Distance: 3 miles and take yoga class
trans: The voice I hear
Of the cheerful birds
In the drunken Night
Tags: Tankas and Haikus. Link: Nusquama Friday, April 22, 2011
This weekend the - increasingly disappointing to Ciwt - NY Times ran another of its self-initiated discussion forums. Their topic was Does Poetry Matter? Is it Relevant?
A poet friend I forwarded the whole thing to wrote back in part: ..While I felt that some of the writing was lovely, I found the premise of the debate silly and offensive. It's obvious that poetry is relevant today. There are more people writing and publicly reading poetry today than at anytime in america's history, and if you count Rap in poetry, which I do, it's essentially taken over the music business. When media organs post debates like this about the arts--the viability of theater is another such topic--the underlying intention is to subordinate arts and the artists to other agendas. It's to make the arts safe by making them weak. When artists participate in these debates, whichever side they take, they acquire greater visibility at the price of their own art. I feel strongly that art thrives best when it defines and follows its own terms.
Ciwt liked this response; hers was to go to a local bookstore and buy three volumes of poetry.
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