23 may 2003

My lecture for the Círculo de Bellas Artes is going well. Outline:

Vallejo and Williams: a poetry of the quotidian needs to find a new colloquial language.

Neruda (Odas elementales), social poetry: the quotidian becomes mere symbol of ideological position, is rhetoricized.

Creative writing workshop poetry, Spanish poetry of "experience": in the absence of political commitment, quotidian becomes mere banality.

Frank O'Hara: poetry of the quotidian works because of the poet's extraordinary life and talent. "The Day Lady Died."

Bernadette Mayer: the project of writing the continuous present.

Present day poets: blogging as diary keeping, Million Poems. The Pepys factor.

Contemporary example from Spain: Concha García: a poetry of deliberate tedium, the refusal of the lyric epiphany.

Conclusion: poetry of the quotidian works when it is linked to experimental project. It doesn't work simply as "realism" or straight talk.

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