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POETRYETC  March 2006

POETRYETC March 2006

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Subject:

Re: Help! The grass is singing

From:

Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and poetics <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:50:57 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (62 lines)

This is confusing two different strands of atgument, I think. I was 
pointing out to Dave the relevance of Williams in the US in the 
simplest possible terms. But what I've been talking about at some 
length isn't a question of discipleship, but of dialogue. I'm in 
dialogue with Marvell, not with Eliot, and I think many are actively 
in dialogue with Hopkins--he still matters, in that sense, to poets. 
As to other media, I can't speak for painters, but I assume my 
relationship to Rothko is different than theirs--he matters differently for me.

A musical analogy. The Wagner-Brahms war, in which everyone took 
sides, is long over. The composers I know like Brahms, but they tell 
me he's irrelevant to their practice. Wagner is apparently still relevant.

So it's a question of usefulness, as in, I go to this or that artist 
to learn, but also usefulness as audience and colleague--I'm speaking to them.

My sense is that artists tend to value earlier artists who are part 
of their internal audience--that when a poet says he loves this or 
that other poet's work what he means is that he finds it useful in 
this way. We're simply in a different relationship to Eliot, or 
Chaucer, or the Gilgamesh epic than non-poets are.

Not particularly unusual. I have a cabinet-maker friend. His 
appreciation of a piece of carpentry is vastly different from mine. I 
learn from his eye, see more than I once did, but it's still not the 
same. Even if I did an apprentice-piece it would remain different--my 
friend has been through the refinement of his awareness through 
thirty years of practicing and improving his craft. When he looks at 
a nicely-made piece he not only dopes out how it was made, but feels 
the process.

As to your little red herring, I presume you're aware that sex is 
more fun with some than with others. It's better, in my experience, 
when it's in dialogue.

Mark

At 12:52 AM 3/29/2006, you wrote:
>On 29/3/06 12:18 PM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Eliot has few children in America and has become something of an
> > artifact of the past, even among those who love the poems. Williams
> > fathered tribes and remains contemporary for many.
>
>Seminal indeed (though I do hear Eliotic cadences in Ashbery, rightly or
>not, and poetic genealogies are much harder to trace than biological ones).
>But Mark, I can't help thinking this is somewhat like the Catholic attitude
>to sex: it's legitimate only if for procreational purposes. What of the
>beautiful lovemaking that goes on for its own sake, unthinking of progeny?
>How many people have successfully followed Hopkins? Is Rothko any less a
>great painter for being a dead end?
>
>All best
>
>A
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com

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