> Jeez, Fred, you insist on making me work on my one day off! But I'm up to
>> the challenge of saying wot you said below, only more briefly.
>
>
1) Sharon, like all Mainstream poets, writes ABOUT relationships, politics,
gardens, etc.
2) Mainstream poems, tho sometimes witful, soulful, freshly metaphored and
stylistically economical, make the reader look at the poet, rather than
giving the reader a world of images (s)he can inhabit.
3) In terms of inspiration, not style, wot makes poetry poetry is digging
into one's unconscious until one is terrified of wot emerges (i.e., going
beyond one's comfort zone), and giving up the notion that there is a life of
personal feelings and relationships apart from politics, history, science,
etc.
4) Mainstream poetry, therefore, cannot be bold and sweeping bcuz it
focuses on the self-absorbed and not the broader world with which we are all
connected.
You're careful to omit style as a topic for considering what poetry is.
Now let me join you in this discussion. First, let me ask you to provide a
couple poems of two different writers whom you feel represent non-Mainstream
poetry, with the exception of your own poems which we'll have to assume are
non-Mainstream. Next, let me ask you in wot ways non-Mainstream poets
present the terrifying part of their unconscious that recognises there is no
life of personal feelings and relationships apart from politics, history,
science, etc. I understand that they will not make us readers look at the
poet, herself. But, then, in wot other ways will they present their
connected worldview?
You yourself write in many personae. Each poem is usually a dramatic
monologue. Is this the only technique of the non-Mainstream poet? If not,
wot are some other techniques?
If I write about my garden, I am Mainstream. If I write about my garden
from the perspective of George Bush, I am non-Mainstream. If I write about
my garden from the perspective of the garden's inhabitants, (i.e., bugs and
flowers) will I be Mainstreaming or non-Mainstreaming? If you hesitated
more than two seconds on that last question's answer, you may be trapped.
May objective is to force you to see wot you are telling us. If my
reflecting your views back to you sounds unlike wot you actually think, then
it's time for you to figure out why. It is not time for you to decide to
stand pat.
Judy
>>
>> Sharon, this question is hard to answer because the only earlier poem of
> yours in my inbox is your 4th of July poem. (Don't take that personally; I
> had something like 5000 messages and I recently cut them down to 2000.) All
> I can give is a vague impression, and those are unfair; one should be able
> to cite lines and passages. With that proviso I have to say yes; my
> impression of your work is that it makes the reader look at you (the "I")
> rather than providing an image-world he or she can inhabit. Let me stress
> that this is an extremely widespread shortcoming. Many poets spend their
> entire careers talking ABOUT their grandparents, parents, childhoods,
> marriages, divorces, children, politics, gardens, etc. They do so with more
> or less wit or soulfulness, more or less fresh metaphors and stylistic
> economy. They criticize each other, and perhaps improve, in style alone,
> never aware that there is any deeper issue. And there are many readers who
> enjoy, or even recognize, no other form of poetry. Such readers want to
> feel, Oh I've been there; the same thing happened to me; I really feel I
> know her, etc. But as far as I'm concerned, these predictable agonies and
> ecstasies and this sentimental pseudo-relationship aren't poetry; they're
> Oprah. At the level, not of style, but of inspiration, what makes poetry
> poetry is 1) One tries to go beyond one's comfort-zone (which includes one's
> comfortable lifelong griefs). To probe the unconscious until one is truly
> scared of what one emerges. Baudelaire: "Au fond de l'abime de trouver le
> nouveau." That "new" is what counts, for oneself and the non-Oprahish
> reader. 2) One renounces the most pervasive ideology of our society and of
> ordinary language: the assumption that there is a Private Life - of
> "personal feelings" and immediate relationships - distinct from the big
> "abstract" world of politics, history, science, etc. In reality, reality is
> ONE thing. It contains one's least admissible dreams, other galaxies, the
> future, hydrangeas, etc. etc. As Forster said of prose, the point is to
> connect - but more relentlessly, rapidly, and bravely than prose can. The
> paradox of Mainstream poetry, which is all I'm accusing you of writing, is
> that on the one hand it's narcissistic, even solipsistic - it assumes that
> one's tsurris (Yiddish: pains, troubles) and petty epiphanies are
> interesting. But on the other it's utterly timid; it confines itself to the
> narrowest ghetto of insight and subject-matter. I recently encountered two
> reviews that praised two different poets for being "humble." I don't think
> good poetry or poets are ever humble. I'm not.
>
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