Comments on: What do you mean teaching poetry writing and wasting your time painting sober little organic, meaningful pictures?

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:30:48 +0000

Lots of terrific metrical poetry is being written all the time — check out Paul Muldoon, for instance, although he does tend to play it loose. Geoffrey Hill & Christopher Logue are wizards of blank verse. You’ll note that these are all UK examples. I’m sure there’s a historical reason for this, having to do with Whitman, no doubt.
As for capitalized first lines, lots of people do this, some of them writing in meter, some not. I’ve always wondered when EXACTLY this practice was more or less abandoned. Can any Harrieteer point me to a precise moment or two, e.g. on or about?
The dread Rothenberg-Eshelman axis, mistaking meter for bourgeois-rationalist instrumentality, is pretty safely ensconced in the footnotes of UCSD dissertations by now.
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By: Janusz Czubakowski

Janusz Czubakowski — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:59:56 +0000

how does anyone out there feel about metrical poetry, with capitalized letters to start each line?
I do mean poetry written now, not 50 yrs. ago. Also (I’m ducking already), is it possible every volume of poetry put out in recent years is ground-breaking, insightful, humorous etc.? I wd. appreciate informed replies, even if they disagree. it’s lonely out here thanks..
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By: John Latta

John Latta — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:07:07 +0000

A. R. Ammons used colored inks (Pelikan, maybe? I recall I bought some after seeing a show of the works, in little bottles with squeeze-droppered unscrewabel tops—I wanted to see if I could duplicate some of the effects and ended up making a mess). I think the Ithaca House Gallery had a show of some of the inks: $300 apiece. And, later, Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art displayed a number, a large white gallery full, where they looked splendid. Ammons apparently churned the works out in huge numbers, saying he had stacks and stacks of them filling a closet. He also, rather touchingly, did some small ones (about the size of a stenographer’s notebook, or smaller, if I recall rightly), and offered them for sale at $15 apiece. He thought maybe some of the graduate students might want them. (I’m surprised to see the figurative inks included in the slideshow: I only recall seeing abstracts, mostly involving “drips” and “runs” of ink against more solid panels of colors. Though I do still have, I think, one of the smaller ones—a dud—totally gone to mud, with the score of some NFL game written in ink against it: Cowboys 21, Steelers, 6, or something.)
John
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By: Lucia

Lucia — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:43:00 +0000

The picture reproduced here is so unwatercolorlike that it makes me wonder about his technique?
As per Bill Knott, the ars poetica has too long a history to be a product of our cultural moment, though in low moments I agree about the lowliness of poetry. Yet humanity pursues many lowly pursuits with long histories. Like, um….painting vases..
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By: bill knott

bill knott — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:01:56 +0000

. . . how something-or-other it is that even the most gifted poets are forced to present justifications for their practice . . . as you show Ammons doing here——
i know they *enjoy* doing this, like bottoms in s and m find pleasure in their humiliations . . .
but sometimes it seems like half of what poets write is apology/defense of their right to write,
or else to write in the way they wish to write——
it’s as if they must continuallty make excuses for doing what they do,
constantly offering up exculpatory rationalizations for their foolishness in persisting in the vain pursuit of this most worthless,
most despised of the arts, poetry,
the least compensated and rewarded art——
in the caste system of the Arts, poets are the lowest——
so even Ammons has to stuff his verse with these pleas for forbearance, begging his society/culture to please please
allow him to——
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By: Jim K

Jim K — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:24:28 +0000

very evocative pic! Brings many images to mind.
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