Read as much Wordsworth as you can. So I'm taking the graduate seminar, "Wordsworth and His Circle" with Martin Corless-Smith. I was always intrigued by the romantics for their audacity to write poems to essentially save the world. There isn't that kind of poetics any longer, or if there is, I haven't come across it yet. An explanation for this, I will posit, stems from our(poets) lack of ambition. Ambition not only insofar as production and output of poems, but a lack of concern for the grandness of what a poem can be. I'm not saying this is a new end of mine by any means. However, it is interesting to read poems and read about poets, who at one point, believed poetry could achieve certain things that a variety of wars, genocides, and indifference seem to have swept away.
That being said, what is poetry? According to Martin, poetry is seen by many (and this was prefaced with the idea that poetry has in fact earned this reputation) as, "a parlor game for intellectuals." This, as far as I can tell, may indeed be the case. Who reads poems outside of poets? My stance on publishing is ambivalence and indifference. A poem is something that is and will always be regardless of whether it is published today, tomorrow, or the next decade. What do I get outside of some fleeting feeling of satisfaction from seeing my name/poem in print? My ultimate satisfaction is the poem. The poem will figure itself out eventually--both in its eventual becoming and being, as well as ultimate end point. Whatever dusty notebook/laptop/anthology/collection that might be.
Martin :)
