Poeta Doctus

The teapot in the tearoom of the North American poetry milieu is all aripple again and cups aclatter in their saucers. Boston Review publishes a conversation with poet, critic, and scholar Stephen Burt and (via the Véhicule Press blog via Evan Jones) one can read Adam Plunkett in the The New Republic take Burt to task—on the matter of taste. Taste? In 2013?!

I quote a supposedly well-known poet-critic:  “Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.”

This serious artist has more important things to attend before Time’s wingéd chariot kindly stops for him. Or, to quote again that well-known poet-critic:

I would much rather lie on what is left of Catullus’ parlour floor and speculate the azure beneath it and the hills off Salo and Riva with their forgotten gods moving unhindered amongst them, than discuss any…theories of [taste] whatsoever….I shall not argue.