Re: Criteria time

Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Thu, 08 Jan 1998 11:51:44 -0800

Molly Hall wrote:

> If I cared to take the time I certainly could.  Of course to answer what
> you ask would require twenty/thirty pages for the introdution alone.

Well you certainly sounded like you had the wherewithal with your resounding
"CERTAINLY not" post.

> Let's look at what he is remembered for:  a beat (but not the originator
> of the movement)

You must not know your Beat history. Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs. That was how it
started.

> , a hippie (good enough), his famous poems Howl,
> Kaddish, AMerica, A Supermarket in California, etc., his being openly
> gay as a poet (as WHitman only partially was), etc.  Find and dandy.
> And he could read well.  Absolutely.  He could have made even my
> pathetic attempts at poetry sound decent.  The problem is, even with all
> that, one is left with collections filled with nonsense mutterings and
> an unfortunately large amount of erotic poetry which proves quite boring
> after the first one or two.

Are you gay?

> Like Vivaldi with concertos, he wrote the
> same poem a thousand times.
>
> The beats had their time and it was good.  What they had to say was
> wonderful.  But speaking of what has influenced people in the particular
> genres and how much the artist actually concentrates on his craft, they
> don't stand up to others.  What they were attempting to change was the
> style of T.S. Eliot, Pound, etc.  THose guys were truly interested in
> symmetry, intellect, irony, and wit.

not to mention being pedantic for the sake of it.

> Ginsberg and others attempted to
> create an alternative, like Kerouac w/stream of consciousness, etc.
> They didn't really do it.  Many argue Eliot's "The Waste Land" to be the
> most important poem of the century, at least to poets concerned with the
> craft itself.

Sure, it's a masterpiece, but it also sunk poetry under it's own weight. Joyce did the
same thing with Ulysses: blew the doors right off the 19th century, but prose is a
much larger canvas and you have oodles of space for your own particular scaffolding to
unfold if your ambitions for your text are going to be that all-encompassing. But
,poetry with footnotes is the most ostentatious thing there is. Ginsberg and the Beats
liberated poetry from pedantic ivory towers and got it back in the streets where it
was vibrant and alive again, not worried about "THE CANON." (the, uh, WESTERN canon,
that is)

> As w/poetry, so w/prose:  Today's authors don't turn to
> Kerouac today for inspiration, they still look to Hemingway, STein,
> Fitsgerald, etc.

Name today's authors you're thinking of then.

>  Think of Ginsberg's generation and the man himself
> like any other movement that fit the time. I will continue to read
> Ginsberg and enjoy his often meaningless rants,

an example of his "meaningless rants" please?

> often quite meaningful
> as well, but when it's time to pick up the ol' pen and paper, I'll
> concern myself more with poets like Robert Lowell, Dennis Levertov,
> Robert Creeley, Sylvia Plath.  These were poets concerned with their
> craft that still fall into Ginsberg's category.

You'd call what they do "craft" rather than "art"?

>  They may not all have
> been as outspoken as Ginsberg, but they were all carefully dedicated to
> each individual word when it came to composing.

So you're saying that your definition of a poet is literal: one who writes poetry, as
opposed to, say, the blood of a poet as Cocteau would put it. Am I safe in assuming
you believe the entire Romantic tradition to be nothing but utter codswallop?

> ANd now, since it's a pretty day, I'm going to stop and let you disagree
> with everything.  :)

My word, you are a smug mugwump aren't you? :)