On 4/8/2011 4:35 PM, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> Also Kasper, there are some pretty fine performers among poets today,
> who could light up a kid's life.
>
> i'd like to see some sound poets, for example. Christian Bök cold sure
> excite the kinds, & so could many others...
Yes! These kinds of things should be automatically done for kids--but
cheaply, as part of an ordinary school's ordinary expenses. And I think
the /main/ emphasis should be on exposing the enormous width of
contemporary poetry--like visual poetry, Bok's sound poetry and
chemistry-based experiments, all the Joycean word-game poetry and other
kinds of language poetry, and my mathematical poetry, and poems in code,
and cyber poetry. Not necessarily to show kids in general that poetry
can be fun (although that, too, part of the time) but to show one or two
who might be contemptuous of it that one weird kind might be right up
their alley.
I remember being hostile to all poetry but light poetry, mainly funny
limericks, until 18 or 19 because I thought it was nothing but flowery
mush. But I love codes and am sure I would have become a cryptographic
poet by age ten if such poetry were around then and I was exposed to
it. I'm sure, too, I would have broadened my taste from there--even as
far as the mushy stuff--as I did, but eight or nine years later than I
might otherwise have.
--Bob.
|