News at Eleven: [Garrison] Keillor's taste in poetry

may differ from [August] Kleinzahler's, and his understanding of what it's for may differ--caricaturally, he thinks it does the soul good, and that makes Kleinzahler wince with embarrassment. (Not that the does-you-good school of thought isn't without well-respected adherents: FR Leavis, for instance, or George Eliot, who said: "If art does not enlarge men's sympathies it does nothing morally.")

But it strikes me as odd that the response is not indifference but active rage: "The indefatigable and determined purveyor of homespun wisdom has wandered into the realm of fire, and for his trespass must be burned."

from The Guardian: What's wrong with popularising poetry? Well, the poets don't seem to like it . . .

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