far as anything in the house of lies that we
> call poetry can be.
>
> i show it at times to some real hard guys, and it moves them, it's rather
> like the police policy (? you say) - nowadays the cops try to send out on
> patrol at late night in the cities teams of two that are a bloke and a
> (preferably under thirty and pretty) policewoman, the reason being that all
> the pissed up machos will normally turn into nice little good boys if a bird
> in uniform comes to tell them it's time to go home.
>
> where it falls apart is if a woman and a bloke are there in the group having
> a row - then all hell appears.
>
> So there we are.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> .AC.UK>
>
--
http://www.badstep.net/
http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
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