2 hours ago
Dylan Thomas was great, but not uniformly so. His earlier work, such as “The force that through the green fuse” etc is unreadable though nice sounding gibberish.
I can only speak for myself, and my tastes are fairly catholic. I dislike pretentious, pseudo intellectual purportedly academic garbage. I can’t fathom why anyone will like Anne Carson as a poet outside of a small bubble of American leftist artsy types who have a very narrow view and experience of the world.
Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo, Ruth Stone, Henry Vaughan, Ted Kooser - now I’m not widely read, but that’s a range, and they all write it wrote well. Sans gimmicks.
The main reason why I don’t think highly of modern poets is that they are the same shallow, artsy types with no life experience, writing endlessly about the trivial problems of their modern American urban existence. Earlier western poets weren’t such useless pansies. Poe died of rabies and Marlowe got stabbed. Goethe was an administrator. Shakespeare was a wily businessman first and a writer of comedies second. Radnoti was killed by the Nazis.
Ted Kooser was at least a farm boy. Geoff Hill was British. They had real lives. And that reflects in their poetry.
If you don’t love palaeontology, you can’t be a poet.
If you don’t like spreadsheets, you’re a poser
This was a reply to the wrong thread - it was meant for your other post and got mixed up
I can only speak for myself, and my tastes are fairly catholic. I dislike pretentious, pseudo intellectual purportedly academic garbage. I can’t fathom why anyone will like Anne Carson as a poet outside of a small bubble of American leftist artsy types who have a very narrow view and experience of the world.
Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo, Ruth Stone, Henry Vaughan, Ted Kooser - now I’m not widely read, but that’s a range, and they all write it wrote well. Sans gimmicks.
The main reason why I don’t think highly of modern poets is that they are the same shallow, artsy types with no life experience, writing endlessly about the trivial problems of their modern American urban existence. Earlier western poets weren’t such useless pansies. Poe died of rabies and Marlowe got stabbed. Goethe was an administrator. Shakespeare was a wily businessman first and a writer of comedies second. Radnoti was killed by the Nazis.
Ted Kooser was at least a farm boy. Geoff Hill was British. They had real lives. And that reflects in their poetry.
If you don’t love palaeontology, you can’t be a poet.
If you don’t like spreadsheets, you’re a poser
This was a reply to the wrong thread - it was meant for your other post and got mixed up