"But that a downright simpleness, under the affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and a preference of mean, degrading or at best trivial associations and characters, should succeed in forming a school of imitators, a company of almost religious ardent admirers, and this too among young men of ardent minds, liberal education and not
with academic laurels unbestowed;
and that this bare and bald counterfeit of poetry, which is characterized as below criticism, should for nearly twenty years have well-nigh engrossed criticism, and the main, if not the only butt of review, magazine, pamphlet, poem and paragraph; this is indeed matter of wonder! Of yet greater is it, that the contest should still continue as undecided as that between Bacchus and the frogs in Aristophanes, when the former descended to the realms of the departed to bring back the spirit of old and genuine poesy."
--S.T. Coleridge, from Biographia Literaria
T'is an obvious take upon what "The Poems" means (as I would say to Pricer at some godawful reading I'd say, Look, man, that dude is okay but he doesn't know "The Poems", which takes it deeper & should be a standard by which to read & know & what's got that fore-arm shivver to the heart & the mind of it) just that there ain't a whole lot of the hundred thousand million soi-disant poets what knows "The Poems". The fucking schoolboys & profs have no clue...in fact maybe nobody does, since it's not a quantifiable or empirical, it's always gonna be that feeling that is only there in the words that dance it, sing it, & defy the Definitions 101 class dissection unit. We can only talk our way around it, but it takes a while to get hold of that notion since we'd like to explain these things. Bad human habit
"Poems were made for the pleasure of making them, not for the purpose of being merely 'understood' by the literary scholars and bluestockings who edify themselves with the 'study' of poetry."
--Philip Whalen
The UC Press New California Poetry series is a good example of how academia has skewed the picture. The books published in this series, allegedly designed to be “reflective of California literary traditions”, have more to do with a worn-out east coast academic intellectualism than with the reality of a living California or West Coast poetry. Actually they could have been written in any university setting, anywhere, & are "reflective" of nothing but that closed, self-sustaining system.
Fuck it all anyway...you can slam your head against it all you want. Corporate poetry is what it is & has been for as long as I can remember. "O, poet! show me your resume!"
My take on California poetry is all West Coast -- a poetry that perhaps is best characterised by the ancient indigenous Ohlone song which goes,
“Dancing on the brink of the world.”
