[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Ben Lerner writes about "the disdain for poetry" in the LRB.

Duncan

[John Whitworth]

'you’re moved to write a poem because of some transcendent impulse to get beyond the human, the historical, the finite. But as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms. So the poem is always a record of failure.'

Well, I don't know about you, Duncan, but that does not describe in any way the reasons I write a poem. 'Some transcendent impulse'? No, nothing like that. 'Get beyond the human'? Why should I want to do that. Looks like adolescent twaddle to me. 'The song of the infinite'? Nope.

It might describe a poem by Kurt Schwitters, I suppose. Or this in English.

The Loch Ness Monster's Song

Sssnnnwhuffffll?
Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl?
Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl.
Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl –
gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw gm.
Hovoplodok – doplodovok – plovodokot-doplodokosh?
Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl fok splfok!
Zgra kra gka fok!
Grof grawff gahf?
Gombl mbl bl –
blm plm,
blm plm,
blm plm,
blp.

Edwin Morgan

[ross hamilton hill]

I get tired of poetry some times, and tired of academics who write about it, this article is long-winded.

I actually liked S1 of the Tay poem, I thought it unintentionally very funny, I liked the meter too.

I expect poetry to be about this world, we are not angels, we can't write about heaven, maybe a religious vision, some saints have written about those, but religious visions don't necessarily make good poetry. I love poems about this world, I like the window they provide into another's experience of life.

[Ed Shacklee]

For a good poet, like Keats, talking about what can't be described is another very skillful way to describe something.

Disdain? Meh. The article sets a goal that nothing human can achieve, and no one I know agrees with, then blames poetry for not achieving it. Isn't literature part of the Humanities?

Best,

Ed

[Rick Mullin]

This article reminds me of my disdain for Marianne Moore.

[Susan McLean]

Wow! What a self-hating and self-defeating argument. I do think it exposes the ways in which the desire of avant-garde poets to be always ahead of the curve is impossible, because whatever they have written is immediately "so yesterday." But it doesn't seem to explain why anyone can love poetry. Yet I do. Not all poetry, but there are a lot of poems that I genuinely love, both contemporary and earlier. I don't love them because of their politics. I love them as poems. So sue me.

Susan