Burning Shore Press host a dialogue between writers Rob Woodard and Tony O’Neill:
What do you think the poet’s role is in America in 2008?
Tony O’Neill: I suppose it is to question everything, to push boundaries, to challenge preconceptions. Poetry is so marginal at the moment, but I feel that this is changing as the technology is changing. Poetry is actually becoming the perfect artistic vehicle for the digital age; it is compressed. It is a way of communicating a thought, a feeling, in a miniature form. I suppose our job is to make sure that this unassuming looking vehicle is in fact packed with incendiary devices.
Rob Woodard: The poet’s role is what it has always been: to challenge authority, not in the rebel-without-a-cause sense, but as part of the antidote to the inevitable corruption that grows out of too much accumulated power. The poet’s job is to explore and find meaning in real life, not the consumer comodification ritual that governments, corporations, and the more cowardly individuals among us try to convince us is reality. The poet’s job is to call out politicians, academics and anyone else perpetrating falsehoods in our society. The poet’s job is also to somehow have fun while doing this. Life is rough at times, but it’s also amazing and beautiful. Poets, more than anyone else, need to keep their finger on that pulse at all times.
First posted: Saturday, May 31st, 2008.
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Sorry, but that’s a load of posturing self-aggrandising bullshit. If you start talking about what a poet’s role is, and start mouthing off sixth-form platitudes about exploding incendiary devices blah blah blah, all you do is diminish poetry and restrict the possibilities of poetry. What if a poet doesn’t want to do that? What if a great poem is written that doesn’t conform to that? You become a philistine because you don’t recognise it. It’s just another form of narrow mindedness.
/ Posted by Pablo on May 31st, 2008 at 12:08 pm / Permalink /I think I understand what Tony, Rob, and Pablo, are saying here. And it’s all good. Like Woodard, I always urge people to focus on social relevance - war, poverty, greed, and the effect that has on children. And like O’Neill, I want art to be sublimely overwhelming, the lead dog in the human race. But as Pablo points out - art is whatever the artist wants it to be. And no one can tell the artist what to do. Thus it is a good thing, an essential thing, that each of us has a different definition of the poet’s role.
/ Posted by Mikael Covey on June 1st, 2008 at 10:37 pm / Permalink /