Is it possible a new school of poetry has taken up as its subject the
disintegration of language?
The Disintegration School of poetry is upon us. One finds it going about its
business in literary publications. Strange spelling of words, oddly coined
words, strange punctuation. Hypertext in which connections with other lines
in other poems seem to have a vague relationship with the whole.
The New School of Disintegration mimics by broken language the failed
aspects of society and the disintegration of art itself. Not to mention the
subsequent collapse of church and state. Absence of ethics.
Its methodology a deliberate effort to work in an opposite direction from
the forces of poetry. Rather than to clarify language, beatify language or
renew language the goal of The Disintegration School seems to serve as a
comical corruption of language.
The school making a literary genre of disintegration. As if embodiment of
corruption was a lesson. An end in itself.
If the Disintegration School of poetry is to succeed then one would wish for
it more than the one-dimensional message of disintegration. It's too easy.
And perhaps represents a momentary infatuation, not a poetry movement.
The disintegration school must still find time in its busy schedule to
renew, beautify, and yes, even clarify language.
Or is the disintegration school merely the collapse of modern poetry?
Ernest Slyman
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