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>>>> ps did I misread or was Peter R not saying that peasant farmers in
certain countries he cited, which I presume he has visited & seen
something of their cultures, have more ready ability to make art of
their lives (& livings)?
I can't speak from personal experience, but roughly, yes, in the particular
forms that have developed,, in the terms which are set for it, in the much
larger structure in which their performance participates. Without going
into detailed instances because it's aside to most "British-poets"
concerns, I do think that a creative participation is probably readily
available and common practise among the "peasant class" which in fact
constitutes a majority of the world's population, compared with which
sitting watching the TV for an evening with a can of lager is true
deprivation. I still think leisure is the wrong word for it.
But I think I was mainly trying to suggest that over Western here in our
moneyed ease we are not in all respects as well off as we think we are, so
that poetry's proper concern with harm cannot be so simply channeled into a
historical guilt, but that the harm is all round us, with its contrary,
and intimately too. And I still think poetry is an intimate art.
/PR
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