[New-Poetry] Wordsalad; poets talking

[James Cervantes]

Book jacket poet-speak.  My vote for the worst (which would not make a book
jacket, at least not for a book of poems): "I feel a horrified, appalled
grief about the built environment. I loathe concrete." - Lyn Hejinian
Best example of insularity: "Robert Pinsky: Contemporary poetry is informed
largely by translations from non-Western sources." - Robert Pinsky

My vote for flirting with possible truth: Glück: "Every great poem teaches
its readers how to read it."

- Jim

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 3:17 PM, <jforjames at aol.com> wrote:

> http://wordsalad.wordpress.com/
>
> Part of the Academy of American Poets' Forum 2008, a full day of panel
> discussions yesterday at NYU produced a series of conversations that
> explored the mysteries of creativity and writing from a number of angles.
> Some of these conversations will be soon available on the Poets.org<http://www.poets.org/>web site. Here are a few of the bon mots I enjoyed.
>
> Ron Padgett: The best poems make me dance in my head
>
> Lyn Hejinian: The collision of natural place vs the built environment is a
> vast impasse, the big aporia. I feel a horrified, appalled grief about the
> built environment. I loathe concrete.
>
> Robert Pinsky: Contemporary poetry is informed largely by translations from
> non-Western sources.
>
> Susan Stewart: When we're born, we enter the world through a door that
> won't allow us to return. When we die, we leave the world through a door
> that won't allow us to return.
>
> Stewart: We turn to the Light, but it blinds us, and we must turn away.
>
> Ron Padgett: Any line repeated many times is not the same thing. It goes
> through transformations.
>
> Louise Glück: All memorable poems are difficult. But that doesn't mean you
> must write a poem that is so harrowing and violently perceptive that people
> flee from it.
>
> Glück: Every great poem teaches its readers how to read it.
>
> Carl Phillips: Poets see things clearly that other people either (a) don't
> see clearly, or (b) can see, but more easily turn away from.
>
> Ellen Bryant Voight: Poetry presents difficulties of several kinds:
> Density, Reference, Protean form, Erasure, Derangement of senses, and Tonal
> complexity. Easily accessible poetry has no tonal complexity, or no tone at
> all.
>
> Carl Phillips: Reading a poet's entire body of work chronologically shows a
> record of a mind surprising itself, and then incorporating those surprises.
>
> Glück: A poem begins as an urgent, felt need to bring a perception into a
> form.
>
> James Longenbach: A good poem teaches the writer how to write it.
>
> Carl Phillips: A good poem teaches its readers how to read themselves as
> people.
>
> Ellen B Voight: The difficulty and discipline of Art gets us out of the
> igloo of the Self.
>
> James Longenbach: when a student complains that a poem is boring, I say,
> "That's fine. But it's your fault."
>
> Gerald Stern: I'm disorganized today. It's good to be disorganized. It
> makes you pay attention.
>
> Frank Bidart: Poems are models of Self-making.
>
> Sharon Olds: My early work was informed by a counter-phobic boldness.
>
> Gary Snyder: Place is more important to our identity than race or gender.
> Place gives us our body. Place is possible on any scale.
>
> Lyn Hejinian: I look for the sublime point of encounter. When unlike things
> encounter each other they create an extraordinary event.
>
> Hejinian: Every idea has a terrain, and every work has a contextual
> landscape. Some writing is highly focused, poly-focused. It is a writing of
> rolling surfaces with peaks and valleys that fold into the whole.
>
> Victor H. Cruz: The Caribbean is a form of Cubism: elements of Spanish,
> Taino, and African, with language and accents a jagged line that runs
> through the painting.
>
> Hejinian: the best antidote to global capitalism is global imagination.
> Imagination is not administratable.
>
> ------------------------------
> Instant access to the latest & most popular FREE games while you browse
> with the Games Toolbar - Download Now!<http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212904500x1200818240/aol?redir=http://toolbar.aol.com/games/download.html?ncid=emlweusdown00000004>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>


-- 

"Enjoy the breadcrumb pudding at Hansel & Griddle's" - The Mesa Gourmet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org
http://www.hamiltonstone.org/catalog.html#temporarymeaning
http://www.fieralingue.it/documenti/mr_bondo.pdf
http://www.poetserv.org/jvc/home/index.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamescervantes/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20081110/1232e398/attachment.html