[New-Poetry] Tony Hoagland

[Bob Grumman]

"Modern consciousness may indeed be splintered, but it is one function of poetry to fasten it back together—which does not mean to deny or repress its complexity.   When poetry can name the parts and position them, when it draws us out of the speedy, buzzing fog that is selfhood and modern life, our sense of being alive is heightened and intensified.   How strange it is that when I read a particular poem, which brings the world into focus for me, that I can feel my own life come into focus.  I was already part of the world, I know—but the unifying, clarifying impact of a poem (whatever form that takes) moves me to a deeper, and more succinct sense of being-in-the-world.  Deeper and better than before, when I was only lost in it." 

  Tony Hoagland, from The AWP Chronicle, Volume 39, Number 1

   
  Jeff Newberry

  Well, I can't start the day without being crabby but the above seems to me mostly bs, although with some truth--and just the kind of thing one would expect a mainstream American poet to say.

  --Bob G.
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