[New-Poetry] Academy-Award Winnning Sad Thought

[jforjames at aol.com]

I'm no Kenneth Goldsmith expert, for sure...but I think him mostly as not a poet but as a conceptual artist. I once wrote in my notebook that I hoped never to be so bored with my life, that I'd actually read any of Kenneth Goldsmith's 'poetry'. Most of it is not really to be read, or I don't think so anyway. It's really his attempt to provoke thinking about what literature is; how text works and doesn't work, etc. Or some of it could be described as 'postmodadaism'.
 
It probably can be said that somewhere toward the end of the 20thC no poets existed outside of their readership by other poets (in or out of the academy). There are exceptions of course: Ginsberg when he was alive, a cultural phenom like Maya Angelou, Billy Collins who raised his sails deftly and high enough to catch the Zeitgeist and cruise outside of the territorial waters of Poets' Island. And there are some unsubstantiated reports of 'common readers' who still attend to poetry. But those folks always remind of the Japanese soldiers who would be found 10, 20, 30 years after the end of hostilities in the Pacific, living rough in caves on a deserted atoll, still awaiting orders from The Emperor to return home.   
Finnegan
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: cstroffo at earthlink.net
Sent: Fri, 18 May 2007 2:15 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Academy-Award Winnning Sad Thought 


Correction---I meant Jersey City (not Hoboken)..... 


On May 18, 2007, at 11:12 AM, Chris Stroffolino wrote:


Ah, the feel good hit in the summer. 


I thought Kenny-G had a thinkership, or at least a listenership, through his radio show on WFMU. 
WFMU was a college radio station in The Oranges (New Jersey), but even when the college went under,
the station still existed. For  a few years, they used to proudly announce how they broadcasted from a "Ghost Campus."
Then, since much of their listening audience was in the NYC metropolitan area, they relocated to Hoboken.
I doubt the film would win an academy award, but you never know.
Maybe Kenny G., will argue that his DJ existence was not in any way connected with his poet existence....


On May 18, 2007, at 10:20 AM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:


http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/05/the_academy.html
 
Kenneth Goldsmith--
"Without the academy, as I poet I don't exist. I have almost no readership (thinkership) outside the academy. This is not a choice of mine: it's is a condition that preceded my arrival onto the writing scene, fostered by numerous cultural conditions in the States -- primarily by the precedent set by the warm reception of Language Poetry by the academy in the 80s. As a result, since then, innovative or experimental writing lives only in the academy. "
 
--
It's the reader's fault--Finnegan
 






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