CLOUDBURST – YEAR 4
Cloudburst!
An explosion of poetry.
This was the fourth year of the Cloudburst
gathering. Two dozen poets gathered in
the Gell
Center near Naples, NY to read their own
poetry, listen to the poetry of others, argue about
poetry, all the activities dear to a poet’s
heart.
This year there were three panels: Grace, with Judy Kerman, David Landrey and
moi; Stillness,
with Dwain Wilder , Steve Lewandowski, Alan
Casline and Alifair Skebe; and John C Clarke,
teacher/poet from the doctoral program at
the State University of Buffalo, with former students
John Roche, Stephen Baraban and Michael
Peters.
One of the best discussions that evolved was
the dichotomy between accessibility and obscurity
which confounds many in our modern poetry
world. No resolution but I stood up for
William
Stafford who was my mentor while the others argued
for the benefits of “difficult” poetry.
It’s an argument that will only be solved by
the future. Which one will survive,
which school
will get a name, be the subject of a
dissertation, article, etc. My own take
is that obscurity will
win.
Obscure poems need litprofs to explain them. It’s a form of job security.
When I was in grad school and took a seminar
on Frost, the professor thought he’d been
denigrated by his colleagues for teaching
Frost (under the accessible umbrella).
But no matter, it is so wonderful to argue
about poetry and how it is evolving in this early part
of the 21st century. A hundred years ago, Pound and imagism was
transforming how poetry
was written.
Would these early years would do something as revolutionary.
