[New-Poetry] Re: poetics is childish

[Anny Ballardini]

I think I am a full-fledged fogeyist because I agree completely with you.
And besides that, after having read so much contemporary poetry especially
in the last four five years, and while reading The Call of Stories by Robert
Coles someone mentioned on this list (if I am not wrong), I am tempted to go
back to Tolstoy. It seems to me that I need that human warmth.


On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 5:48 PM, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

> Gary Snyder once remarked in an essay or interview that he wasn't terribly
> interested in cultural developments after the Neolithic, a notion that still
> makes me smile probably thirty years later.
> Whenever I dip my toe into the poetic blogosphere I discover furious
> debates about hot journals, current poets, editorial folly, po-biz politics,
> and so forth.  Even if I had the time to get fully engaged (as I did long
> ago when I was in grad school and we had these debates over coffee and beer,
> not our laptops)--I guess I'm rapidly evolving to the Snyder view.  It just
> doesn't matter to me who's in fashion.  I know this is a sign of
> full-fledged fogeyism, but there it is.  And I note that, with many notable
> and honorable exceptions, the bloggers often have very little to say about
> poetry written more than five years ago.  Sometimes it's five days ago.
>  Which among other things is a screaming limitation of this *kind* of
> debate, in its usual forms.  I'm not one to look down my nose at shop talk
> and gossip, but let's not mistake it for something it's not.
>
> I don't see much reason to pay attention to the opinions of any critic who
> doesn't demonstrate a long view of things.  You don't have to go back to the
> Neolithic, true, but it's nice when the arguments aren't mere unwitting
> re-hashes of earlier debates.
>
> As for narrative itself being "dated," "outmoded" or whatever, I think that
> very possibly a longer look at literary history might provide a quick cure
> for such nonsense.
>
>
>
> ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
>
> Home Page:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz
>
> Poetry Library:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> ==========================================
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>


-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20080921/83951ed1/attachment.html