tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post2142566402200661014..comments2023-12-16T02:44:20.427-06:00Comments on Reginald Shepherd's Blog: The Mirage That We Call "Poetry"Reginald Shepherdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11965170916626482963noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-76935367250047305052007-02-26T16:12:00.000-06:002007-02-26T16:12:00.000-06:00I like poetry, but most of all I love spoken word!...I like poetry, but most of all I love <A HREF="http://spokenwordart.com" REL="nofollow">spoken word</A>!Scott Hugheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14311961380750048408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-76798785388597410832007-02-26T15:12:00.000-06:002007-02-26T15:12:00.000-06:00Dear Mr.Shepherd, I am struck by a mental picture ...Dear Mr.Shepherd, I am struck by a mental picture of a 'smith' engaged in the work of his forge. I do love the heat he must feel as he stands in charge of the fire,bringing proper fire to the peice,each stroke of hammer and all that forces its blow to ring out. I love his knowing the purpose of a thing,<BR/>the magic of its place in the world<BR/>and knowing his moment of imbuing a cross-sharing pf life into its nature. He is the 'smith',I come ther in need of his service, and for the look in his eye when he first set them upon me. In each of his actions I sense knowing the soul of a thing by touch,taste,sound,shape and color.<BR/>The depth of his expression,even the way he holds things seems as strong as every single one of the relations I have with the world. I know he shares my desire of being something of use. I find my self singing. SPH<BR/><BR/>P.S. Sorry I left out smell,perhaps I was holding my nose at the time these words were coined.scotlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01549546977518972516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-57185834792651358492007-02-26T11:36:00.000-06:002007-02-26T11:36:00.000-06:00Dear John,Thanks for your comment. I agree that to...Dear John,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your comment. I agree that to say that poets "write the poems they need" says nothing about the quality of those poems, whether they are worth reading or worth writing. It can even be read as condescension: obsessive-compulsives, after all, also do the things that they need to do.<BR/><BR/>To say that a poet needs to write a poem hardly says that a reader needs to read it. It could imply just the opposite, that the poem is only a psychological symptom, of interest to no one but the author and perhaps his or her therapist.<BR/><BR/>Take good care, and thanks for commenting.<BR/><BR/>ReginaldReginald Shepherdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11965170916626482963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-51321428959333148462007-02-26T11:08:00.000-06:002007-02-26T11:08:00.000-06:00The bit on Barr was well done here. Barr will be g...The bit on Barr was well done here. Barr will be giving a version of his talk at AWP in Atlanta. I hope that he's been reading up for it, and revising.<BR/><BR/>I don't think Silliman's being genuine here. Though he's right about his few positive reviews, he's delivered them with an air of "look everybody, I like some poems of quietude!" <BR/><BR/>"Necessary for them" is such a weird way to approach a poet's work. One could say that about Kooser as well. It doesn't make the poems any better . . . it just runs them through some cult of personality.John Gallaherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02112997671155171626noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-75676062047737565422007-02-26T09:21:00.000-06:002007-02-26T09:21:00.000-06:00Glenn Ingersoll,I will ignore the tone of your com...Glenn Ingersoll,<BR/><BR/>I will ignore the tone of your comment and respond to its subtance.<BR/><BR/>If it were obvious that there are different kinds of poetry with different methods and aims, most of the arguments and rifts in the poetry world would not exist. Obviously we recognize differences (how could we not?), but we still too often end up speaking of "my kind of poetry" as "poetry" itself. I am as guilty of this as anyone else.<BR/><BR/>One need hardly be an angel to try to approach objectivity. To think that one would, that all judgments are purely subjective or arbitrary, as you imply, is the worst sort of unthought-out relativism, in the pejorative sense.<BR/><BR/>Very few people, in poetry or in other areas of life, attempt to see things in their own terms or for themselves (which, again, does not preclude later judgment). But they should.<BR/><BR/>Reginald ShepherdReginald Shepherdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11965170916626482963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-51335337489403795402007-02-26T08:39:00.000-06:002007-02-26T08:39:00.000-06:00Poets & critics are doing two different things. T...Poets & critics are doing two different things. This fact probably accounts for some of the confusion. Open-mindedness & generosity should be part of the critic's ethical equipment. Often, however, in the case of the poet, his/her poetry is the ONLY real poetry out there - & its uniqueness often contains (sometimes in disguised form) a ferocious and "unfair" critique of other poetries. I'm not saying this is always the case, or that it's admirable - it's just there. It's part of poetic license. The poet is not required to be fair and evenhanded in the same way the critic must be.Henry Gouldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06763188178644726622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-28486121091548536352007-02-25T18:28:00.000-06:002007-02-25T18:28:00.000-06:00Duh.I suppose that looks like a criticism. It's no...Duh.