I agree with you, Jon, except possibly for the last sentence; I need to know
what you mean by "reactionary" before I agree or disagree with that
conclusion.
Best,
Judy
2009/8/4 Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]>
> But our contemporary poetic orthodoxy, at least in the English
> speaking world, requires poems in short , nonstanzaic, prose-like
> lines which largely substitute typographic effects for aural, with
> sound values that carefully avoid the obviously songful, and with an
> emotional range eschewing the direct expression of intense feeling
> except in well defined areas of the bourgeois revolutionary posturing
> ideology (what Lenin called "left wing communism") currently prevalent
> in the academic circles which have become the same thing as poetic
> circles: in these carefully circumscribed areas the poet may invite
> readers to indulge a simplistic hatred of cartoonish villains in an
> exercise reminiscent of the daily "Two Minutes of Hate" in 1984.
>
> Before anyone starts posting the exceptions, I'll reply in advance
> that they validate my description because they are just that:
> exceptions. Look at any of the more prestigious print poetry journals
> or poetry books published by the most prestigious presses -- the stuff
> of which careers are made -- and I'd be surprised if as much as ten
> percent of the verse present didn't generally meet the above
> description.
>
> Under these conditions, the only way for a poet to be revolutionary is
> to be reactionary.
>
>
> --
> ===============================================
>
> Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis
>
> ===============================================
>
|