The decade in poetry
The Poetry Foundation invited nine poets to talk about the decade in poetry. Interestingly,
Annie Finch on how women poets changed in their attitude towards each other:
Jane Dowson and Gilbert and Gubar have pointed out that for generations women poets renounced and ignored the women poets before them. During the last decade that pattern seemed to change as, in new physical, textual, and virtual spaces, women poets increasingly took control of the development and maintenance of the canon and poetic tradition.
And Ron Silliman on how the technology changed access, tools and poet-reader relations:
The poet’s relationship to his or her audience is undergoing a profound transformation. The poet’s relationship to the institutions and even to the tools of her or his practice is doing likewise. Everything is up for grabs.
Some poets have chosen to embrace the new with everything from flarf to technology-based visual poetries. Others have decided that the “timeless” values of tradition will outlast even this….What’s apparent is that (a) this joyride isn’t over, and (b) we’re all in this together.
