If we are to foster the kind of intelligent critical culture required to combat the effects of populism in politics, we must stop celebrating amateurism and ignorance in our poetry.”
Heaven forfend that politics take into consideration the preferences and predilections of the populace. I guess the thesis here is that populist poetry is another cause of Donald Trump’s being elected President. Rather a stretch in my view. But then, I remain a latitudinarian when it comes to poetry. Poetry is what poets do, and there are a lot of different poets doing a lot of different things. Read what you like, and skip what you don’t.
For at least the last century, and most of the last two, it has not been possible to be elected president without being to some degree a populist, else why Harding rather than Lodge? And even in the UK, the Salisburys and Wellingtons are extinct. One can review poetry with the savagery of a Pound or a Jarrell and have no effect whatever on this.
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