I'm very often let down by the poetry I occasionally see published
today, but I think that it's a matter of standards. poets don't,
really, write for other poets because it's all craft among the
craftsmen. there's a poet here in Finland called Tommy Tabermann, who
writes amusingly prolifically & in a boorish, Poet-ic, dripping
romance style. no other writer probably takes his work seriously, &
his only audience seems to be (undiscerning) women of age 50+.
my idea of poetry is mastery of, playfulness with & (dis)respect for
language. assuming there is talent, the lighter the touch & approach,
the easier the (dis)respect is & thus also the imaginativeness. what
Thomas did was adopt an extremely serious & heavy style of thought &
voice, and he STILL produced incredibly well-crafted poems. not
something that seems very likely, or possible, today. freeverse has
taken over & eroded Quality to the extent that now any even mildly
insightful-seeming prose cut into lines appears to gain accolades &
sales. I like to stick to the power of imagery & reshaped language.
KS
On 24/08/07, Lynda Nash <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:39:44 -0400, TheOldMole <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> >I like this for what it is. It's a good story, good insights on
> >character. I don't get a strong feeling of it as a poem, butactually no
> >less so than with a lot of people who are out there getting published.
>
>
>
> This begs the question, what is poetry these days? or more to the point
> what has poetry become? Is all this conversational poetry just fiction in
> disguise? And if beginners are using the authors of such poetry as role
> models will poetry ever improve or will the real stuff be lost forever?
>
> Food dor thought?
>
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