Comments on: Poetry is dead! Long live poetry! http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/10/poetry-is-dead-long-live-poetry/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:48:08 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Allison http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/10/poetry-is-dead-long-live-poetry/#comment-25743 Allison Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:05:45 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=5677#comment-25743 A delight, as always. Where shall we bury her? A delight, as always. Where shall we bury her?

]]> By: Terreson http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/10/poetry-is-dead-long-live-poetry/#comment-25714 Terreson Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:56:18 +0000 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/?p=5677#comment-25714 What a fun little essay, Abigail Deutsch, and a treat to read. The imagined Prison School of Poetry tickled me, but maybe not as much as the Roswell sightings. And this: "Mary McPherson, 32, was driving down Clovis Highway when she noticed the air shimmering strangely above the pavement," which actually comes through as pretty accurate evidence that one is in the presence of a poem. Anyway, I don't know how it is in the world of professional poets and the academy, but I am satisfied that poetry is alive, well, and flourishing in on line venues such as poetry boards and ezines. There I've found affective poetry written by people coming from all walks of life, working different trades and occupying different stations. A long haul trucker, for example, doing amazing things with the language, making it implicate. Or a retired unemployment office worker whose improv is stunning and whose erotica is equally so, especially when she treats her favorite, vampire, theme. And so on. I've also found that rarest creature of all: the gifted poetry reader, the same as who Nabokov called the artistic-reader. Many years ago I met a retired hydraulics engineer who had worked on maintaining some of the monumental dams spanning the Snake and Columbia rivers. He had an interesting perspective about his life's work. From memory he said 'You cannot stop a river for long. It will find its way around a dam, finger through rock fissure, wear the rock down, and make a new course.' This is how the case seems to me. Thanks. Terreson What a fun little essay, Abigail Deutsch, and a treat to read. The imagined Prison School of Poetry tickled me, but maybe not as much as the Roswell sightings. And this: “Mary McPherson, 32, was driving down Clovis Highway when she noticed the air shimmering strangely above the pavement,” which actually comes through as pretty accurate evidence that one is in the presence of a poem.

Anyway, I don’t know how it is in the world of professional poets and the academy, but I am satisfied that poetry is alive, well, and flourishing in on line venues such as poetry boards and ezines. There I’ve found affective poetry written by people coming from all walks of life, working different trades and occupying different stations. A long haul trucker, for example, doing amazing things with the language, making it implicate. Or a retired unemployment office worker whose improv is stunning and whose erotica is equally so, especially when she treats her favorite, vampire, theme. And so on. I’ve also found that rarest creature of all: the gifted poetry reader, the same as who Nabokov called the artistic-reader.

Many years ago I met a retired hydraulics engineer who had worked on maintaining some of the monumental dams spanning the Snake and Columbia rivers. He had an interesting perspective about his life’s work. From memory he said ‘You cannot stop a river for long. It will find its way around a dam, finger through rock fissure, wear the rock down, and make a new course.’ This is how the case seems to me. Thanks.

Terreson

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