On 19/05/12 16:08, David Bircumshaw wrote:
> I felt the article had a certain US-centric leaning, rather like a house
> about to fall into the sea. It begins acknowledging the existence of other
> cultures in the dim past, and some antique Brits have a passing mention,
> but then follows what conveys a curious sense that everything only mattered
> as a lead up to recent American literature
Perhaps uncanny, but this was what I was thinking about, as well. The
Paris Review books have a US leaning with the novel getting most
coverage... but this I understand was the intention.
The article has a wiki warning. But having read quite a bit of recent
USA literature... say since 1950, this is an interest. What really
worries me is the idea that to be an important poet one needs to write a
long poem. (Being a writer of long poems magnifies this concern. The
short lyric often attracts my reading interest.) This idea of poetry
seems a recent concern from what I can gather in the US. Also the
concern with genre and sub-genre, seems very much a US thing. This idea
of giving it a category into which to fit it. And then another angle is
a sort of opposition to long poems which is hinted at, perhaps as an
attempt at a defense of long poems??? The anthology and journals have a
history of favoring the shorter lyric.
That aside some of the formal description seems interesting. Montage and
multi-voice for example. Trying to guess where to look at some more
ideas. Initially the basic idea a long poem is that which exceeds three
pages? The formal concerns here. I tend to mix genres and point of view,
so can't see the long poem as a genre. The suggestion that verse novels
are a long poem interested me, as well.
I am thinking of trying to find what Canada may have to say. I am more
or less limited to poems written in english or translated. (Welsh was
considered not a good language so I was not taught it but there is a
rather famous ancient long poem in this language which seems to be
itself a myth, as much as I can make out.) I have read the English
Romantics, so where to go from here as well. And Rimbaud, of course, and
A Cloud in Trousers, and Ginsberg... and the list could go on...
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