how did poetry criticism get to this point where feelings have trumped concepts?
calvin bedient spills his feelings about the state of poetry in an article for the boston review entitled "against conceptualism". it's about how this kids these days write poems using "concepts" instead of "feelings". it's the latest, and truly one of the laziest, attempts to separate "poetry" into 2 camps pitted against one another where only one can win. the entire premise is impossible to take seriously, but luckily for bedient, since "concepts" are precisely what's on trial here, he need not be bothered with fleshing his own out.
bedient writes:
"back in my day, we wrote from our hearts... and damn it if we didn't even know that was a metaphor, because knowing things was for brains, and we wanted nothing to do with that".
that may or may not be an exact quote, but it sure feels like it could be.
1 comment:
CS
said...
I sort of wandered away around the part when he said that you writing conceptual poetry makes it impossible for other people to write anything else, or causes them to wither, or, er, something. He'd already wank...I mean, name-dropped all over the place, and things were getting messy, and I was bored. Final grade: tl;dr.
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1 comment:
I sort of wandered away around the part when he said that you writing conceptual poetry makes it impossible for other people to write anything else, or causes them to wither, or, er, something. He'd already wank...I mean, name-dropped all over the place, and things were getting messy, and I was bored. Final grade: tl;dr.
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