nce upon a time, there was a Young Intellectual Poet who lived with his friends in a beautiful tower. He loved poems, and read often. One day, he read a Great Poem that imparted to him a deep sense of mystery. Assuming the poem itself must actually be a mystery, he set out to solve […]
By now, I have heard many poets complain about accessibility in poetry, and how it waters down the art. In fact, I have always firmly believed that poetry is about communicating an experience through art. The reader necessarily has to bring their faculties to bear, and maybe do some work. But beyond some pretty basic
I’ve been following some of Ron Silliman’s recent posts about the effect he and Gabe Gudding have been tracing of “McPoem”–cookie-cutter work based on personal experience churned out through the business of MFA programs–on the course of poetry in the past thirty years. Ron’s musings on Gudding seem to imply a strong connection between, “self-expression
