[New-Poetry] Does Most Contemporary American Poetry Have To Be Chopped-Li...

[jforjames at aol.com]

I think my take on this is similar: What's wrong with poetry using all the robust and multifarious resources that prose has to offer? Since the advent of free-verse it has, and will continue to do so. Prose in effect is subsumed by poetry, just as?all the other aspects/techniques of deployed language can be subsumed by poetry.?In that sense poetry gives up nothing, it gains by?absorbing the?resources of prose (which technically almost entirely overlap the resources of poetry).?

One of the most attractive elements of prose is its ability to become limpid or almost transparent.?Prose can easily disguise its artifice (both the aural and visual)?while foregrounding its poetic content. And that will always be?an attractive attribute of prose for?a certan number of poets.?
Finnegan

-----Original Message-----
From: David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu>
To: NewPoetry <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:29 am
Subject: [New-Poetry] Does Most Contemporary American Poetry Have To Be Chopped-Li...


And I'll add what I always add when this chestnut gets roasted again. . . .

There's a circularity to the argument ("this poem is just chopped-up prose") that is seldom acknowledged by the makers. ?Typically it goes like this: ?(a) All poetry must have X or Y. ?Otherwise it's just chopped-up prose. ??(b) THIS poem doesn't have X or Y. ?(c) herefore it isn't a poem, it's just chopped-up prose. ?

But what about if you don't buy the original premise, which remains assumed? ?Or what if things are a leeeeetle bit more complicated than defining poetry as X or Y (meter, heightened diction, or whatever). ??


On 2/26/09 8:47 AM, "AlMaginnes at aol.com" <AlMaginnes at aol.com> wrote:


Could you give some examples of what you consider "chopped line prose" instead of simply saying "most contemporary American poetry"? It's kind of hard to have a discussion about something like this without dealing with specifics .

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