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A World of Things
Bill Knott asks some important (to the extent that poetry is important) questions here and here. His focus is Objectivism (the Zukofsky/Williams/Reznikoff/Oppen Objectivism, not the hilariously stupid “philosophy” cooked up by that maven of selfishness, Ayn Rand), one of the root assumptions of which is the notion that content doesn’t matter. In fact, Objectivist poetry exalted a world of things, a world without meaning—except for the significance imposed upon it by the poet.Read More
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Those Who Can’t Do…
I highly recommend a visit to Ron Silliman’s blog post today, in which you can savor his disordered thought process in all its glory. He starts off with a school-marmish sneer toward Curtis Faville for using parodize instead of the correct parody in the comments stream, while going on to note that there have been plenty of parodies of Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem, “tho I don’t recall linking to any.” You see, in Silliman’s world, “tho” is acceptable but “parodize” is not, undoubtedly because “tho” was sanctified by his Objectivist hero George Oppen.Read More