In reading the items about worst poems, I am reminded of what
Kenneth Rexroth about some of the poems of D. H. Lawrence: "The major
poet, unlike the minor, is always writing about everything imaginable, and so,
is in good form for the great poem when it comes....I suppose it is the
absolutism which has swept over popular taste in the wake of Cubism which has
encouraged the ignorant to expect a canzone of Dante's in each issue of their
favorite little magazine, a School of Athens in every WPA mural. This is
just greediness, like children who want it to be Christmas every day. And
it produces an empty, pretentious, greedy art." He also states, "The
greatest poetry is nobly disheveled." Would Shakespeare had blotted a 1000
lines. Which 1000? Sam Garren
