Comments on: Accidental Poetry and What to Do with the Stuff http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/ Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:40:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: John http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-12187 John Sun, 31 May 2009 16:01:10 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-12187 Eileen, you create beautiful,tasty,easily masticated rationalizations. Why such fumisterie? This is a brass age for poetry and academic poets poison the air that we breathe. No one ever learned how to be a poet or write poetry in a creative writing class. Poems are not relative! Ever! Well maybe for poetasters they are... Eileen,
you create beautiful,tasty,easily masticated rationalizations. Why such fumisterie? This is a brass age for poetry and academic poets poison the air that we breathe. No one ever learned how to be a poet or write poetry in a creative writing class. Poems are not relative! Ever! Well maybe for poetasters they are…
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]]> By: Jason Guriel http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-10926 Jason Guriel Fri, 08 May 2009 22:37:26 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-10926 "Nobody is all duck" IS a nice line, Eileen! Thanks for it -- and to the others for their comments! “Nobody is all duck” IS a nice line, Eileen! Thanks for it — and to the others for their comments!
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]]> By: A.W. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-10923 A.W. Fri, 08 May 2009 21:37:10 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-10923 "...we are subject to a continuous flow of language...it courses through us...we can tap into it at any time..." --Kit Robinson “…we are subject to a continuous flow of language…it courses through us…we can tap into it at any time…” –Kit Robinson
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]]> By: Travis Nichols http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-10915 Travis Nichols Fri, 08 May 2009 19:25:01 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-10915 There is, of course, <a href="http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/" rel="nofollow">this</a>. And the "Danger is Their Business" cassette, the first put out by K Records, full of found sounds and a cappella accidentals. And Flarf. ? There is, of course, this.

And the “Danger is Their Business” cassette, the first put out by K Records, full of found sounds and a cappella accidentals.

And Flarf. ?
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]]> By: Don Share http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-10912 Don Share Fri, 08 May 2009 19:03:35 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-10912 "The free-floating availability of all language (in popular culture and academic) has been drawn down into poetry by poets for good reasons and with beautiful results. Why not use it all: from technical to vernacular overheard. Take lines from the tormented dead and from mad people, drunks, captives, and foreigners whose English is ripe with useful faux pas. Sit in bus depots and barbecue pits and note down what the oblivious passersby say to each other." -- Fanny Howe “The free-floating availability of all language (in popular culture and academic) has been drawn down into poetry by poets for good reasons and with beautiful results. Why not use it all: from technical to vernacular overheard. Take lines from the tormented dead and from mad people, drunks, captives, and foreigners whose English is ripe with useful faux pas. Sit in bus depots and barbecue pits and note down what the oblivious passersby say to each other.” — Fanny Howe
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]]> By: Eileen Myles http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-10894 Eileen Myles Fri, 08 May 2009 16:31:28 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-10894 Hey Jason, I both question the accidental category and the professors. I mean isn't the process of writing quite accidental for all of us. Isn't that somewhat the element we dwell in when we write. When someone says something great, whether it's a character or a person I'm talking w or even me or a thought in my head these seem like the seamless beads of poetry, whatever it is we do. Some of us call ourselves poets I think that's the difference. But I bet either Edith's thoughts or her writer's felt same as I do when the line occurred. And re August's poet shot - oh come on. I mean this is more to him - who didn't ask to be ithis conversation but since his poems here I've gotta say its intentions are troubling to me. Why do we need to make there be some bad mediocrities who are professors who write about ducks so deliberately. I mean yawn most of us make our livings teaching at some point and paunches seem true for more poets than not. It's not a vigorous job teaching. I know lots of people who would glibly write a simliar poem about New Yorker poets who love ducks and teach college anxiously. The poetry world is full of many things but one of them is endless easy notions about class. The little people who accidentally say lovely things or the bad deliberate people who force poems out ceremoniously. Those academic shills unlike me. I just think we're them and I don't mean and so let us cherish our mediocrity but maybe the constructed other here in either case is not a very fruitful idea. Poems are relative, right. August's poems are very academic to many readers. Nobody is all duck. Though that's a nice line don't you think. Hey Jason,

I both question the accidental category and the professors. I mean isn’t the process of writing quite accidental for all of us. Isn’t that somewhat the element we dwell in when we write. When someone says something great, whether it’s a character or a person I’m talking w or even me or a thought in my head these seem like the seamless beads of poetry, whatever it is we do. Some of us call ourselves poets I think that’s the difference. But I bet either Edith’s thoughts or her writer’s felt same as I do when the line occurred.

And re August’s poet shot – oh come on. I mean this is more to him – who didn’t ask to be ithis conversation but since his poems here I’ve gotta say its intentions are troubling to me. Why do we need to make there be some bad mediocrities who are professors who write about ducks so deliberately. I mean yawn most of us make our livings teaching at some point and paunches seem true for more poets than not. It’s not a vigorous job teaching. I know lots of people who would glibly write a simliar poem about New Yorker poets who love ducks and teach college anxiously. The poetry world is full of many things but one of them is endless easy notions about class. The little people who accidentally say lovely things or the bad deliberate people who force poems out ceremoniously. Those academic shills unlike me. I just think we’re them and I don’t mean and so let us cherish our mediocrity but maybe the constructed other here in either case is not a very fruitful idea. Poems are relative, right. August’s poems are very academic to many readers. Nobody is all duck. Though that’s a nice line don’t you think.
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]]> By: Annie Finch http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-10886 Annie Finch Fri, 08 May 2009 14:14:33 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-10886 It strikes me that your beautifully-built post circles back on itself, Jason, in the sense that looking for a poetic home for one of these accidental bits of poetry is something like trying to take the clothes off a statue. Or, in one of the lines from Yeats I find most sticky (especially since I used it as an epigraph once) "to press at midnight in some public place / live lips upon a plummet-measured face." It takes a Pygmalion-strong desire to bring them to life again within the non-life of one's own poem. It strikes me that your beautifully-built post circles back on itself, Jason, in the sense that looking for a poetic home for one of these accidental bits of poetry is something like trying to take the clothes off a statue. Or, in one of the lines from Yeats I find most sticky (especially since I used it as an epigraph once) “to press at midnight in some public place / live lips upon a plummet-measured face.” It takes a Pygmalion-strong desire to bring them to life again within the non-life of one’s own poem.
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]]> By: Don Share http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/accidental-poetry-and-what-to-do-with-the-stuff/#comment-10857 Don Share Fri, 08 May 2009 04:03:10 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=2757#comment-10857 In every city, I always hear the lions roar. - Max Beckmann, 1947 In every city, I always hear the lions roar. – Max Beckmann, 1947
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