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Poetry across frontiers (09)
response from Seattle, USA
Greetings, all -
I feel compelled to respond to this stream of dialogue.
First off, regarding American culture.
What is regarded as such, must be qualifiied as American Pop culture, which IS detestable. John Paul O'Neill got a glimpse of that with his Slam experience, which is an example of pure Pop Culture. It is often thin and vacuous and attracts people who can be very needy. (I am recalling someone who said academic poets who mumble their academic verse, making the monkeys at the Slam look good.)
On the other hand, the American impulse towards open form as initiated by Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams and extended by the Black Mounatain School, the Beats, etc. is a reaction to the control paradigm, American Consumer culture and the imperialistic tendencies which it fosters.
These open form practitioners feel it important to make poetry relevent to the PLACE, casting off aspects of the other literature and attempting to forge a sense of the infinite. If people around the world take THIS notion from their experience with American poetry & poets, we'll ALL be better off.
The Rothenberg Anthology Poems for The Millennium, Volumes I & II, though somewhat top-heavy with Americans, is quite brilliant and notes other movements from around the world that resonate with the sense of liberation that Whitman embodied/s.
I am no jingoist, nor do I think American poetry can be judged by the Slam. It is a form that is good for people to hone their sense of performance. It is not to be taken seriously. Those who do will likely create work that will not be remembered.
As Duke Ellington once said: If it sounds good, it is.
- Paul E. Nelson
Continue to the next response.
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