[New-Poetry] Camlle Paglia explains how she saved poetry

[Judy Prince]

Thanks, Tad, for this.  I've decided to invest a few pennies on seeing what
in fact La Paglia decides to include, rather than nearly-include, as she
indicates in the article you cited.  So, for under ten dollars including
postage, amazon.com'll send me a used copy of her book.
Riffing off politics and my former take on the Democratic Party, I wonder,
as well, at our odd stodge place for poets:  We loathe and elevate academic
writers.....and most of us on this list, I'll wager, are academic poets.
 That is, most of us studied poetry heavily at university and somehow ended
up writing it, some of us lucky enough to teach it.

And most, as with the former [before Obama] Democratic Party, of us
poet-academics are word- and assertion- wimps.  I used to say that because
Senate Democrats operate politically like college professors, heaven help us
if they win a majority in Congress as well as the Presidency!  Kind of like
a political movement of self-loathing but slightly corrupt Quakers [no, I'm
NOT insulting the Society of Friends!] who determine their actions through
consensus.  <g>  It'd take a couple years to get that toilet fixed at the
Meetinghouse.

Just give us regular folks, regular folk poets.  Does that mean
not-intellectual poets?  Indeed, no, it does not mean that.  Back to the
analogy:  Most of us voted for Obama primarily because he is a breathtaking
blend of intellectual, loving, and pragmatic political being.  We who read
and practice poetry like that kind of Regular Person, want that kind of
poetry.

And this means.....for poetry.... what?  It means that Camille Paglia has
probably justifiedly decided that poetry for 'the public' is a dead duck,
has been since academic poets have had the , albeit limited, power and
authority to arbit Proper Poetry for the world, whether the world approves
it or not.  Has the same thing happened in the other arts?  Of course.  It
would seem to be the case in 2nd and 3rd dimension fine art, with a few
comparable blips in the world of music, and dance, and, sadly, with very
little at all to admire in theatre.

Academics writing for academics.  The rise and uncreativity of _us_, the
middle class.  Hmmm......

Yes, of course, I've thrown most of us, myself, included, under the bus.
 But we deserve it, if only for this one lonely solitary post's moment.
 Thanks for the chance to ramble it out.

Best,

Judy







2008/11/11 TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org>

> http://www.bu.edu/arion/Paglia16-2.html
>
>
> I was shocked and disappointed by what I found. Poem after poem, when
> approached from the perspective of the general audience rather than that of
> academic criticism, shrank into inconsequence or pretension. Or poets whom I
> fondly remembered from my college and graduate school studies turned out to
> have produced impressive bodies of serious work but no single poem that
> could stand up as an artifact to the classic poems elsewhere in the book.
> The ultimate standard that I applied in my selection process was based on
> William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming," a masterpiece of sinewy modern
> English.
>
> Ezra Pound, because of his generous mentoring of and vast influence on
> other poets (such as T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams), should have
> been automatically included in /Break, Blow, Burn/. But to my dismay, I
> could not find a single usable Pound poem—just a monotonous series of showy,
> pointless, arcane allusions to prior literature. The equally influential W.
> H. Auden was high on my original list. But after reviewing Auden's collected
> poetry, I was stunned to discover how few of his poems can stand on their
> own in today's media-saturated cultural climate.
>
>
> --
> Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
> Don't forget to order your copy of FILM NOIR!
> http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=2712239
>
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