Hi David
Your post is very interesting but I'm not sure how relevant it is to the lyric debate. I agree with what you say about art source in childhood etc., which I then see as fermenting in the barrels of adolescence, and I can understand how that can then emerge in early adulthood as a form of personalism. But, does this always happen? I don't think so, and I would be vary wary of saying that the mainstream poets of personal anecdote/opinion were stuck at some kind of stage because they didn't have the skill or will to move on - interesting as it sounds. It's not an argument I've heard before. I tend to look for the reasons why people write the poetry they do in sociological factors on the one hand and chance factors on the other. Trying to pin it to personality sounds iffy to me, though obviously personality comes into it as it is affected and mediated by external influences. I also think that ideological memes and models are important - often the people who write what we might call 'personal poetry' are people who seem to have very dull personalities, on paper, and they write the way they do because it's like filling in a form - you follow the model.
Cheers
Tim A.
On 19 Nov 2014, at 17:38, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> There is nothing in the notion of the lyric that precludes it from being used experimentally, nor is there any necessity
> in permanently aligning the lyric with a narcissistic personalism. I do agree that the so called "mainstream" tends in that direction,
> but in my mind these are poets who have not set themselves the task of moving past who they were when they began.
> In other words, one must make a conscious decision as a human being to move beyond the innate preciousness that inevitably comes with childhood
> and feeds one's original impulses in the arts.This means hard personal work over decades-- work that is not likely to be supported by prizes or an endowed chair.
>
> That most people do not do take this on is not the fault of any form or approach to art. it simply shows up in the limitations of their work.
> I have always been suspicious of any claim that a theoretical stance can overcome or do an end-around the hydra of the artist's ego.
> In fact such claims strike me as the exact opposite of that-- a means of hiding one's ambition behind a noble sentiment.
>
> David
