Tuesday 17 December 2019


Columnists


this post has been taken down. (editorial decision)
Original post started:
My first reaction, almost, was the dread that [a] the Poetry World would lie about [...]'s drug problems [b] they would lie about the connection between his poems about polychrome visions and paranoia and drug highs and come-downs [c] this would set up a false position which I might occupy but which would fall in on all of us. 


(addition) I am interested in the distinction between insecure paranoia and documentary testimony. And whether anybody believes poetry. That joke about columnists being cheap copy for bankrupt newspapers because there is no fact-checking needed, and who the hell fact-checks poetry. So poetry as testimony is worth no more than columnists. This doesn't sound right. Some poets are telling it how it is. Maybe there should be a website where experts do fact-checks on poetry. Even an allegory should reflect a real-world process in some way.
Even someone who likes Blake probably isn't going to ask for funding for a dig to verify his account of the feats of the Children of Albion. "Remains of 5th Zoa found in Clackmannanshire": hardly.

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps strangely I do believe in poetry as being about facts, even if some several steps away from easy or exact definition. But let's say I don't think anyone pretends to understand consciousness.

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