February 28, 2007

Richard Kostelanetz, "Advice to a Young Poet," Melee 1.1 (Jan 2007): 14-5.

"In writing your own poetry, don't do anything too conspicuously alternative either in content or form; your poetry will be judged 'acceptable' only to the degree that it resembles what other people are doing. [. . . ] Do not confuse the values of poetry with visual art or even concert music, where ambitious aspirants know they won't get anyone's attention unless they do something uniquely different from their predecessors. Writing poetry with character or a stylistic signature, as the great early moderns did, is definitely old-fashioned; it's strictly for 'wild men' nowadays" (15).