Comments on: Further “poetic”s

By: Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:36:24 +0000

Greenlaw wants no happy medium. I want a poem that says something that matters and says it well, regardless of its subject. I observed that the dance piece I saw happened to be both good art and powerful politics, and wondered why that seemed so unusual.
I think, Mr. Knott, that we are using the terms ‘art’ and ‘intention’ differently. I would not transpose my terms with those of Paz who is, I believe, talking about two different forms of poetic imperative, which would for me both come under ‘intention’.
I don’t think art and intention are ‘two extremes’ except where the absence or weakness of one is used to justify the other. They are different aspects: how something is made and what it represents, and I am simply saying a good poem should be equally ambitious in both.
I agree that political poetry can be terrible whether it is explicitly or implicitly formed. I am just wondering why it is so hard to produce art that is politically explicit and artful at the same time.
Who the hell are all these Os and Xs and Ys and Neos?

By: Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:08:56 +0000

Is the problem something to do with the fact that our reflexive mode is the lyric rather than the epic? Where are the good epic poems of our age? And do we need them?

By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:17:10 +0000

Greenlaw wants the happy medium: a poetry that “is as serious about its art as it is about its intentions”——
but think of Paz’s view that the history of modern poetry is that of an “oscillation between the religious temptation and the revolutionary temptation”— (in Greenlaw’s terms, between art and intention)—
the median of these two extremes is rarely struck—or stable—or granted a state of synthesis—
so I hope the upcoming poets—the O Gen poets—will put their intentions first and their art second—
especially since the poets predecessor to them, the ‘80-’90s XY Gen of Neo-Decadents are so opposed to intention, so artfully disengaged—
It seems time for the tempt to oscillate again, away from art and toward intent,
no?

By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:02:19 +0000

Elaine Scarry, in “Fins de Siecle” (Johns Hopkins, 1995),
observes the calendic affect on poetry,
and suggests that just as many poets who emerged in the 1880s/90s
were decadent,
so the fledgling poets of the 1980s/90s exhibited similar traits——
but a newer crop of poets may possess, as Greenlaw posits, “renewed hope” and a fresh idealism of their own choosing . . .

By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:19:39 +0000

. . . . and of course the vast majority of implicitly political poetry
is superficial and terrible too——
in any case, i trust the O Gen poets will make their own minds
up regarding the matter,
and hopefully they won’t be too influenced by the XY Gen cynics and decadents——

By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:39:12 +0000

One can only hope that we won’t get a lot of explicitly political poetry, as the vast majority of it is superficial and terrible poetry.
!
. . . and like the vast majority of explicitly apolitical poetry AIN’T
superficial and terrible?
i cast my one vote for a lot of explicitly political poetry—
bring it on, O Gen!

By: Troy Camplin

Troy Camplin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:49:53 +0000

One can only hope that we won’t get a lot of explicitly political poetry, as the vast majority of it is superficial and terrible poetry. Yes, this election has shown us that action can bring about a change in faces — but one thing we cannot change is physical reality, and that’s some of what we were promised would happen. As Francis Bacon once said, to control nature, you must first obey it. The same is true of the economy and of human nature. Of course, the more we learn of each, the more we learn that “control” in the Baconian sense is impossible and undesirable — but the Left still believes in control. Where are the poems reflecting that reality?

By: rahman henry

rahman henry — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:15:38 +0000

Lonelyness / Rahman Henry
No, not to Be, nothing be created ___
Sure, Coupling blocks my head
I ‘ve to fight ;
Assembly creats even Less
If there is light ___
That’s loneliness