[Andrew Szilvasy]

Michael Bazzett, whose poetry I have often enjoyed, has a compelling read on the "dangers" of craft.

http://lithub.com/how-fetishizing-cr...f-a-good-poem/

[John Isbell]

Thank you, Andrew, that is a nice piece.

John

[Roger Slater]

I'm not really grooving on what he's saying. Of course "the reader wants something alive inside that structure." Who is saying otherwise? He's arguing with something that no one ever said.

[John Riley]

I'll search out his poetry but am not impressed with his thinking here. I like that he talks of the long process of finding a voice and method but don't know he ever makes the point, a point, clear. How is it about craft?

[Michael Cantor]

I think we all work and react differently. This is Bazzett's experience and Bazzett's reaction. There's nothing here I strongly disagree with, but the only thing I find extraordinary about it is that he seems to think it's a big deal.

[John Isbell]

I like his contrast between "honest labor," based on an acquired and acquirable body of knowledge, and poems that just happen, under the radar poems so to speak. I know I continue to add a little value to poems that took me a lot of work, and perhaps to subtract value from ones I tossed off in minutes. Surely the labor counts for something.
As Whistler put it in his libel suit, "I don't ask five thousand pounds (or whatever) for five minutes' work, but for the experience of a lifetime."

Cheers,
John

Update: 200 guineas, evidently: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...h-1440343.html