Poetry month

Andrew O'Hara kindly drew my attention to an article about poetry which may be of interest.

Poetry is very definitely not my thing, but I do hear rumblings from time to time that all is not well in that arena. (Dan Schneider, for example, has been scathing about it.)

Anyway, in his article 'Against Poetry Month as Such', Charles Bernstein has a few things to say about how people want poetry to be nice and polite and easy to read; whereas, the chief virtue of poetry, in Charles's eyes, is that the good stuff ain't easy and nice and polite.

The article also has something to say about the deadly effects of commercial sponsorship. My own view is that such sponsorship is indeed counter-productive (usually), and state subsidy is even worse.