Wow, I missed that, Doug! Maybe my eyes had glazed over by then.
How can one say any of those poets write without feeling?
I'm reminded of Milan Kundera's book, Testaments Betrayed. He has a
lot to say about this accusation, which he claims is a hangover (I'd
say a misunderstanding) of Romanticism...certainly this guy
misunderstands Coleridge, who was far too smart to fall into that kind
of crude sentimentality. That accusation of being unfeeling was used
against Janacek, Stravinsky, Beckett, and many others. I don't
understand it myself. Unless people claim that intelligence and
feeling are polar opposites. This is deeply untrue of poetry, I'd say
all art: isn't it about the passionate intellect, the intelligent
passion? And what the hell is "fanciful" about Carson's passionate
meditations on love, on Kinsella's of climate change??
xA
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 3:19 AM, Douglas Barbour
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> So I finally went & cruised the long article. And it is interesting, with
> some sense of poetry outside of Britain.
>
> I find one of his controversial moments when he discusses the Coleridge
> distinction between Imagination & Fancy, & then says this about poets he
> feels are only 'fanciful': 'For poetry, it helps to explain why poems
> created without a basis in feeling, however artful and intelligent, are
> finally unsatisfying. At bottom they are mechanistic, aggregative, fanciful;
> one thinks, for example, of Ashbery, Anne Carson, J H Prynne, Jorie Graham
> and John Kinsella.'
> Really? Are they? I would certainly argue that Carson has achieved works of
> imagination, & Kinsella has played between the two, depending on which works
> of his one reads. He's hard on Ashbery compared with O'Hara, but I would
> argue, again, that in some poems Ashbery achieves imagination.
>
> But of course, this has to do with what each of us does as reader &
> writer....
>
> Doug
> On 8-Dec-08, at 5:43 PM, andrew burke wrote:
>
>> Laurie Smith's article in *Magma
>> 42*<http://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-42/>,
>> '*The New
>> Imagination*<http://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-42/articles/the-new-imagination/>',
>> explores whether truly great poetry might soon emerge in the UK for the
>> first time in many years. It's an excellent article – well researched,
>> controversial, and passionate.
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> Wednesdays'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> Why have you driven through my heart?
> Make that what.
>
> Artie Gold
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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