aimless musings

Still reading Break, Blow, Burn...and of course clicking around online doing some research about Camille Paglia. Found an interview with her that both daunts and excites me about the world of poetry. Who cares about poetry? Exactly her point...

An Excerpt:

"City Paper: In Break, Blow, Burn, you condemn poetry removed from popular diction. How removed is the poetry clique from popular culture?

Paglia: Today the poetry world is very small because poetry doesn't sell. What you get is the poets feel very embattled; they've drawn into their inner world. And certain poets get honors — you have critics that, no matter what a poet puts out, it's praised as this incredible masterpiece. So you have Seamus Haney, who is at Harvard; he won the Nobel Prize for his poetry. Well, I couldn't find a single poem by him that I could put in this book. … It's all derivative. It's all fifth-rate Yeats. So I'm saying that the poets are themselves to blame for withdrawing into this world. It's very clubby. They give awards to each other. They have these grants committees from the foundations, and they're all scratching each other's backs. I'm asking poets to think again about what they're doing. And saying, "You better start addressing the public again and stop addressing each other."

#40 from Paglia's compilation (newly settled in my favorite poems of all time)

My Makeup

on my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers

on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage

for lipstick
I wear my lips

-Rochelle Kraut-

Another Exceprt from the interview in which she addresses "My Makeup"

"City Paper: How will feminists and female humanities professors find your selection?

Paglia: I looked everywhere for what I thought was a strong feminist poem that truly expressed my era. Some defiant voice that was denouncing male oppression and tyranny … actually the strongest I found was Sylvia Plath's "Daddy," even though she's pre-feminist. The only [relatively contemporary] one I found [is] the one by Rochelle Kraut. I found it in an anthology from the '80s. She is not someone who's written a lot of poetry. But boy, I think that is a feminist poem. It's called "My Makeup." It doesn't even pretend to be a feminist poem. But it is. "