[New-Poetry] Frost on the edge

[Jason Quackenbush]

i meant you're on the side that wants to shore up robert frost's reputation as a great american poet. i think frost is dull and highly overrated. I 
also think think if one is looking at a overview of american poetry and it's geneaologies, his influence has resulted in much more bad than good. This 
contrary to Billy Collins and his ilk's assertion (see poetry 180 introduction and elsewhere) that it is the fault of the post/avant camp that poetry 
has declined in cultural currency over the last hundred years. If that decline is anybody's fault, it's robert frost's, the popularity of his boring 
poetry being a signal to the casual observer--who may begin and end his or her encounter with american poetry when he or she reads stopping by the 
woods on a snowy evening in high school--that this is the nature of all poetry and therefore that poetry itself is boring crap written by stentorian 
dead white guys about nature, death, and other 'heady' topics in vague and unmusical ways.

David Graham wrote:
> Jason:  Perhaps you'll help me out by letting me know which "side" I'm 
> on, and which of the many possible binaries you're imagining as battle 
> lines in this case.  Orr's point, as I understood it, was to question 
> the usefulness and continuing relevance of the old battle lines.  I take 
> it you disagree?  Say more?
> 
> 
> On Feb 4, 2007, at 8:55 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote:
> 
>> it's only pointless if you're on the side you're so obviously on.
>>
>> David Graham wrote:
>>
>>> In any case, like David Orr I tend to be far more interested in 
>>> looking at ways in which Frost is a great poet than in choosing up 
>>> sides in this old and pointless battle.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu <mailto:grahamd at ripon.edu>
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ==========================================
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry