Comment Archives: stories: Arts and Culture: Books
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
I saw Collins at Hume Fogg when he did a free reading to a packed auditorium one Saturday morning. So personable, funny and real! In the days when everybody is a writer and self-expression seems to have no bounds, I am thrilled there are still people for whom writing is a craft and who truly rise above the mediocrity of the internet and prime time television. I didn't really appreciate the slurping, late, higher chair slant given in the article either, and I would personally treat him with more deference - call me old fashioned.
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
I happen to see through JP Grasser, though I do appreciate the glowing comment from his mother, "Poetry lover." He crafted his article in such a way to make Billy Collins look like he was late, didn't care, and was sloppy-- totally not the case with Collins. The details Grasser included tell us more about him than they do about Collins. It sounds like Collins directed Glasser to sit in a chair that would make him seem short while sitting upright himself (so he'd be taller than Grasser?). Collins is six feet tall. I'd be interested to know how tall Grasser is, and also how many chairs were in that room. And I'm still waiting for JP to support his assertion that Poetry 180 has detractors. In fact, Poetry 180 has gotten nothing but praise. Sigh.
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
Vanderbilt and the Nashville community were fortunate to have this national treasure in their midst, if only for a fortnight. This engaging portrait, with its details such as slouching and slurping, only serve to make the poet flesh and blood, while his comments on poetry, the writing process, and even the Kindle provide original insights. This well-crafted article inspired me to seek out Collins’ latest volume. Thanks to JP Grasser for a well-crafted interview, allowing those of us who couldn’t attend to gain a glimpse of Billy Collins.
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
Lovely article! Glad to have such a talented poet in Nashville.
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
*hospitable.
Also, check your facts about Collins not including his own poems in Poetry 180, the book for high schoolers.
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
I think you're confusing the general criticism of Collins by other poets regarding his hospital poems, poems that "welcome the reader," as Collins puts it (others call it his "accessibility"), with the Poetry 180 program, which was intended for high school students. Poetry 180 has had no criticism directed toward it that I've heard of or read, ever. Can you provide a source for your assertion that it has?
Other poets' criticism of Collins is generally centered around their resentment that he has taken away their poetry readers with his more easily understood poetry, while they're left with their dense books in hand, unsold. That's based on the fallacy that Collins's audience is made up of readers of the other poets' poetry. Collins, in fact, has created a large audience of poetry readers who wouldn't be reading poetry if it weren't for him. His poetry actually reaches people, and he's not compromised one thing about poetry or himself to achieve that.
Your observations about Collins being late because he had trouble finding the place, his slumped shoulders, and the slurping of his coffee are interesting. Perhaps a professor with over forty years of teaching behind him with these personal attributes is constitutionally incapable of writing formal poetry. Then again, he has formal poems in nearly every one of his books, if not every one. And what do we make of his vast knowledge of formalists and their works and his ability to teach them? Perhaps he has learned the rules in order to break the rules (to good effect), having a mind of such imaginative force that it is unwilling to remain in the box. Don't even get me started on the paradelle and its legacy.
Re: “A new multimedia children's book reminds us that it takes a village”
I've ordered the book and can't wait for it to come in!
Re: “Joyce Carol Oates talks about her new memoir”
She is my favorite living author, has been for decades now. This memoir is beautiful.
Re: “Steve Earle's debut novel is a skid-row story of grit and redemption”
Graciela proves to be a quick study; she is also something much more. Her touch offers healing powers that leave the stricken with no signs of their ailments, and that summons them to turn their lives around entirely and escape the vortex of South Presa.
This is from http://www.christianlouboutindiscountsale.…
Re: “Jean Auel talks about the long-awaited conclusion to her celebrated Earth's Children series”
we hope she ends the series - Painted Caves most definitely did not, left far to many threads unanswered... and some of it just made no sense at all according to the culture she has developed.
All the fans are hoping for Book Seven to wrap up the series... and be in accord with the world Auel has built
Re: “Holly Tucker talks about the macabre history of blood transfusion”
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Re: “Holly Tucker talks about the macabre history of blood transfusion”
Fascinating! Cool subject and great interview - I will check this book out.
