With apologies to Guardian Passnotes
In message <[log in to unmask]>, Ernest Slyman
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Is it possible a new school of poetry has taken up as its subject the
>disintegration of language?
Tell me more.
>The Disintegration School of poetry is upon us. One finds it going about its
>business in literary publications. Strange spelling of words, oddly coined
>words, strange punctuation. Hypertext in which connections with other lines
>in other poems seem to have a vague relationship with the whole.
E.g. The Waste Land. J.C.Squire agrees.
>The New School of Disintegration mimics by broken language the failed
>aspects of society and the disintegration of art itself. Not to mention the
>subsequent collapse of church and state. Absence of ethics
Whereas it should have an ethical programme, like all good poetry? Is it
possible it does, sneaked in behind the mimicry?
>Its methodology a deliberate effort to work in an opposite direction from
>the forces of poetry. Rather than to clarify language, beatify language or
>renew language the goal of The Disintegration School seems to serve as a
>comical corruption of language
E.g. Lyrical Ballads, remarked someone or other circa 1800.
>The school making a literary genre of disintegration. As if embodiment of
>corruption was a lesson. An end in itself.
An end? See above.
>If the Disintegration School of poetry is to succeed then one would wish for
>it more than the one-dimensional message of disintegration. It's too easy.
>And perhaps represents a momentary infatuation, not a poetry movement.
What did 'poetry movements' ever do - as distinct from individual
probably infatuated poets?
>The disintegration school must still find time in its busy schedule to
>renew, beautify, and yes, even clarify language.
There must be a hidden agenda here somewhere.
>Or is the disintegration school merely the collapse of modern poetry?
Modern poetry's been collapsing ever since it was invented. Probably a
structural fault. Interesting ruins, though.
--
Alan Halsey
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