Well Versed
Clive James, provides some interesting insights and analysis while reviewing "Break, Blow, Burn" Camille Paglia's new "intro to poetry."
The term "a poem" is one we have to use, because our author is strong on the point that a poet should be measured by individual poems, and not by a "body of....work." ... Good poems are written one at a time: written that way and read that way. Even "The Divine Comedy" is a poem in the first instance, not part of a body of work; and even in Shakespeare's plays there are passages that lift themselves out of context. Shakespeare the poet ...often burns through Shakespeare the dramatist, not simply in the great soliloquies that have become actors set pieces but in passages throughout his plays that can stand alone as poems.
The penalty for talking about poets in universal terms before, or instead of, talking about their particular achievements is to devalue what they do while fetishizing what they are.
This book on poetry is aimed at a generation of young people who, knowing nothing except images, are cut off from the ''mother ship'' of culture. The mother ship was first mentioned in her 2002 lecture called ''The Magic of Images.'' In the same lecture, she put down the marker that led to this book: ''The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words.'' She can say that again, and let's hope she does, in a longer edition of a book that shows her at her true worth. When you have proved that you can cut the mustard, it's time to cut the malarkey.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/books/review/027JAMESL.html?8bu=&emc=bu&pagewanted=all&position
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The term "a poem" is one we have to use, because our author is strong on the point that a poet should be measured by individual poems, and not by a "body of....work." ... Good poems are written one at a time: written that way and read that way. Even "The Divine Comedy" is a poem in the first instance, not part of a body of work; and even in Shakespeare's plays there are passages that lift themselves out of context. Shakespeare the poet ...often burns through Shakespeare the dramatist, not simply in the great soliloquies that have become actors set pieces but in passages throughout his plays that can stand alone as poems.
The penalty for talking about poets in universal terms before, or instead of, talking about their particular achievements is to devalue what they do while fetishizing what they are.
This book on poetry is aimed at a generation of young people who, knowing nothing except images, are cut off from the ''mother ship'' of culture. The mother ship was first mentioned in her 2002 lecture called ''The Magic of Images.'' In the same lecture, she put down the marker that led to this book: ''The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words.'' She can say that again, and let's hope she does, in a longer edition of a book that shows her at her true worth. When you have proved that you can cut the mustard, it's time to cut the malarkey.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/books/review/027JAMESL.html?8bu=&emc=bu&pagewanted=all&position
Registration required
posted by Morhangeois at 8:07 AM
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