[New-Poetry] ambition?

[JforJames at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/13/2006 5:34:18 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
tad at opus40.org writes:

That's an immense poetic accomplishment, describing a very  modest ambition. 
Did Yeats have immense poetic ambition? We gather that he did  -- he had a 
powerful desire to be a great poet. Does this poem come out of  immense poetic 
ambition -- to write a poem that will change the world? Not so  clear that it did


 
In another post you brought up Taylor Mali, whoi was several times the  
individual 
Nat'l Poetry Slam Champion. He clearly knows a thing or two about ambition 
in both senses. The first sense is slightly more tawdy sense of  just trying 
to 
get ahead in one's art/endeavor. Can I make a poem and perform it  so well 
that
I can knock out dozens of competitors and succeed in being named Slam  Champ
for YEAR. But in its more important sense, it has more to do with what  one
expects from his/her poetry. The ambit or scope of that undertaking. You  
don't 
have to avoid the small poem. On the contrary you take on the small and 
commonplace subject for the particular challenge it is. A telescope and a  
microscope
are the same instruments. Emily Dickinson was clearly as ambitious for her  
poetry 
as was voluble and visionary and self-promoting Whitman. I don't think  one 
hand
sews fascicles of sheaves that one believes are unimportant.
Finnegan 

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