But our contemporary poetic orthodoxy, at least in the English
speaking world, requires poems in short , nonstanzaic, prose-like
lines which largely substitute typographic effects for aural, with
sound values that carefully avoid the obviously songful, and with an
emotional range eschewing the direct expression of intense feeling
except in well defined areas of the bourgeois revolutionary posturing
ideology (what Lenin called "left wing communism") currently prevalent
in the academic circles which have become the same thing as poetic
circles: in these carefully circumscribed areas the poet may invite
readers to indulge a simplistic hatred of cartoonish villains in an
exercise reminiscent of the daily "Two Minutes of Hate" in 1984.
Before anyone starts posting the exceptions, I'll reply in advance
that they validate my description because they are just that:
exceptions. Look at any of the more prestigious print poetry journals
or poetry books published by the most prestigious presses -- the stuff
of which careers are made -- and I'd be surprised if as much as ten
percent of the verse present didn't generally meet the above
description.
Under these conditions, the only way for a poet to be revolutionary is
to be reactionary.
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Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis
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