Comments on: True Poetry: Criticizing The Critic http://www.worldclasspoetryblog.com/true-poetry-criticizing-the-critic/01/29/2008/ Commentary On 21st Century Poetics Sat, 10 Jul 2010 17:13:20 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: the poet http://www.worldclasspoetryblog.com/true-poetry-criticizing-the-critic/01/29/2008/comment-page-1/#comment-138 the poet Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:07:11 +0000 http://worldclasspoetryblog.com/true-poetry-criticizing-the-critic/01/29/2008/#comment-138 Good thoughts, Jim. You're right about choice. Everyone has preferences and I'm sure there is a poet out there to match every preference. Your views on all of it being valid are very akin to my own philosophy of poetics, which I call Millennialism. The view is that craft, passion, imagination, and raison d'etre are the most important characteristics for a poet to possess. These characteristics accompanied by the study of the techniques available and how other poets have employed them successfully should yield a poet worth his salt. All else is preference. Thanks for reading! Good thoughts, Jim. You’re right about choice. Everyone has preferences and I’m sure there is a poet out there to match every preference. Your views on all of it being valid are very akin to my own philosophy of poetics, which I call Millennialism. The view is that craft, passion, imagination, and raison d’etre are the most important characteristics for a poet to possess. These characteristics accompanied by the study of the techniques available and how other poets have employed them successfully should yield a poet worth his salt. All else is preference. Thanks for reading!

]]> By: Jim Murdoch http://www.worldclasspoetryblog.com/true-poetry-criticizing-the-critic/01/29/2008/comment-page-1/#comment-139 Jim Murdoch Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:53:19 +0000 http://worldclasspoetryblog.com/true-poetry-criticizing-the-critic/01/29/2008/#comment-139 A few goods points in this blog. As for poetry and politics, some poets do deal with political issues head on. I don't. In thirty-five years of writing I've used the word "politics" (actually it was "politicals") once in passing. Beckett was also criticised in his day for not bringing politics into his writing and the gist of his answer, as is mine, is that we don't write about what we want to, we write about what we have to. I can rant about social injustice with the best but there are clear parameters that define what I write about. And that's fine. I shouldn't be lambasted for that. It's like the whole Billy Collins thing. He does what he does. If you get bored with what he does then read something else, it's not as if there's no one out there to choose from. Every writer/artist/whatever has his thing: Rothko did big chunks of fuzzy colour, Pollock did drippy paintings. What's the point in criticising either of them because they're not Rembrandt? There's a place in this world for all of them. The world needs all of them. As for getting more people to read poetry… I've been reading and trying to read poetry for thirty-five years and there is so much pretentious, overblown, self-important, navel-gazing, plain badly-written tripe out there looking down its snotty-nose at readers because they don't "get it" that when I do read a poem that I like and get I'm more taken aback than anything else. I wish people would be done with all these divisive definitions. It's all just writing: 'Ere 'ave a shuftie at this, it's summat I wrote, see if you like it. People read something and it makes sense to them or they impose sense upon it, they decide they like it or they don't and then they get on with real life. Writing is only a part of life, even for writers; it has its place – it can be an important one – but it's not the be all and end all of everything. A few goods points in this blog. As for poetry and politics, some poets do deal with political issues head on. I don’t. In thirty-five years of writing I’ve used the word “politics” (actually it was “politicals”) once in passing. Beckett was also criticised in his day for not bringing politics into his writing and the gist of his answer, as is mine, is that we don’t write about what we want to, we write about what we have to. I can rant about social injustice with the best but there are clear parameters that define what I write about. And that’s fine. I shouldn’t be lambasted for that.

It’s like the whole Billy Collins thing. He does what he does. If you get bored with what he does then read something else, it’s not as if there’s no one out there to choose from. Every writer/artist/whatever has his thing: Rothko did big chunks of fuzzy colour, Pollock did drippy paintings. What’s the point in criticising either of them because they’re not Rembrandt? There’s a place in this world for all of them. The world needs all of them.

As for getting more people to read poetry… I’ve been reading and trying to read poetry for thirty-five years and there is so much pretentious, overblown, self-important, navel-gazing, plain badly-written tripe out there looking down its snotty-nose at readers because they don’t “get it” that when I do read a poem that I like and get I’m more taken aback than anything else. I wish people would be done with all these divisive definitions. It’s all just writing: ‘Ere ‘ave a shuftie at this, it’s summat I wrote, see if you like it. People read something and it makes sense to them or they impose sense upon it, they decide they like it or they don’t and then they get on with real life. Writing is only a part of life, even for writers; it has its place – it can be an important one – but it’s not the be all and end all of everything.

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