Saturday, August 06, 2005
What to Competition?
Nice to read some new voices here.
But let me write that I think Adam’s response doesn't speak to competition fully. Competition isn’t supplementary to poetic practice. It is the point of it. One needs to have refractory material against which to work; for poets this material is the tradition and materials of poetic practice, from Homer to me. (I have written already about this below.) To write that competition is merely supplementary to practice is to record punching as a tactic one might use effectively in a boxing ring.
Nor do I think poetry is just some job we leave for in the morning, that one might meet up with us after work and find the hooker does have a heart of gold, the chief executive office a conscience. What makes a poet interesting is that s/he is a poet. Not that s/he writes poems. What makes a friend is that s/he is interesting.
Will Esposito
But let me write that I think Adam’s response doesn't speak to competition fully. Competition isn’t supplementary to poetic practice. It is the point of it. One needs to have refractory material against which to work; for poets this material is the tradition and materials of poetic practice, from Homer to me. (I have written already about this below.) To write that competition is merely supplementary to practice is to record punching as a tactic one might use effectively in a boxing ring.
Nor do I think poetry is just some job we leave for in the morning, that one might meet up with us after work and find the hooker does have a heart of gold, the chief executive office a conscience. What makes a poet interesting is that s/he is a poet. Not that s/he writes poems. What makes a friend is that s/he is interesting.
Will Esposito
