on this issue, he levels some important criticism at contemporary poets and poetry.
His first point claims, "I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems."
from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101: Donald Hall on Ambition
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2 comments :
It's an interesting essay with some good points. But doesn't everyone want to write great poems that last forever? I doubt that ambition has gone. It's just that it's not so easy!
Hi Rob,
Three Linda Sue Grimes items this week. She is dedicated.
I agree wholeheartedly with your take.
Usually, I don't really care personally. It would seem odd to me to look through the glass at the world a hundred or thousand years from now and see a picture of me in an institutional corridor alongside Plato and Shakespeare, or Billy Collins and Donald Hall. So my vision isn't there.
As a rule, as a craft, interest or passion, I would like to be better, though, and write great poetry, but in the sense of getting the poem I am writing at a given time to be as good as it can be, or maybe better, to make it all it is suppose to be--and hopefully to make it a great one if that's what it seems it should be. So I like the idea of his focus, that when a poet is writing, it is about the poem not the poet or the social circle.
I find myself in with the social contradiction as well. I tend to be very social, both online in many workshops plus blogs, and in person especially with a group of poets I have as dear friends, and others I have met--never one I didn't like. But there's a detachment as well, something very Lone Rangerish about the whole enterprise.
A month or so ago, I got to meet Hall briefly for the second time. But before I did I participated in the Q&A at the end of his reading. That led to this blog post: The Gifts of Donald Hall: "Retriever", which displays a poem. It's a great one, I think.
Thanks again.
Yours,
Rus
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