Poetry and Class

SoNotHer · 10-27-2011, 01:34 PM

Poetry has long been an act of revolution, and poets have come from and worked outside of a class for as long.

I don't have an iPhone or iPod, but I would be interested in what podcasts you're listening to, Nat.

I once listened to a heated debate among poets about a popular poet (working class background) with Nazi sympathies. He and his poetry received a real post-mortem dissection and evisceration.

I don't like Nazis, and I'm sorry he was so misguided. But I like his poetry. And as I suggested in that discussion, if we're going to start thinning out the canon because someone was a wife beater, and someone else was an adulterer, and someone else was queer, and someone else was just nasty, and other folks came from a class other than our own, then we're going to get down to a very small number of readable folks and maybe zero.

What I find more amazing is the amount of people who proclaim they write poetry and don't actually read or listen to other people's poetry. In fact, a student recently told me that he not only didn't read/listen to other poetry but that he didn't need to. And here I thought we were all teachers and students, poets and readers, artists and audiences, changing roles in an interconnected universe.

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10-27-2011, 01:34 PM	#3
SoNotHer Senior Member How Do You Identify?: Professional Sandbagger and Jenga Zumba Instructor Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: In the master control room of my world domination dreams Posts: 2,811 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 6,587 Thanked 4,736 Times in 1,409 Posts Rep Power: 21474851	Poetry has long been an act of revolution, and poets have come from and worked outside of a class for as long. I don't have an iPhone or iPod, but I would be interested in what podcasts you're listening to, Nat. I once listened to a heated debate among poets about a popular poet (working class background) with Nazi sympathies. He and his poetry received a real post-mortem dissection and evisceration. I don't like Nazis, and I'm sorry he was so misguided. But I like his poetry. And as I suggested in that discussion, if we're going to start thinning out the canon because someone was a wife beater, and someone else was an adulterer, and someone else was queer, and someone else was just nasty, and other folks came from a class other than our own, then we're going to get down to a very small number of readable folks and maybe zero. What I find more amazing is the amount of people who proclaim they write poetry and don't actually read or listen to other people's poetry. In fact, a student recently told me that he not only didn't read/listen to other poetry but that he didn't need to. And here I thought we were all teachers and students, poets and readers, artists and audiences, changing roles in an interconnected universe.