[New-Poetry] Goetsch's greed

[Gerald Schwartz]

>> Perplexing metaphors, incomprehensible allusions, that feeling of 
>> alienation: American poetry is notorious for its failure to appeal to the 
>> masses.

Seems as though he would like to place those of us who reject the
major keys for minor chords, who choose universals for particulars,
who process a sometimes forbidding bodies of work resistant to
sweeping pronouncements and vague generalizations--in a ghetto.
Seems as though in doing so, he's simply calling to the yahoo.

>> "[Poetry] still has to give the reader pleasure; it has to compel rather 
>> than confuse," Douglas Goetsch said in describing his fellow American 
>> poets, who often work to create ambiguity. "I hope American poetry is 
>> done with the cult … It may be a mystery, but not a puzzle."

Would be interesting to know here how D.G. came to poetry in the
first place. As creatures we have been given much, and when we
come to poetry, authentic poetry, much is demanded because of its
refusal to separate intellect from feeling, or complexity from clarity,
whether it be found in Ronald Johnson, William Bronk or Robert Frost.

Gerald Schwartz