Against Poetry
Posted by ben on 10 Nov 2007 at 12:08 pm | Tagged as: essays, poetry
It’s wonderful that we live in an age in which an essay such as this can exist:
Melancholy and joy are poetry’s modest, binary legacy. Affirmation and repudiation taken together form a somewhat psychotic gesture, the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” casually borrowed from the Roman caesars (both caesars and poets rely on the thumb). And isn’t poetic melancholy at times only rapture in disguise, as if the poet wished to enjoy inspiration just a bit longer and so hides it in a heat-resistant container? At times these affirmations and negations may be slightly ahistorical, pronounced without reference to new facts and conclusions. The court assembles, experiences inspiration and, ignoring the witnesses, ignoring both the prosecutor and the defense, passes its apodictic, beautifully composed sentence. Is Baudelaire’s complaint really so different from Ovid’s?
Lady Lyndon bathes while being read poetry by a servant
the problem with homey’s essay(ie the reason i didnt feel like reading till the end) was that it was obvious he was being ironic. after having read the conclusion i wonder about the educational advantages he was afforded that have kept him out of bourgeoisie muck, above the little people in idaho who know not the aesthetic ravages they impose upon poor Dr. Zagajewski.
“The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to make ourselves; and that our renascence or our ruin will alike, ultimately and equally, testify with a trumpet to our .”