[New-Poetry] saying the obvious yet again

[Barry Spacks]

On Dec 16, 2010, at 5:37 PM, Bob G. wrote:

>  After all, people are still painting pictures
> and making statues even though, some swine made up names for each of  
> the
> two major forms of visual art.
>
    The problem lies with politically motivated name-calling declared
    to be merely descriptively taxonomic, as you well know, Bob, being
    the local master of the process.

   I'm all for the value-free Periodic Table, and for convenience one  
might
   wish to categorize this or that as sculpture versus painting  
(though in these
   post-modern, kaleidoscopic  days in the visual as well as other
   arts -- v. environments, use of video, performances --   generic  
lines
   are wildly crossed.

   You'd think it would suit your purposes to declare lesser known
   styles and effects at home  under the single generic category  
"Poetry."

   Sure, call a sonnet a sonnet, no party-line value judgement implied
  (though  even here what to do with 15-line sonnets, unrhymed sonnets,
  curtal poems achieving sonnet-like effects? Oddities?).

  I was entirely serious in suggesting -- if one must cut and dice --
   Poetry / Oddities as a  less proscriptive scheme (even make that
  Art / Oddities) than those you so persistently strive to enforce.

  It's the not so hidden sneer in the labeling, Bob, that gets some
  folks  stirred up in the age of Fox and the perfection of the Big Lie
  theory of power-sway.

yearning to be able to sign off "respectfully,"

Barry