Crabby Thought of the Day

Some time ago, poetry expressed universal experiences; a little later it posed important questions and, even if it was about as radical as a lukewarm mug of Sleepytime tea, tended to take risks and transgress. Lately it’s a really good thing to attack the language. I’m all for attacks. But is there any more dreary cliché than the feeling that language is inadequate to describe experience?

This is said by poets about their own poetry—to whom I often feel like saying “try harder then”—and even more often by critics about poems they’re praising. It seems to me language is most inadequate in inadequate poems, as any teacher of poetry writing can attest. When a poem is good, even if the poem is about language’s alleged inadequacy, then language is doing the exactly the job it’s being called on to do—adequately.
While I’m being Andy Rooneyish, can I just say that the most inane thing I’ve heard in the presidential primaries so far is the New Hampshire voter who said “I was torn between Edwards, Obama and McCain, but then I saw Hillary cry and voted for her.” The mind, as they say, reels.