Re: Kafka and rilke and Perplexity State University

Hi Jim,

You write:

"Most poetry these days isn't heard, it's read..."

Actually, I'm not sure this is true at the moment. The country is full of
bars and bookshops and campuses that now host poetry slams. Competitive poetry
is present in almost any town that has a decent size university. Cable
television now has several spoken-word shows, including Def Poetry Jam, that are not
rap or hip-hop shows, but full-blown poetry readings. I suspect as much
poetry is being heard around this country today as is being read, perhaps more.

And any number of pieces in almost all of those readings and slams would
challenge your distinctions about arrangement, I suspect.

And, by the way, Scottie's wrong. Discussing something is not the same as
killing it nor autopsying it. You can discuss it and still allow it to live and
breathe and flourish. We are in no danger whatsoever of killing the patient.
 Poetry is alive and well and always will be, even amidst our discussion of
it and our discussion of such distinctions. The idea that discussing a genre's
characteristics or analyzing a distinction is the same as killing the genre
or taking the life from it or ruining it or even dissecting it is a very old
myth usually maintained and dredged up by those who'd rather not do the work
necessary to participate in the discussion but want to have a say nonetheless.
It's cheap and it's easy and it's just not true.

But thanks, Jim, for the thoughts. I suspect that there are more
"exceptions" than you think, almost enough to make you begin to doubt that the rule is a
rule.

In any case, for what it's worth, pieces like the one I offered, whatever
they might be generically, are widely accepted for entry at "poetry" slams.

Perhaps the word is evolving. Catachresis is one of my favorite tropes.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Tue Jul 1 11:11:50 2003