Coteries Categories Individuals

          
                                    
                                             
See prior Stephen Burt posts: kh00027 and kh00028.     
As strongly as I am against literary packaging,   
which arises from the human need to label things,
I cannot figure out why I consistently allow the    
ruminations of others to draw me into that habit.
Yes it is a memory aid, and yes in the sciences it
is essential, but it tends to limit the scope of 
what a given maker actually makes.  Scientifically,
I am in the category of humans who are less than   
five feet tall.  In the realm of poem-making are  
those who prefer to be members of a coterie and/or   
to be identified as being a maker whose works are  
examples of a specific categorizable nature.  I   
find nothing wrong with that.  But yesterday          
Mark Wallace led me to a post by none other than   
that erudite independent John Latta, a post I had   
already read or at least glanced through.  I read  
it, and realized that my willingness to let Burt  
or whomever have hir say without my trying to be   
confrontational lessens the worth of what I say.  
So this is how on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 
Latta wins.                                             
                                               
                                         
                                               
                                              
kh00029                                    
              

Regarding Burt's The New Thing

         
                                             
                                              
essay in The Boston Review, which I read today  
via a link at Silliman's Blog, several thoughts:             
                                                    
Stephen Burt did a lot of research.                    
-                                                    
His essay is therefore historically valuable.               
-                                               
Establishing and supporting the existence of a          
poetic trend requires a node of activity dedicated  
to making poems of a particular kind.  That, as Burt  
recognizes, poems of the kind he discusses have been  
made for years do help to support his position; they   
are not sufficient to establish a trend.             
-                                                     
Anthologies, presses, journals, blogs, poet-to-poet
communications are the means by which trends are   
established.                                        
-                                                    
I and many, many others are among those who for    
years have written poems of The New Thing kind;
but it wasn't until recently that numerous poets    
began writing entire books of such poems.  *         
Stephen Burt notes that the two best books are                 
Mark Levine's Debt and Rae Armantrout's Next Life.
                                                                   
                                                                 
                                                                  
                                                                 
                                                                    
kh00028           

Stephen Burt Elliptical

          
                                     
                                         
For those of you, who like me, are lagging:             
                                               
Joan Houlihan interviews Stephen Burt                                              
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Stephen Burt reviews Smokes by Susan Wheeler       
                                                   
                                                                      
                                                          
                                                      
kh00027