<BR/><BR/>I suppose that looks like a criticism. It's not. Rather, I'm tired of the argument, the idea that one has to make this argument, especially among educated people. I mean, isn't it, like, totally obvious that <A HREF="http://lovesettlement.blogspot.com/2004_10_14_archive.html" REL="nofollow">poetry is not one thing</A>?<BR/><BR/>During an editorial board meeting for a literary magazine I made an argument much like yours: "[P]ostpone ... judgment until the poem has been understood on its own terms. It is only then that one can determine one’s position toward those terms, to evaluate whether what was done was done well or badly, and to decide whether it was worth doing at all." The response I got: "We're not angels like you, Glenn."<BR/><BR/>Ach. It didn't at the time, but it makes me laugh now!Glenn Ingersollhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674475308395975995noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-63481349043888215422007-02-25T10:40:00.000-06:002007-02-25T10:40:00.000-06:00Dear Ron,First, let me say that I'm very pleased a...Dear Ron,<BR/><BR/>First, let me say that I'm very pleased and, yes, honored that you are still reading my blog and that you chose to post a comment.<BR/><BR/>Given that my piece was somewhat polemical, there was an element of conscious overstatement in the passage to which you object, which sets you and John Barr up as polar opposites who nonetheless share a similarity (extremes meet and all that). And in fact John Barr is considerably more narrow and rigid in his ideas than you are.<BR/><BR/>It is true that there are poets who are not "avant-garde" or "post-avant" whom you have praised. Nonetheless, you are highly consistent in what you praise and, especially, in what you dismiss.<BR/><BR/>The unsystematic and apparently random quality of the exceptions that you make to your own strictures gives me as a reader the feeling, not that your strictures and categories are flexible and capacious, but that your exceptions are arbitrary, made for reasons that are never clear to me, except in personal or, sometimes, social terms (poets from approved ethnic minority groups tend to get a pass).<BR/><BR/>For example, Daisy Fried lives in Philadelphia and didn't do an academic poetry degree, and thus perhaps has an "outsider" cachet (though she's published by my publisher). Her work doesn't seem to me any different from much other work that you dismiss. I can see no principle on which to distinguish her work from that other work.<BR/><BR/>I am sorry if I have misrepresented you, but if so, I remain convinced that it is only a matter of degree, not of kind. That there are occasional exceptions to my assertion does not make the assertion as a whole untrue.<BR/><BR/>Thanks again for reading, and take good care.<BR/><BR/>ReginaldReginald Shepherdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11965170916626482963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-10045146058947816122007-02-25T10:03:00.000-06:002007-02-25T10:03:00.000-06:00True Ron, to my knowledge you don't assert that th...True Ron, to my knowledge you don't assert that that your kind of poetry is the only kind worth writing/having, at least not directly (though Reginald may know something I don't). <BR/><BR/>But there are different ways of asserting these things. When you grandly dismiss Yeats as "operating out of a context that has little to do with U.S., frankly" or mischievously title a link to an article that praises Frost as "what's wrong with Irish poetry" (to cite just 2 examples) you are making such sweeping statements (using such a ridiculously broad brush) that one could easily be forgiven for assuming that you are being VERY assertive about what kind of poetry is or isn't permissible.Mark Granierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09899629187771913398noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-54130539838786035762007-02-25T06:44:00.000-06:002007-02-25T06:44:00.000-06:00It's provably not true that I assert that only "my...It's provably not true that I assert that only "my kind of poetry" (even writ large, as the whole of post-avant) is the only kind worth writing/having. I think, as I've said before, in fact of you specifically, that I think poets (or at least most poets) write the poems they need. And I've reviewed positively such folk as Wendell Berry, Daisy Fried, Jack Gilbert precisely because what they write clearly is necessary for them.Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250950725876683923noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-25989520808354304852007-02-25T04:28:00.000-06:002007-02-25T04:28:00.000-06:00Hello there Reginald, from Melbourne Australia. Wo...Hello there Reginald, from Melbourne Australia. Would you contribute a haiku to my blog - Hot Cross Haiku? :-)Hot Cross Haikuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07531752566477051790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-43571870469663316312007-02-24T20:38:00.000-06:002007-02-24T20:38:00.000-06:00An eminently reasonable post, but isn't the Mao al...An eminently reasonable post, but isn't the Mao allusion in the concluding section somewhat ill-considered? In light of how those hundred flowers ended up, am I paranoid in finding Houlihan's provisional musing in the final sentence a bit ... <I>sinister</I>?Kasey Mohammadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13353259413006470925noreply@blogger.com