[New-Poetry] I feel...

[Bob Grumman]

As I keep saying into no ears at all, apparently, it's not how many poets one doesn't know, it's how many varieties of poetry one doesn't know, or doesn't know more than names for.  That's what should bother most people who post here, Anny extremely excepted, but doesn't.  Because mainstream poetry is the only kind that is important.

--Bob G.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jeff Newberry 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,Views 
  Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 4:35 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] I feel...


  This kind of stuff just doesn't bother me.  

  Usually.

  I understand where you're coming from--and there are times when I feel deeply uneducated about my own art.  But, I'm also a musician, and there are hundreds and hundreds of musicians that I've never heard--and that's just in the genres that I like, jazz and blues.  

  So, I'll continue to read the poetry that I love; I'll continue to seek out new poetry that I love.  And I'll continue to write poetry, for I love doing so.

  And with any hope, I'll have written one day a poem that someone, somewhere thinks is essential to his or her understanding of the world.

  I have a few of these myself:  Whitman's "The Open Road" comes to mind, as do several of Dickinson's poems.  Mark Jarman's book *Questions for Ecclesiastes* is important to me.  So is Forrest Gander's *Eye Against Eye*.  I love Wendell Berry's poetry.  I love Morri Creech's book *Paper Cathedrals*.  I adore Inger Christiensen's *Butterfly Valley:  A Requeim.*  Ditto John Donne and scores of others. I could go on here, but the point that I'm trying to make is this:  these poets may not be on everyone's radar as "good poetry."  But, for me, I love them.  I can write long, polemic essays defending them as good poetry.  

  And I do believe that "good" and "bad" poetry exist.  I'm just not sure (most of the time) how I'd define either.

  Thanks, Anny, for forcing me to think through this.

  By the way, I think that the quote you post comes from a wonderful entry in which Silliman talks about the lack of knowledge most MFAs have.  He suggests some very concrete ways to remedy this situation--but for my money, I love his idea of requiring a critical essay (or perhaps a "historical" essay--can't remember the term he uses) from MFA applicants along with their manuscript submission.  One of the many reasons that I opted for the Ph.D rather than the MFA is the sheer breadth of reading that I'm having to do.

  All the best to everyone on New Poetry.  Happy Fourth!

  Jeff Newberry

   
  On 7/3/06, Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at tin.it> wrote: 
    sick,

    from Ron Silliman's blog:

    Think for a moment of just what the problem is. If you read two books of poetry per week, you will fall behind in your knowledge of what exists and is out there to the tune of 3,900 books a year at minimum. Another way of putting it is that, at two books per week, you could read the poetry books published in the U.S. just in 2006 by roughly 2045. If you read a book a day, however, you can get it done by the end of 2014 or thereabouts. And then you could begin on 2007. 



    ******

    Anny Ballardini
    http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
    http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
    http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html 
    I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
    Friedrich Nietzsche 


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  -- 
  "Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death."
                                                     --Miguel de Unamuno

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