[acornlive] the purpose of poetry
nessa@indigo.ie (acornlive@dublinwriters.org)
Sun, 11 Apr 1999 10:28:35 +0100
Hi list
I'm posting this as a query, as much as anything else. An
extremely talented poet called Gordon Dunham expressed the
following opinion during a critique of a poem over at our poetry
workshop
http://www.dublinwriters.org/discus/index.html
Gordon said:
"A major function of poetry is to excite and elevate the soul -- which is not
done downbeat, but upbeat. We have had far, far too much downbeat
poetry (if it must be called such)in the past five or six decades. If poetry
depresses, rather than uplifts -- then it had better remain silent. To wish to
show how artfully one can depress people (and by this I do not mean to
include the evocation of a sadness or wistfulness which may have its own
beauty) is a deplorable perversity -- not to be encouraged by well-wishers
of human kind."
I think this is a really interesting point of view, and one that merits debating.
Do you agree with his premise? What do people think?
I'd be interested to hear
Nessa O'Mahony
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