Poetry, schmoetry

[The Sanity Inspector]

I know that poetry is indispensible, but to what I could not say.
-- Jean Cocteau

Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.
-- William Wycherley

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-- H. L. Mencken

--
bruce
The dignified don't even enter in the game.
-- The Jam

[Flash]

syna...@hotmail.com (The Sanity Inspector) wrote in message news:<aa4dddce.02041...@posting.google.com>...

> I know that poetry is indispensible, but to what I could not say.
> -- Jean Cocteau
>
> Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.
> -- William Wycherley
>
> A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
> -- H. L. Mencken

"We fear that he will never produce any real good work till he
has made up his mind whether destiny intends him for a poet or for an
advertising agent."

"The basis of literary friendship is mixing the poisened bowl."

--Oscar Wilde

--Flash

[Erica]

> A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
> -- H. L. Mencken

________________

Vex not thou the poet's mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet's mind;
For thou canst not fathom it.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Poet's Mind

Erica
________________

[Flash]

Poets don't count in this country...that's why they are so free, of
course. Artistic freedom is really an insult here. Take Russia or an
East European country like Poland--they are scared shitless of poets.
That's why they ban a lot of anti-government stuff--because they
respect a poet's power. Can you imagine the U.S. government trying to
buy off Allen Ginsberg? Only when they go abroad does that happen,
because people out there, those foreign kooks, listen to poets. Here
in the U.S.A. they don't care what poets say 'cause nobody listens to
them anyway. Poet revolutionaries are the most dangerous of all.
--Abbie Hoffman (1968)
--Flash

[The Sanity Inspector]

On 16 Apr 2002 00:03:24 -0700, CLEARL...@aol.com (Flash) shared
with usenet this thought:

When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I
work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing
matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and
everything matters.
-- Philip Roth, ``Reading Myself and Others,'' Farrar Straus
and Giroux, 1975

[Erica]

> When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I
> work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing
> matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and
> everything matters.
> -- Philip Roth, ``Reading Myself and Others,'' Farrar Straus
> and Giroux, 1975

__________

The fact that poetry is not of the slightest economic or political
importance, that is has no attachment to any of the powers that control the
modern world, may set it free to do the only thing that in this age it can
do -to keep the neglected parts of the human experience alive until the
weather changes; as in some unforeseeable way it may do.
~ Graham Hough, in Bradbury and MacFarlane, Modernism (1991)

Erica
__________

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

In article <3cbcd479$1...@news.chariot.net.au>,
"Erica" <ei...@chariotDELETE.net.au> wrote:

> The fact that poetry is not of the slightest economic or political
> importance, that is has no attachment to any of the powers that control the
> modern world, may set it free to do the only thing that in this age it can
> do -to keep the neglected parts of the human experience alive until the
> weather changes; as in some unforeseeable way it may do.
> ~ Graham Hough, in Bradbury and MacFarlane, Modernism (1991)

In the form of song lyrics, poetry can be of some economic importance.
For example, in 1988, Warner Communications paid $25 million for the
rights to the song "Happy Birthday To You."

--
Daniel P. B. Smith
Email address: dpbs...@world.std.com
"Lifetime forwarding" address: dpbs...@alum.mit.edu

[TheSanityInspector]

On Saturday, April 13, 2002 at 2:35:20 PM UTC-4, TheSanityInspector wrote:
> I know that poetry is indispensible, but to what I could not say.
> -- Jean Cocteau
>
> Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.
> -- William Wycherley
>
> A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
> -- H. L. Mencken

And one of the things that reduce me to annual rage and despair in correcting examination papers is the spectacle of two or three hundred young men and women who have soaked in poetry for two or three years, yet seem, with rare exceptions, not to have absorbed one particle of it into their systems; so that even those who have acquired some knowledge yet think, too often, like pedants, and write like grocers.
-- F.L. Lucas, “Simile and Metaphor”, Style, 1956

[SteveMR200]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 07:24:09 -0800 (PST), TheSanityInspector wrote in
message: <62be671b-93f4-4c24...@googlegroups.com>:

>And one of the things that reduce me to annual rage and despair
>in correcting examination papers is the spectacle of two or three
>hundred young men and women who have soaked in poetry for
>two or three years, yet seem, with rare exceptions, not to have
>absorbed one particle of it into their systems; so that even
>those who have acquired some knowledge yet think, too
>often, like pedants, and write like grocers.
>-- F.L. Lucas, "Simile and Metaphor", Style, 1956

Heaven forbid that we should never read--and praise--
any poems less than perfect.
--C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
_Selected Literary Essays_ [1979]; "Hero And Leander," [1952]

--
Steve