>Has anyone considered that poetry-making might be a craft, and therefore
>tied to the necessities of production and market?
Often. But let's keep it a secret... it's difficult to draw useful
conclusions from it, apart from obvious ones which lead to
audience-pandering. If one is to survive as a poet, one has to find
ways of living in the world, eating and paying for a roof and so on, and
those are pragmatic considerations of no small importance. I think it's
a kind of duty to be clear sighted about that, because ideally it permits
understanding of the other side of the question, which is that poetry is
tied more profoundly, I believe anyway, to other necessities which are
much harder to trace. The most useful definition I've found of the use of
poetry is Muriel Rukeyser's: that it is "an approach to the truth of
feeling". That, of course, is shorthand for a very complex argument.
Didn't Celan say something like craft is like hygiene, something one
should take for granted? I take it that he means no disrespect to craft
in this, rather the reverse. That whatever you end up with is the sum
total of the decisions made or not made in the processes of making it -
and I mean this in the broadest possible sense - seems self-evident, and
the interest of the poem depends on how interesting those decisions are.
I don't think it matters much what shape it takes, that is, the shape is
no real basis for evaluating a poem, unless you're looking for rules.
Best
Alison
Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Literary Arts Magazine
PO Box 186
NEWPORT VIC 3015
Masthead online: http://www.masthead.com.au
Home page: http:www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338
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