As Kasey Mohammad says, we've sparred a few times about which tradition, which structures, are the best foundation for serious contemporary poetry, but his description of the miserable goings-on in a typical Creative Writing workshop is spot on, and it makes me as crazy as it does him. As much as I disagree with him, I bet his students learn something about writing.
Robert Pinsky, last Friday, had a pretty good, mostly non-polemical piece at Slate about poets and war. I'm not a particular fan of his poetry--which also seems pretty good and non-polemical--and Jonathan Mayhew likes it less than that. But Jonathan, what in the world do you see in Ron Padgett?
Ron Silliman says langpo isn't hard, and he points approvingly to his half-sibling's description of Ron's own work as "structured like a walk on a path: "You see one thing, then you see another.'" Well, yeah. It isn't hard. But just why, Ron, is it "invariably a sign of deprivation" when it's Philip Larkin's work that "may be apprehended on some level at a single sitting"?
6:00:08 PM
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