Category: poetics
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Brilliance
“Probably some of us were taught so long and hard that poetry was a thing to analyze that we lost our ability to find it delicious, to appreciate its taste, sometimes even when we couldn’t even completely apprehend its meaning. I love to offer students a poem now and then that I don’t really understand.…
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Nothing is new anymore, the death of poetry, etc.
I’ve been leading a workshop on poetics at The Writer’s Center for a bit. It’s afforded me the opportunity (and impetus) for going back and rereading some foundational essays that I’ve read and not thought much of since. In a lot of ways, I’ve been surprised, surprised again by them. I’ve reloved Amy Lowell, found…
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"Sounds like a good, cool guy until right about here"
That’s the brief note marked by the former owner of my copy of Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry. It appears here: Hired to talk about literary matters, Pound could nt resist the opportunity to promulgate his political views. His broadcasts were self-indulgent and digressive to the point of incoherence, but…
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Poets Repeat Themselves
One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, “I want to be a poet–not a Negro poet,” meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white poet,”; meaning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet”; meaning behind that, “I would like to be white.” And I…
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Poetry’s Mythology
Every morning I begin the day with a book of poems open at the breakfast table. I read a poem, perhaps two. I think about the poetry. I often make notes in my journal. The reading of the poem informs my day, adds brightness to my step, creates shades of feeling that formerly had been…
Charles Jensen | Writer 