Entering a new world

[Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni]

First, my thanks to Conrad DiDiodato for introducing me to this network. He had already earned a legion of fans with his lovely Yahoo Group Venus at Dusk. Sharing poetry online is a silent activity, but it serves the soul, and the artform, by allowing the writer to create a piece, and share it without fear. The readers then can respond, sometimes with advice for minor adjustments, sometimes with unbridled praise. If there is no response, that is the fatal response from peers. Back to the drafting board if that is the message.
Why do we still write poetry?
Because we have to.Without poetry in the air, words would die. Ideas would melt into a puddle like a candle at the end of the evening. Songs are best written by poets with music in their heads. Start with folksongs, and work your way along the years to songs in plays, and opera, and vaudeville, and jazz, and rock songs, and hip-hop, and rhythm and blues, and rap. All poetry put to music.
Catches you by the throat, makes you open eyes wide, when a poem gets through the fog to you.
That's why I like it. That's why we need it. Poetry, an essential ingredient for a healthy life.

[Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni]

The idea of "poetry community" is full of promise. How good it would be if artists and writers felt secure enough to share their thoughts without prejudice in circles of creativity. Sad to say, this doesn't happen often. There is a human tendency to compete, to outdo, to win something, anything to prove superiority. Andy Warhol called it, though-- everyone will be famous (Nota bene:) for 15 minutes. Our discussion here is exploring whether we think that fight for fame is worth the damage done. Should writers push and shove in the course of "creative writing" class, or a writer's group? It seems that we three, Conrad, Carol and I, are not of that ilk. We appreciate the encouragement that comes from sharing our poems with a positive attitude. There are ways to make suggestions for improvements; sometimes it takes an outside reader to spot a weak word or a wonky rhythm, etc. Good editing is part of the craft. Put-downs are not.

Associations, however, seem to be inevitable in our Canadian context, as an organizing method in a country as widespread as ours. The vitality of an Association always depends on who is sitting around the table, so to speak.

Now I am going to contact some other writers I know to invite them to join this super Network.
Caroline

[Conrad DiDiodato]

Hi Caroline

You've made a very elegant case for the importance of both writing 'community' and Associations: perhaps the most we can hope for is a table of talented, impassioned and generous-hearted people like you and Carol, from which to develop a truly national poetry that puts us on the map, for once
.
As I've said, I'm not afraid to be unabashedly Canadian here!

Conrad

[Conrad DiDiodato]

Carol,

those poems in a drawer (like Emily Dickinson's) set the pattern for what followed, whether you were conscious of it or not. If Dickinson's poems had been thrown away (and they almost were), would she still have been a great poet? Of course. Processes of poetic inspiration & creation are ineffable; they can't be recorded just in print, held in the hand like an artifact and then easily discarded. Even Marxist critics have more respect for artistic productions than that. It's sad that so much of contemporary Canadian writing is commodified in just this way, with authors, titles and the whole publishing melieu valued more for their potential 'sexiness' than any intrinsic literary merit.

Mainstream publishing is anathema to me: I've advocated (and always will advocate) a return to the 'grass roots' of artistic production, where it really began and where it can flourish. Poetry is a live medium; its spoken form is vital to its success ultimately as an art form with relevance to people's lives. Ginsberg, for example, used to invest the poet & his/her craft with just this vital cultural necessity.

Conrad

[Conrad DiDiodato]

Caroline,

following T.S.Eliot, I believe that the purpose of 'criticism' is to discuss intelligently, and respectfully, what is perceived to be the writer's end, leaving the reader with the final judgement (favourable or not)I haven't encountered a nasty critic who hadn't more to learn from what they criticized than they realized. Internet trolls (you've seen them before, I'm sure)are the bugs in the system that need to be ironed out before Internet becomes a real alternative to print; and one way to make Internet online writing respectable is to create communities (such as ours) where writers and their craft get the respect they deserve.

But that's only a first step: poetry as performance must flourish as well; poets and the spoken word must come together in a living, meaningful exchange that is the basis for a real cultural community. Every poet of note could be easily traced to a living community of this kind that both set the background for artistic production and served to give him/her a unique identity.

Conradg