John Ashbery reads the poem
"Interesting People of Newfoundland"...
American poetry may be about to run out of (such) greatness...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Notes From The Air
American poetry may be about to run out of (such) greatness...
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1 comments:
Wow, that Orr essay really strikes me as fatuous, as though poetic "greatness" is an exclusive Hamptons country club into which, after much sniffing over by the navy double-breasted blazered Orrs of this world, one might eventually be admitted. His remarks on Milosz strike me as especially trolly snark, as it betrays a glib ignorance of the profound sweep of history. Orr dismisses (if he's even aware of it) Milosz's witnessing of WWII and subsequent Communist rule in Poland, the profound impact those enormous soulkilling events and forces had on the individual human spirit, and Milosz's proper role as a poet in documenting them.
I think Orr's asking the wrong question, or perhaps (this is the NY Times, after all) maybe it's precisely the right question for the commercial publishing world. "Greatness" with its cachet sells even poetry, after all.
But the chase after aesthetic greatness - what a way to stifle, perhaps even permanently, one's creativity. Even Ashberry seems to refer to it, in the YouTube you posted on 2/10 (the poem Once Upon a Time There Were Two Brothers):
As I aged
increasingly, I also grew more charitable
with regard to my thoughts and ideas,
thinking them at least as good as the next man’s.
Then a great devouring cloud
came and loitered on the horizon, drinking it up, for what seemed like months or years.
I like what Elizabeth Gilbert has to say (see link to her talk) about nurturing creativity, and how she found a way to quell her fears and anxieties about expectations as to her further creative expressions (after her bestselling memoir). I think her take is really great (wonderful punchline - ole!), and I'm finding it personally very encouraging and reassuring.
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
Loving your blog, as always, John.
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