As a fan of modern poetry, I would like to publicly express my outrage at the comments made by Peter Bloxsam in ‘Poets Cornered.’ (The Australian Magazine, 9 June 2001). I believe that poetry, like most other things is simply moving with the times, constantly adapting to the modern audience. Poetry should present the reader with a message, and do so in a visual, almost magical way.
Views that poetry should have rhyme, rhythm and a perfect structure, are the views that Shakespeare had. Poets have changed. Audiences have changed. People have changed. The audiences of old were the upper-class English snobbery, living in a time when people weren’t required to think for themselves, but allowed the leaders of the day- Kings, Lords and Popes, to run their lives. They were unable to interpret thought and thus their poetry had to be easy to follow, with an unmistakable meaning. Abstract and subtle was simply not
. . .
Products of the imagination never make sense- if they did they wouldn’t be products of the imagination, but rather of the brain, of logic. Modern poetry is finally here, and here to stay. The days when the public were told what to believe are over. What Mr Bloxsam perceives as ‘trivial, formless, self-absorbed, crude, pretentious, idiotic, incomprehensible’ is more than likely just an excuse for his inability to conceptualise the meaning of some of the more abstract modern poems. The Australian Magazine should be ashamed to print such an archaic notion. ’ If poetry really is of the imagination, than what good is sense, or grammar? The human imagination is a weird thing. What they also have, however, is the same style of abstract, interpretive meaning that is found in the modern style. Two centuries later, his views are regarded as prophetic, and he as a master visionary.
Yours sincerely,
Tim Smith
. ’ He then goes on to contradict himself with the belief that ‘elementary requirements’ of poetry include ‘sense, grammar, euphony and good taste. Blake sensed this need for a way to bring poetry away from the snobbery, and into the imagination, and now, many years later, a new genre of literature has emerged. The new generation, the ‘popular culture’ think for themselves, thank you very much. Blake is, by all counts, an old style poet. He wrote in the 17-1800’s, his poems rhyme, they have rhythm and they have perfect structure.
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