Given my personal history with the last post modern beatnik progeny on earth, his powers waning in my estimation (alas, the undercurrent of antagonism stems from? psychoanalytic drum roll, but this morning it is not a primary concern, father fucking as an act of annihilation which did not happen...) I am unresolved on what attracts me to the work of Allen Tate, whether it is, in fact, Tate's mimetic qualities conjoined to his violent modernism, which Yezzi recognizes in ridiculing fashion in his New Criterion piece, an article I have been attempting to digest off and on since 2007, and will continue to absorb, only to note here that Yezzi's hyperbole, highlighted below, while charming, is the normative hogwash of the literary critic, and his or her concerns toward peer review:
Without a proper appreciation of Tate, the full story of recent American poetry cannot be told.
Really? Jerry recognized early in our journey that I was interested in literary imitation, but I am not sure I recognize my youthful curiosity in my appreciation of the poems themselves. We'll come back to it, as I am contemplating asceticism as a form of reactionary protest, except to add something about Tate's *inherited racism,* as Yezzi calls it.
Slapping labels on people is a way of turning them off. Unlike the event of Gore Vidal's death, my demise will not have much public reverberation, but commentators burned bright to excoriate Vidal as a racist elitist pig. What does that mean exactly? That his intellectual endeavors are worthless? Not every form of reaction is an atavistic backslide.
No comments:
Post a Comment