[New-Poetry] Concerning "fauxpo"

[Jason Quackenbush]

I write the kind of poetry he talks about in the second paragraph.

i would argue that any number of the language poets did too. and  
they're all old now.
On Oct 6, 2008, at 11:55 PM, James Cervantes wrote:

> from The Writer's Chronicle (AWP), October/November 2008, "A  
> Recognizable Life: An Interview with Dick Allen," by Leslie McGrath:
>
> "McGrath: What are your thoughts about the fragmented, elliptical,  
> 'difficult' poetry written by many young American poets today?
>
> Allen:  If you're talking about Language Poetry, I don't consider  
> it 'poetry' but faux poetry, fauxpo, done by theorists.  That's  
> fine and enjoyable in the head, just as Dada was fine and  
> enjoyable, but it's not poetry.  Poetry is an emotional art, which  
> may contain a great deal of reason, but without emotion, without  
> strong ties to understandability, fragmented, elliptical,  
> 'difficult' writing of that sort is just words in arrangements.
>
>      In the future, this sort of stuff might mutate to become  
> sections of larger future poems in which there's much weaving  
> through nonsense to meaning.  Some young poets seem to be starting  
> to work in these directions, but we're still waiting.  When the  
> general public, or even the non-English major college student  
> begins buying and quoting these works, then something will have  
> happened.  But it doesn't seem to me that we're anywhere near there  
> yet.
>
>      I'm also wondering about the amount of trivia included in many  
> of today's poems.  It seems necessary to include trivia because  
> trivia is so much part and parcel of the 21st century consciousness  
> and day-to-day life.  Yet will the future care to remember X-men or  
> a cell phone ring, even when footnoted?  I think there are still  
> new and specific and memorable ways to write about the eternal."
>
> Talking points:
>
> Isn't all poetry "words in arrangements"?
>
> Who is writing the kind of poetry Allen  hints at in the second  
> paragraph of his response?
>
> Who has the answers on what is eternal?
>
> Why won't Allen pal around with terrorists?
>
> - Jim
>
> "Whatever gets you through the night, babe." - Frank Sinatra
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Jason Quackenbush
jfq at myuw.net




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