Re: [New-Poetry] An Era of DÃ(c)tente for Creative- Wri ting Programs

[Halvard Johnson]

Bob, Bob, Bob. Not wanting to live on Staten Island does not
make one anti-Staten Island.

Hal, rising to the defense of his Alaska brother

"Those who cast the ballots decide nothing.
Those who count the ballots decide everything."
                          --Joseph Stalin


Halvard Johnson
================
halvard at gmail.com
http://sites.google.com/site/halvardjohnson/Home
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org





On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>wrote:

> Chris Lott wrote:
>
>> I can't disagree with any of this... I'm careful always to note that
>> I'm not looking for traditional teaching. I just think that the best
>> way to bring poetry to life is by sharing poems.
>>
>> Anyway, this inability to explain poems that give you pleasure makes
>> perfect sense. I wonder why it's a red flag to so many when that claim
>> is made w/r/t a poem or poet they don't like? For instance, say that a
>> James Wright poem gives you pleasure for some reason that you can't
>> explain and many in the post-avant will do their best to eviscerate
>> your parochialism.
>>
>> Seems to me that it's a reasonable explanation and, because it is so,
>> negative poetics and the attempt to build one school up by tearing
>> another down are diseased in their heart.
>>
>> It's that kind of hostility and unwillingness to accept their own
>> terms when it isn't self-serving that gets me pissed off and angry at
>> many post avant pundits. I don't like the unwritten rule that appears
>> to read something like "your with us or your against us" and which
>> apparently means I can like Eigner or Jack Gilbert, but not both... if
>> I do, I'm somehow sucking the soul out of new poetry and selling my
>> own at the same time.
>>
>> c
>>
> To each his own, Chris, but what you say about yourself, along with your
> stance toward taxonomy and terminology, etc., just identifies you as
> anti-intellectual.  I believe that any poem that no one, after a reasonably
> long time, can explain the value of is no good.  (I believe I can fairly
> easily explain the value of the James Wright poems I like.)  I think some
> people rave over certain poems without being able to say why they're good
> because of extra-aesthetic delight over, say, their politics, or because a
> relative created it.  This isn't to say that one can very much like an
> artwork for a long time without being able to pin down why, but one should
> eventually be able to.  The universe is, ultimately, understandable (except
> for why it exists, which you simply have to accept).
>
> --Bob
>
>
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