Email me at jmayhew at ku dot edu
"The very existence of poetry should make us laugh. What is it all about? What is it for?"
--Kenneth Koch
“El subtítulo ‘Modelo para armar’ podría llevar a creer que las
diferentes partes del relato, separadas por blancos, se proponen como piezas permutables.”
Páginas
▼
22 jul 2005
He has it wrong... Maybe so. I often am wrong. The original context of this was that I personally, as a writer, would not use a tired phrase like "wander the earth" without some self-awareness that this was indeed a tired phrase. I would never rule out all un-ironic or "sincere" uses of language in poetry. As for that, there is plenty of "Old Sincerity" still out there. Isn't that what Louise Glück does? There's a solemnity untempered by sensitivity to tone. These people don't listen to themselves. They aren't aware of how they sound.
I wish I hadn't typed, "He has it wrong." It wasn't what I meant, but in the search for a "title" I mis-typed. I apologize if I started a little arguement or something. I was interested in what you were saying. It made me think about why I get so upset when people can't just "feel" things anymore...
ResponderEliminarI should have said, "I understand this differently" or maybe "I hope I can explain why one might use 'wander the earth' in a poem... though I agree with you about the Gluck. I feel much the same.
I would just phrase my objections differently.
I think my beef is with all the kids I went to grad school with, who preferred difficulty to sentimentality. As though these descriptive terms had inherent values.