Poetry

Last edited Wed Aug 5, 2015, 09:54 AM - Edit history (1)

I was thinking of Richard Wilbur as an exception to the rule. He's a very fine poet.

I didn't know there was a classification of poetry as "formalist." Could you explain that school and how it came about?

Also, I have to backtrack a little on what I said about Pound because he was a very important influence on some great poets whose poetry took energy from the imagists and symbolists, here thinking mainly of T S Eliot and Guy Davenport. The only problem is that their genius was almost too great for the genre, just as Joyce's was for the novel. It's hard to take an audience along with you if the reader or listener is not privy to all the allusions and inside jokes and secrets, so to speak. But their artistry does rather make up for it, imo, if you can take the time to catch up with it.

I should add that Davenport was more of an experimentalist in the school of art as pure art and artistry, very playful in what I think he would consider the manner of the French. Reading his stuff is a very rich and heady experience, but it takes work to get at the gist through all the allusions. He's like the child in da Vinci's workshop, drinking in genius and then pouring it out himself. I plan to stream my thoughts on the entirety of his work in Da Vinci's Bicycle. I got about halfway through and then other works and interests took me down some different paths. But the book is still sitting on the table right next to me waiting until I'm ready to return to it.

Also, remember, you pointed me to some very bad poetry which turned me in a certain direction. Now, by pointing me to some good American poetry, our conversation can take a different direction.

Do you have any links to the works of any of those "formalist" American poets you mentioned? The only one I'm really familiar with is Wilbur. I have his books and I love the riddles he's been posting. I guess I soured on American poetry because the stuff I had access to over the years wasn't very good. I hope that will change now if I can get access to some good stuff. Thanks.

ananda