This is a very fine thread. I'd just give a gentle reminder that John
Clare had a worse situation than any of us ( even than Pound in St
Margarets)
Joseph Bircumshaw
2008/6/28 Joseph Duemer <[log in to unmask]>:
> *Stephen writes:* "Without this surrounding labor of critical community, so
> many often extraordinarily fine lyric poems - let alone larger forms. - end
> up fleeting around, or become paralysed in a kind of statuary limbo. They
> may vibrantly appear in a small publication, then disappear as readily. For
> the poet it takes a fierce stubbornness to put up with can appear as an
> almost instant annihilation or a perennial sense of being 'not quite dead on
> arrival'."
>
> This has certainly been my recent experience, both as reader and writer.
> Poets have almost always worked the liminal edges of American culture, but
> the edges seem to have become cliffs in recent decades, with poets & poems
> dropping out sight leaving hardly a trace -- not even a fading cartoon
> scream followed by a thud & a puff of dust. That would be something, at
> least. Stephen is right, I think, to note the effect of recent American
> politics on all kind of cultural habits, the trend starts before Bush's
> completely demoralizing presidency. The country seems mostly dead to me,
> without affect, lost in a vaguely buzzing media haze in which the idea of a
> lyric poem has no place.
>
> Speaking for myself, I've come to think of the poems I'm writing now as
> posthumous works. After a career of moderate success getting my stuff
> published, nobody will take what I'm writing now. Maybe I've just become a
> terrible writer after turning 55, or maybe my moment has simply passed. In
> any case, I figure I'll keep at it until I hit 60 in three years and unless
> something changes in the reception of my work, I'll turn my full attention
> to gardening and cooking and leave poetry to others.
>
> jd
>
> --
> Joseph Duemer
> Professor of Humanities
> Clarkson University
> Weblog: sharpsand.net
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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