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

[Bob Grumman]

jforjames at aol.com wrote:
> I didn't have a chance to read the whole piece till yesterday, and it 
> looks like I'm of the minority viewpoint, but I think that Paglia did 
> a good job defending the poems she picked for her anthology. Opinion 
> is all critics have in the end...there is no proof as I said today 
> after reading the piece: http://ursprache.blogspot.com/
> She laid out her opinions on poetry quite nicely, I 
> thought. (And she's obviously not intimidated or held hostage to 
> careerist niceties so much that she's dissuaded from 
> expressing displeasure at 'name poets'. Which I find refreshing.) 
> The other thing I think this piece points to is how much 
> the 'anthology pieces' we know come to us as received icons.
> The poems are not questioned. Not interrogated. They were taught to as 
> 'canonical' or a certain poetry interest group
>  has 'vested' them and they go on, living-dead zombie poems pushed 
> forward through time without question,
> Finnegan
Including those of your friend (and mine) Wally.   I doubt I'll ever 
have time, but I wouldn't mind doing a reply to Paglia's text.  I think 
she's a Total Philistine.  Good grief, anyone who could blithely write 
off ALL the poems of Pound, for instance, has to be subliterate.  But, 
true, I only skimmed her text after the first ten or fifteen 
paragraphs.  And, of course, I'm not bright enough to have risen above 
the poetry I've been indoctrinated to take as canonical.

--Bob G. 
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