After all, this is Harriet, right? This is free expression among poets, right? The ultimate open-minded intellectual discourse around, right? What could there possibly be to, like, dislike here?

And look…even Kent’s bare and simple honesty got negative votes. This field is definitely not level.

My opinions aside about any commentators here who would seem to be “popular” or “unpopular”…

It does seem, as candidly reported by four or five people now, that the Dislike/Like buttons are available for manipulation by whomever, for whatever reasons– ready, under single posts, to be hit multiple times by single individuals. And one does wonder if this is happening.

If it is the case that a reader can vote for a post multiple times, then it’s obvious (isn’t it?) that the system is available for abuse.

I’ve never myself used the function because I think it’s shallow and risks cheapening the atmosphere of discussion. An individual limit of two or three posts per day would be a much more elegant and less “punitive” option for controlling the problem that’s developed over the past number of months.

Regardless, the issue of the voting-function’s apparent abuse should be addressed.

Kent

– Terreson

.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at laSt,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

– William Butler Yeats

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4VlcVfgFJk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqEbV29uGzA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfvS_fgbuDI

Terreson

It saddens me your blog starter hasn’t generated more traffic. To me Sexton has become a litmus test. Those who read her and find their eyes dilating pass the test. Those who read her with eyes glassing over fail. It is that simple.

You ask if she is a major poet. But, of course, the question gets subject to how each of us determines and defines a major poet, right? My estimation of a major poet involves someone who speaks to my whole body: my intellect, my emotions, my psyche, my senses, my groin, my feet, my arms, in brief, my soma. I would submit that Anne Sexton is a major poet because she speaks to every part of my body and in concert. Some poets speak, and speak well, to certain parts of us. Few poets speak to the whole of what it means to be a human. Sexton speaks to the whole of what it means to be a human.

If I could resurrect that long ago critic, Rosenthal, who attached the label of Confessional to Lowell and company I think I would bring him back from the dead just in order to punch him. The pejorative of his label has done so much harm to American poetry. It has, in fact, stunted the organic growth of American poetry by making poets way too self-doubting. Poetry is confession. Poetry is revelation. Poetry is witness. Poetry, in the final analysis, is duende.

You know something else just occurred to me. Sexton, through her poetry, might have been the first to get an audience and to say women are human type people too, and people following their own rules of procedure.

Prosodically speaking, if you are still wondering if Sexton is a major poet, I still think she is. She took from Rimbaud. She took from him and she excellenced his notions.

Terreson