Re: “Eileen Sisk delivers the first in-depth biography of Buck Owens”
Yeah, Tim...you're an idiot.
Re: “As Outloud! closes its doors, Nashville loses an anchor of the gay community”
Here are two gentlemen who actually provide a genuine service for the LGBT community and while they can't do anything to help them, Gilmore, Jameson and Hollin are certain we need legislation to ensure companies will be conscious of their employees who "may be gay" aren't mistreated. Brilliant!, strategery.
Re: “As Outloud! closes its doors, Nashville loses an anchor of the gay community”
Thank you Kevin and Ted for what you have so generously and graciously given to Nashville. I almost typed "given to the LGBT community in Nashville" but that would have short changed what the two of you have done. You have done great things for the LGBT community in Nashville, but you have also helped Nashville turn into the city it is today. One that is more tolerant and more accepting than it was 15 years ago, and for that all of Nashville owes you a great deal of thanks.
Your friends,
Ranger and George
Re: “Framed for murder and left to languish in a Nicaraguan prison, Eric Volz tells his story”
I watched a television show about you being falsley accused and sent to prison. I was so upset watching the showing seeing the suffering and horror you endured.
I am so happy to read this article and to find out you were freed. Thank God.
Take care,
Elena
Warminster, PA
Re: “The Mark of Cain”
Thanks, Wayne for your review of this book. I find the idea of this story very interesting, just because it there are a lot of people that don't understand why it is that Cain's offering was rejected. Johnnylingo up there is right, though. In the lds scriptures we find that that the reason that the offering was rejected is because it was not in similitude of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Thanks for the article. http://standardworks.com/
Re: “Tennessee writers shine on best-of lists all over the media”
Both "Bloodroot" (Name of a real root-but Mountain in story) by Amy Greene
and "Mr. Peanut" are both wonderful read's!
Re: “Kate Daniels talks about her new poetry collection, A Walk in Victoria's Secret ”
The painting on the cover of this book is one of mine. It looks great. Thanks for getting the color right!
Re: “Billy Collins takes his appeal for accessible poetry to the Fugitives' citadel”
From Contemporary Poetry Review:
Collins’s practical achievement as laureate was the creation of the Poetry 180 website and anthologies, which offer an easy, introductory contemporary poem for each day of the high school year, intended particularly for students to hear in English class or while held captive during the dreaded morning announcements. Teachers are urged to avoid discussing the poems or building any kind of assignment around them. The core of this attitude is a good one. Poetry could do with being unmoored from academic settings and put back into the world beyond the lagoons of academe. Although a respectable enterprise, it highlights what might be considered the central shortcoming of Collins as a poet. He writes in the introduction to Poetry 180 that he wanted poems that “any listener could basically ‘get’ on first hearing—poems whose injection of pleasure is immediate.” This is ideal for his purposes (or it may be that these purposes are fitted perfectly to his ideal). The poems he likes best, the ones he included on the website and in the book, are suited to the adolescent “wish to accelerate, to get from zero to sixty in a heartbeat or in a speed-shop Honda.”
All practicality aside, the one thing genuinely accomplished by such an editorial gesture is that it solves the headache of distinguishing “between legitimate difficulty and obscurity for its own sake” by simply eradicating all difficult poems from the reader’s ken right from the start. Collins asks rhetorically “if there is no room in poetry for difficulty, where is difficulty to go?” His answer? He does not really have one, except to say that even simple poems are difficult when we “experience” them. He goes on to denounce complexity in literary art as an unnecessary roadblock. According to Collins, the difficulty that reigned as a criterion of greatness among the modernists also caused readers to “flee in droves into the waiting arms of novelists, where they could relax in the familiar surroundings of social realism.” Let us forget for one moment that modernism also produced exceptionally ambitious and complex novels. Collins refuses to give difficulty in poetry a hearing at all. Instead, he claims “clarity is the real risk in poetry. To be clear means opening yourself up to judgment.” This is not entirely true. Artistic complexity yields itself up to a different grade and degree of judgment.
http://www.cprw.com/Hilbert/collins2.htm