On Wednesday, July 11, 2001, at 03:30 PM, sevanthi ragunathan wrote:
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But I'd ask, to what extent is having memorized
something an index of its
worth or the extent of it's been appreciated? Sure, poems in fixed
forms
are easier to remember than poems in open forms. For that matter, tv
ad
jingles are more memorable (in a literal sense) than poems, and I have
plenty of poems I loathe in my head and plenty of poems I love not
memorized. I don't know that memorization is the right index... by
that
measure, limericks are probably the favorite poems of all!
memorability is certainly not the only measure, nor the most important
one. But to have been moved by something sufficiently to have tkaen
the trouble to memorize it surely means something
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I'd also ask who the best selling poets of recent
times have been. My guess
would be Allen Ginsberg and Maya Angelou. I'm actually fascinated by
which
poets people who don't read much poetry have on their shelves, and I'd
say
the results are: Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Nikki Giovanni, Audre
Lorde, Maya Angelou, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sylvia Plath. Now, I
can't bear
any of them, for the most part, but these are the poets I see ordinary
people actually reading (outside of school).
I'd have to ask, "How far out of school?" They're certainly read more
by English majors and PoliSci majors on the Left and the various
kinds of Cultural Studies majors. Such people, other than poets, are
the ones who are most likely to read poetry at all, and I would not be
surprised to find these are the "best-selling" poets.
Get a little farther from the schools and, at least in my experience,
it's very different.
When you talk about people
"buying" poetry, I have no doubt that more people bought (in whatever
sense)
Allen Ginsberg than bought Anthony Hecht, though my own tastes are
Hecht-ward. And certainly, I've seen a marked preference for
contemporary
poetry over pre-20th century poetry.
Actually, I prefer Ginsberg to Hecht, though I don't think either of
them anything special. Do you think either of them will be in print
100 years from now?.
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So, I'm not sure I buy your argument, even though I
as a reader (I glance at
my bookshelves), have an incredible bias towards poets who use form.
Frankly, I'd take James Lasdun over Levertov, and Marilyn Hacker over
pretty
much everyone alive, but my sphere of influence is negligible. : )
Don't know Lasdun -- can you point me to a good collection?
Best,
Michael
