May 20, 2012 we have (2016 pdf files in our database)
Short Desciption: The Poetry Circus DAVID MASON Circus to cheer myself up. He may have been a depressive, but at least he believed in literature. These days itrsquo;s hard to get anyone to read works of the imagination in any form, and poets, the mo
Content Inside: The Poetry Circus DAVID MASON Circus to cheer myself up. He may have been a depressive, but at least he believed in literature. These days itrsquo;s hard to get anyone to read works of the imagination in any form, and poets, the most desperate and needy of imaginative writers, circus dominated by windbags and bletherers, with a few charming clowns and pickpockets at the margins. If you buy a ticket to the show, you usually end up disappointed, loping out of the big tent, looking for a good novel or film to take up the slack. Schopenhauer believed in masterpieces and the viability of poetry that could reach readers everywhere in the stands. To many contempo- rary minds, this is a contradiction, but as the philosopher said, ldquo;. . . nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand; just as contrarily, nothing is more difficult than to express deep things in such a way that everyone must necessarily grasp them.rdquo; Surely some kinds of difficulty are better than others. What we too often have in contempo- rary poetry is not difficulty. It is novelty for the sake of novelty. Style becomes a function of irrelevance, there to get the poet noticed rather than offering the reader a vital gift. Perhaps this is why Mark Strand seems the representative poet of our time. He has had a major career without ever writing a great poem. The Man and Camel 1 written with complacency. Still, Schopenhauer reminds me that I should judge an author by his best work, not his worst, otherwise Man and Camel characteristically thin, five of its twenty-three poems rise above the rest with