"Century XX after Four Quartets" by Adam Fieled at The Argotist Online
http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Fieled%20essay%202.htm
Excepts:
"What do we see around us in 2010? It is a poetry world stumbling for direction, still largely lost in the theoretical wilderness of post-modernism..."
"I do not believe that much English language poetry composed after 1943, the year that Eliot’s Four Quartets were released, deserves the title of high art. Before I explain why the twentieth century, post Four Quartets, was mostly a washout for English language poetry, let me explain what distinctions I believe subsist between high and low art. "
"Low art impulses often maintain a stance that technical competence is unnecessary, that breadth of vision is too ambitious, that narrative solidity is a remnant of the nineteenth century...and that “seriousness” is an outdated and outmoded concern. "
"... Eliot’s language is taut, sinewy, disciplined, and rich [and] makes the whole of Four Quartets ring as a solid, major work of high literary art. If another such work exists that was released between 1943 and 2000, I haven’t seen it."
"The Objectivists, the Beats, the New York School (first and second generation), the Confessional poets—what do these poets lack, so that the appellation high art does not affix to their work ..."
"...Objectivists, the Beats, and the New York School poets, fall squarely under the rubric that covers minor poetry and poets, when placed next to the scope and achievements of Eliot and Yeats."
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