Don't agree. Can't speak for Kent - even Kent doesn't speak for Kent.
Funny isn't it, the kindly stuff about not reviewing what you don't like followed by comments that show an itching for an argument. The 'frightful megalomania and perversity' of late Olson Dorn and Duncan. Wow! I'll let others try to deal with that if anyone can be bothered.
The notion of not reviewing what you don't like is a personal one, but there can be many reasons for it, not all of them so benign. My view is that comment and reaction are a natural part of what happens when poetry, or anything else, is published - whether someone responds only privately or publicly (there are degrees of it being public) is a choice. I chose to review certain things I disliked because there was something about them which drew my attention and I thought it relatively important to comment upon. There were very many other things I disliked which I did not choose to review because I did not think my opinion had any relevance.
On 2 Jun 2016, at 13:49, Peter Riley wrote:
> In connection with remarks made by Tim and Kent recently--
>
> I have done a lot of reviewing of poetry, especially recently, but one thing I have never done is choose to write about a book purely because I don't like it and want to attack it. What on earth would be the point of that? If you don't like something take no notice of it. The very fact that you don't like it means it is to you ineffective, you're not going to learn or realise anything from it, it is inert, so let it lie there like a lump of star jelly and pass on. And anyway, nobody's listening. As for hiding behind anonymity in order to shoot your mouth off...
>
> I'm not the apostle of some moral or spiritual credo in poetry, some hope for the future, some cultural light which is in danger of being extinguished by inept or blind poets whose work must be stamped out. We are not missionaries. The idea that it is part or the whole of poetry's business to convert humanity to some new vision, some new reach to the totality, is now out of the question, it last died with the "new American poetry" and its adjuncts. It was killed by the poets themselves, by Olson and Dorn and Duncan, in the frightful megalomania and perversity of their late works (having been so brilliant as young poets). You cannot after that collapse go on any longer spurning the sense of common humanity.
>
> Of course there are ways of promoting poetical quality itself, which is very diversely defined (perceptual accuracy, technical skill, equanimity, the "wisdom" which Olson spoke against and many other things). This involves claiming a right, which might be difficult to justify at large. But to me none of this entails the bombarding of enemy fortresses.
>
> PR
|