Re: Kafka and rilke and Perplexity State University

Hi Jim,

You write:

"The more widely I read contemporary poetry, the more bothered I am by what
passes for poetry these days.  A lot of it is crap."

There's always been plenty of really bad poetry around, even in the days when
your distinctions held in much more firm and fast ways. Every Victorian who
had too much money and free time sat around writing bad verse. Heck, for
every Donne, in his day, I'll bet there were crowds of clerical wannabes writing
junk. That's nothing new, and I don't think the evolution of the genre is
really increasing or decreasing the amount of bad stuff being written (though
technology is certainly increasing the amount of stuff, good bad and indifferent,
being published or otherwise made available to readers).

And yes, I'm sure there is much more poetry "circulating in print" than being
heard -- but that's not quite the same as how much is actually being read.
You know how many people actually see an HBO program in prime time if you add
up all the combined showings? We're talking many millions for each episode of
each show. So I think the difference is not as overwhelming as it might be
concerning just how much poetry is being heard these days compared to how much
is actually being read (outside of classroom assignments, of course). Who
knows...

But it's no matter. I appreciate your personal preferences, even if I don't
share them.

All the best,

--John (happy just have the new Annie Lennox wailing while he works)

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Received on Tue Jul 1 11:40:53 2003