Q. Sylvia Plath says in her journals that one of the purposes of poetry is to “make of a moment something of permanence.” As a way to explain poetry to undergraduates, is that something that you think is a fair explanation of the craft?
A. Yes and no. I think if you consider someone like Plath who is in a way ultra-interested in representing her own experience, and obviously keeping the veil down, I think that notion of preserving the past or making a moment last works. But to me the downside of that is it sort of encourages us to only be interested and curious about ourselves, and our own lives. Unfortunately we sort of live too much under that shadow now, and it’s sort of constricted American poetry especially as a result because we’ve got this confessional thing, and tend to think that poetry can only be about the poet’s personal experience.
Isn't this a great answer?
I find myself becoming increasingly more suspicious of language. Language should be suspect in poetry because we are weighing each word for sound/meaning and weighting each word for music/stress...I think I'm going to write an essay on this for NAPO month.
Yes No Good-Bye
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