[New-Poetry] Van Doren and Frost

[JforJames at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/20/2007 2:48:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time,  
chris.lott at gmail.com writes:

I'm all  for it but there's not a poet on the planet that could fill a
medium sized  room here, Billy Collins and Rod McKuen included.



Maybe there should be fewer poets reading their own work and more  giving
talks and informal lectures about important poets and movements. Perhaps  if
the state of the art is suffering it's because we don't look for  enough ways 
to 
demonstrate our virtuosity in the reading of the works of other poets.  Frost 
is probably not
a tough sell for the general public, but I'd like to bet that one  could fill 
a small room at a local
library or grange hall for a discussion of 'Objectivist Poets', or  something 
along those lines.
The idea might be tos help people learn how to read poetry, to show them  the 
elements they 
need to listen for and to engage them infectiously with what it is  thatt 
might be found there 
and might be useful to them in the lives of their  minds. There might be mroe 
hunger for that
than we think, rather than another Whodat Poet reading from his/her  second 
book of poems.
 
I was sitting next to a woman (in her seventies) who told me she didn't  read
much poetry. But she was there. She was there in part because she was a  
neighbor
of Charles Van Doren. That tells me we should really look for ways to
involve friends and neighbors. Too often these readings and talks are  
sequestered
at some building buried at the heart of a large campus, with little  effort 
to inform or 
encourage community attendence. 
 
Put down that Harry Potter book. Grassroots...yeah.Taking the poetry  to the 
people, baby. 
Finnegan



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