David, I agree with you that Adam’s opening statement is unfortunate; and is difficult to support given that Coleridge was a compulsive theorist, and that ‘Lyrical Ballads’ was predominantly a work derived from Wordsworth’s poetic theories.
But I think Tim’s response to you is worth emphasising when he says, ‘maybe he’s taking “poetics” to mean something more particular, or he is talking about a certain type or degree of poetics, or a relationship between theory and practice which is different to the historical relationship’. That’s what I got from the article. That’s how I read it.
Original Message:
It was very hard for me to take seriously an essay that begins not with an over-generalization but with a statement of fact that I know to be false. One of the problems with blogs, I suppose, is that there's no editor to pencil in the margin after a statement such as 'There is no historical evidence to suggest that during the Romantic era, something called “Poetics” existed.' A large "Really?"
There is, on the other hand, abundance of historical evidence that suggests that subsequent to Aristotle's "Poetics" poets' work has been inflected prior to composition by their consideration of "poetics." Can anyone seriously disagree? Or that "political correctness" hasn't always been present (think "poet laureate").
Now if one wants to disentangle the assertions about the current state of poetry vis-a-vis "postmodernism" or other late-twentieth century constructions from the bogus historical statements, that's fine. I can't imagine any reader being excessively happy about the current state of poetry--mainstream or otherwise.
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