Sorry if I misremembered your terms in an earlier post, where you were
enthusing about poetry with just these qualities (weren't you?). But that's
not the same as saying that writing poetry is stupid--or is regarded as
such--though quixotic would probably be more accurate. And the Eliot quote
is too equivocal to mean much, it seems to me--a generalization on the order
of "poets need to be this AND that." "Stupid" is at least specific, even if
it doesn't get us much closer to Muller's meaning without knowing its
context or what German term he may have used.
What you oppose to "stupidity" here ("the smooth glib surfaces of easy
intellection," etc.) hardly casts them in diametric opposition, though, so I
don't understand why you need the "stupidity" aspect at all. Few smart,
serious poets would be likely to question your objection to "smooth glib
surfaces of easy intellection," I'd guess, so you could simply object to it
without even mentioning stupidity. Of course, that would leave you with a
straw man on your hands. How about posting an example of good stupid poetry?
Thanks,
Candice
>> and the last poetry I'd ever want to read is the dozey-headed, naively
> stupid kind
>> championed by David.
>
> Sorry, Candice, but when did I do that? I was talking about certain
> qualities in relation to the +pursuit of writing poetry+, the folly, the
> stupidity of a love for it, but I wasn't making an aesthetic out of it. I'd
> return to the Eliotic reference, the need for poets to be both extremely
> sophisticated and extremely primitive, I translate this as clever and dumb
> simultaneously. I can't see how pursuing an art like poetry can be anything
> but stupid in the eyes of many, after all, it don't pay (for most). But also
> I think that a stupidity is required in the sense of being resistant to the
> smooth glib surfaces of easy intellection, its persuasive small talk of
> knowing superiority. Too, one must consider the trance like matter inherent
> in its creation, the dissolution of the boundaries of self and ego it
> invokes.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
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