[New-Poetry] Re: Tony Hoagland

[David Graham]

I don't have the book handy, but was recently reading Tony Hoagland's new
collection of essays, *Real Sofistikashun*, and this sentiment rings a bell.
Jeff, was this passage perhaps from an essay called something like
"Thingitude & Causality"?

I think I half agree with Hoagland.  I'm not sure about the historical
generalization--am skeptical about whether "modern consciousness," whatever
that means, is any more splintered in 2006 than consciousness was in 1640 or
1066 or 865.  

But I do find that one function of poetry, for me, is to fasten things
together.  Frost's "momentary stay against confusion" springs to mind, of
course.  Hoagland in his "Thingitude" essay writes about how he no longer
believes that a fractured consciousness or the vortex of a confusing culture
requires poetry to be similarly fractured, elliptical, etc.   So he's
speaking up for realism and narrative values, essentially.  And asserting
that such things, though frequently considered outmoded or naive in some
quarters, are fully adequate to address contemporary conditions.

I've got no complaint with that.

Hoagland's essay collection is well worth reading, I think.

---------------------------------------------------
On 12/4/06 2:10 PM, "Jeff Newberry" <jeff.newberry at gmail.com> wrote:

> "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



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
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