[New-Poetry] Re: WEPD Banana

[Halvard Johnson]

Never thought of relevance as something to be "earned," Barry.

Hal, still learning something relevant every day

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Barry Spacks <barry.spacks at verizon.net>wrote:

>
> I maintain that poems may pass the Excellencey
> test even if only some of the test's criteria help to build its case.
>
> Regarding "Bananas," a sort of Zenish jeu d'esprit, working it
> through the whole WEPD word-grinder becomes
> a joke about a joke. The poem must, I feel, go elsewhere
> for justification.
>
> I'll put before the court an excerpt from my mini-essay on the poem,
> composed for a wide-ranging anthology in progress.
>
> Speaking of "the unsayable," here's an experimental piece that some
> may take as simply silly, an arbitrary blurt. Yet blurt is the wrong
> word, for the tone here is unassumingly quiet and calculatedly subversive.
> A "Language" poem, the piece takes to a far level Wallace Stevens dictum
> that poetry "should resist meaning almost successfully." Heavy emphasis, in
> cases like this,  falls on the word "almost."
>
> The fact that Andrews' four word tease appeared in the prestigious  Paris
> Review in 1972 has helped to gain it attention. The poem's energy lies in
> its oddity, running against received notions of "making sense" to free the
> imagination toward limitless suggestion.
>
> As Robert Pinsky writes in his short survey THE SITUATION OF POETRY, "Comic
> and reductive, Andrews's poem calls attention to the somewhat arbitrary
> nature of any connection between specific examples and general ideas...[it]
> might be made to exemplify nearly anything."
>
> Unique, hence unrepeatable in strategy, the poem may best earn relevance
> from the reader in connection with its tongue-in-cheek daring.
>
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>


-- 

Halvard Johnson
================
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