(Click on the logo to return to the main blog.)

Poets Don't Have to Be Flakes!
01/30/2003

The White House has postponed a poetry symposium. (Apparently, British dictionaries, at least those owned by the Guardian, define "postpone" and "cancel" as synonyms.) The poets invited were giving indications that they planned to turn it into an anti-war slamfest.

The symposium was apparently meant to be about Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman, not some freeform ego trip for the poets. Furthermore, modern "artists" are woefully inadequate in their originality. Their way of looking at the world froze in the sixties. Perhaps the First Lady should have turned the event into a much-needed encouragement for patriotic writers. Sometimes, it seems as if the world accepts that poets and poetry must be left leaning... just the way it is, nothing to be done.

Frankly, I'm of the opinion that modern poets are in the process of hammering away at the last few nails in the coffin of cultural respect for the art form. And that's a damned shame.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:00 AM EST