[New-Poetry] ambition?

[TheOldMole]

And the particular Mali poem I brought up here is an ambitious poem about ambition, and how it's not always found on Olympian heights. Mali wants to write a poem that will change the world, ends up by deciding he can better change the world one junior high school student at a time.


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 11:40 AM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] ambition?


  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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