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Lawrence wrote: >I hope Alison will forgive me if I say that wasn't the best poem she's >written. It disappointed me; but because I have high expectations when I see >her name on a piece of writing. > >But it wasn't smug. Poetry vs smug rhetoric is a false binary. Binaries >nearly always are false. It wasn't smug; it was losing control. It's a risk >worth taking > Of course I forgive you - a thoughtful rebuke is worth much more than thoughtless praise! But yes, it's not a poem in my usual keys, whatever they are. Ugly words for ugly times. Which brings me to a serious point: which is, if one is questioning public speech in the crude ways I am in that poem, by quoting and exaggerating (only slightly as it happens), how does one avoid the faults of that speech being the faults of the poem? Any complexity has to go between the lines, I guess, and be suggested with more wit - not that I'm defending this poem - I don't want to defend it. It is what it is, and as truthful a poem as I can make it, and that's as far as I can go. Maybe I should just go and read Brecht again. He was good at that kind of stuff. I've also been reading Denise Levertov, and thinking also how what is beautiful must be remembered too in such situations as we find ourselves in - but - I bridle rather at the suggestion that aesthetic should be pasted onto ugly realities, in order to make art. The thought of making something "beautiful" out of what I consider obscenity - the public manipulations of real sufferings by brute considerations of power - makes my gorge rise. Nicol seems to be grappling with the same kinds of questions in her poem Remembrance Day. I like the nursery rhyme feel, Nicol - like Lawrence says, a risk worth taking. Best Alison Alison Croggon Home page http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/