Or we at least move between, Dave.
The thing is, each one of us has to find her or his own way to that motion. And sometimes, it seems that various formal pays help (at least they do me).
I want to lessen the power of the lyric I (lie) in what I still want to be 'lyrical' poems. But I have also found poets who do otherwise & well. Or find ways to spread that I out & across a discourse that does much else (I just reviewed a really fine new book by Steven Ross Smith on my blog [& a few others in the past week]). Then there's the fact (I think I can use that term) than each of us finds her or his way to a poetic & an experimentation , some further 'ahead' than others.
I guess poets, generally, still manage to escape (in the writing) most of that consumerist theology not so much by heroic choice as by the lack of 'business'...
Doug
On 2011-07-21, at 3:20 PM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
> Well, yes, Doug, ex-Nineties Brit Art SUCKS, and bpNichol is an inventive,
> enjoyable poet, MacLow ingenious and Cage was a forceful inventor BUT it
> isn't enough, at its worst there's little difference in essence between this
> formalism and 50s poets fiddling with their iambs. I think both Gnoetry,
> with its divorce from selfhood and its automation of the avant-garde, and
> oddly the poem as entertainment only, because aestheticism is no more than
> high-class consumerism, are the ultimate dead ends of avant-formalism.
> It may be that we begin nowhere and end so too, but in between we something.
Douglas Barbour
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It is natural to speak of your own weaknesses so winsomely they will seem strengths, as if everyone else is inadequate if they do not have your inadequacies.
William H. Gass
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