content, in the sense of a meaning, is what i look for in everything made
of words, for words are conceptual.
but a meaning and its form constitute one inseparable
product.
i think everyone in a poetry discussion list will agree with that.
but here's something slightly less obvious: if a form, however charming
and creative, is somewhat reactionary, the meaning it brings is, at least
in a great measure, also reactionary.
i was talking about that with a very good poet, a friend of mine
completely unpretentious, who loves going to samba sessions, who
agreed, not thinking in any genius, but in a general attitude of openess
to the world and to novelty.
not every good artist can be a innovator, but all should be quite free,
and that means also formally free.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 6:16 PM
Subject: "incapacity to be interested"


> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ana Olinto" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 6:26 AM
> Subject: Re: Last Post Laureate
>
>
> you are right, doug, she has sometimes great sentences.
> my problem is my tendency to judge everything by
> great modernist standards.
>
> i'm not a big fan of paz and borges as artists, but only
> - particularly borges - as essayists (you can hit me).
> i think brazilians are more instintive and creative, tend to be
> the best artists of latin america, and hispano-americans are
> more serious and universal, tend to be the best intellectuals.
>
> when i talk about anglo-saxon understanding of latin culture,
> i have t.s. eliot, pound, marianne moore, elizabeth bishop,
> wallace stevens, mina loy, james joyce and similar others
> - including some recent revolutionary translators - in mind.
> we could also mention kenneth rexroth.
> they're all modern, complex - exept rexroth -, and today we
> are reactionary (formally), simplistic.
>
> people just TALK about cosmopolitism, but lack of intelligence
> means incapacity to UNDERSTAND - and not incapacity
> merely to be interested in - another way of thinking.
>
> -------------- ana
>
>
>
> Dear Ana,
>
> Formal sophistication is not the only measure of poetic greatness.  Formal 
> developments are only important if they allow readers to grasp new 
> realities, or old realities in new ways.  They are important, that is, if 
> they serve what can in the largest sense be called content.  The situation 
> is different in visual art.  There, Cubism made a guitar and newspaper on 
> a table something more than trivial; rather timely, even revelatory.  (See 
> Berger's "The Moment of Cubism.")  But even in visual art it is unwise to 
> assume either that formal experimentation is in itself culturally 
> progressive, or that it makes up for lack of thought about content, or 
> nullifies any distinction between them.  And in poetry those assumptions 
> are simply specious.  Joao Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Drummond de 
> Andrade (whom I can only read, but whom I enjoy, in translation) *show me 
> something about Brazil - i.e., about "Brazil" as various ways of being and 
> feeling; as a worldly metaphysics.  The Brazilian Language Poets brought 
> together in a Sun and Moon Press anthology show me nothing.  They offer no 
> experience or insight I might vicariously share.  Their poems might as 
> well have been written in New Jersey.  If that is "cosmopolitanism," it's 
> of the type one could find in any Starbucks or Macdonalds in Rio.