"The real problem with Paxman's comments lies in their incoherence: He is complaining about two different things as if they were the same thing. On the one hand, he urges poets to open up, to write for the general public, to be more accessible; on the other hand, he wants poetry to be better, to be more interesting and captivating. Both are understandable demands, but it's important to recognize that they contradict one another. The best poetry is not always accessible, and the most accessible poetry is usually not good. Emily Dickinson didn't write for a large public, and T.S. Eliot didn't care at all about being clear, yet if you want to read good poetry, you turn to Dickinson and Eliot. Edgar Guest or Rod McKuen, on the other hand, were bestsellers, but who reads them now?
Reading a lot of contemporary poetry at once, the way a judge for a poetry prize does, is inevitably going to be a depressing experience, for the simple reason that most new poetry—like most new work in any art—is mediocre. The past comes to us pre-selected: only what Matthew Arnold called "the best that has been thought and said" makes it into the Norton anthology, while a hundred thousand poems are obliterated for each one that survives. If you had to read every book of poetry published in, say, 1723, you would get equally sick of all those rhymed couplets. To say that more good poetry should be written is like saying there should be more genius in the world: a fine demand, but hard to put into effect."
- Adam Kirsch
- Adam Kirsch
Facinating read...
- Ikhide
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