28 jul 2004

What makes Henry cranky

"Ron Silliman, Steve Evans specialize in denouncing the Dominant Mainstream.

This just makes me depressed.  All these pigeonholes & lists."

 The best remedy is just to promote, as eloquently as possible, one's own vision of poetry. That's what Ron is doing 9 days out of 10, and what I try to do on my best days. Steve's lists are exhausting, but not negative (by and large.) I feel that just by putting some poems by Coolidge (or whoever) out there for public discussion I am implicitly denouncing the "mainstream"--by showing one alternative to it. I don't believe anyone who's lived with challenging contemporary poetry like this for a few years would go back to Billy Collins. Once in a while I give into my urge to bash something, but I usually wait a bit to see if this urge will fade.

No hay comentarios: