Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I hate it. Just leave it alone or it looks needy if u ask me
Apparently he really resented being reduced down to just being a disabled poet and wanted nothing to do with it. I don't read it as being needy, I think he's being arrogant.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
He almost ever mentions his disabilty in all the thousands of poems he did. That line in that one particular poem sticks out for that reason
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Like I say, it's a one off, and i don't think its to be read as a just little ol' me thing.

Anyway, who cares? Fucking great poet imo, better than just about everything else in that New American Poetry anthology, which is where I first encountered him.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Yeah, there's a whole beat poets section with ginsburg and kerouac etc, i hate it, easily the worst section of the book.

But its got good stuff by olson, dorn, o'hara, levertov, lamantia. It had the projective verse essay.
 

sus

Moderator
I do "astonished air" sometimes eg dolphins leaping into astonished air the one good thing geoffrey hill did, literally the only thing, was burly air. I steal that occasionally
the weathers the weathers they lived in
 

sus

Moderator
Howl is obviously brilliant, that's separate from whether Allen was the village idiot he may have been it doesn't matter there have been few greater synergies of man and moment than Howel
 

sus

Moderator
It establishes the "primitives of a future culture unknown" idea very strongly, it sets man back in nature, it sets modernity back in the Bible, it does it so strongly and viscerally and intuitively that it was written in an afternoon and the first time he read it everybody knew instantly that something important had happened
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Every time ive started reading it i've just thiught, why am i reading this drivel when i could be reading whitman instead?

Then he does these other ones copying blake and its just cringe, i can't stand him.
 
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