Impossible to respond to this without examples of what bothers you. The one you give is decidedly odd. I can't think of a less "concealing" poet than Olson.
-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jan 14, 2015 3:48 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Northern
>
>I've no problems with the discussion taking place now, except that I
>remain a spectator, not willing to cross a sideline of my own making.
>I've always had a problem with poetry that disables itself from
>saying. I know there's a mass of theory and explanation that justifies
>not saying, but I don't trust that either. What I've always wanted
>from poetry is enhanced saying.
>
>By "saying" I don't just mean statements about the world or the self
>or the price of fish. I also mean the language structures with which
>you'd make a narrative, or a song so that people know here they are.
>
>But the big obstacle has always been
>Most of the avant-garde is at the other end of the football field from
>this point of view, but some isn't and the borderline is fuzzy. Some
>stuff, like perhaps Geraldine's, hovers on the edge of avant-garde:
>there is a clear urge to say, complicated by a not-saying which seems
>to be part of the urgency. Other poets are full of the urgency of
>saying but take pains to conceal the message (I can't help thinking of
>Olson at this point).
>
>Once someone's poetry is committed to not-saying there's nothing I can
>do with it, least of all evaluate it. Surely when you "enlarge" the
>poetry into that kind of condition you also shrink it to a narrowness.
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