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Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Cantor
I am sick and tired of people writing about people writing about people writing about people writing about poetry, and we appear to have a fresh outbreak on the Sphere recently on this and several other threads. You want to be a poet? Write poems! Write whatever you personally regard as poems. Bounce them off some people you trust, find a local group you feel comfortable with, work with Eratosphere or equivalent. The focus should be on writing, not on blathering on about the future of poetry, the meaning of poetry, the end of poetry.
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I agree with my whole heart.
Yes, I read Walther’s opinion piece yesterday in the NYT. Like James points out, the author shot himself in the leg with his opening declaration, "Like many millennials...". His contributions as a guest writer for the NYT are “hit or miss”. This one is wildly off target. It’s as if he interpreted Eliot’s
The Waste Land as being a self-fulfilling, metaphoric prophecy of poetry’s demise. (To parlay Michael's thoughts — and be morose and possibly profane — What are we doing here? engaging in necrophilia?) He might have a point insofar as Eliot’s poetry being a tipping point/catalyst that catapulted poetry into a new age — but death?! It’s a can of worms proposition that is better off being thrown away with the recyclables. If you really want to get depressed read the comments that swallow the proposition he makes hook, line and sinker.
To his “hit or miss “ credit, he has made a provocative suggestion for reviving the world's greatest game (Baseball — That’s with a capital “B” and that rhymes with “G” and that stands for God’s Game). I remember John Whitworth’s love of the game of Cricket and I privately thinking of that game (cricket) as being the John The Baptist of metaphor-infused games: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he [Baseball] that cometh after me is mightier than I.”
He also wrote an interesting opinion piece on the occasion of Norm MacDonald’s death a few years ago that hit the sweet spot at the crossroads of humor and Christianity.
But poetry is dead? Long live poetry!
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