Monday, May 25, 2009

Blurbering

The critic is Howard Bloom;the poet,who may have had no say in this, can remain annonymous. This on the back of a "selected and new".

X is an Orphic Fountain, a prodigy of the imagination...he frequently makes me think of John Ashbery;improbable fecundity, eclecticism and a stand that fuses populism and elitism in poetic audience...we are poised before the onset of what I prophesy will be a major art.

There ya goes. Oh to be labelled as an improbably fecund Orphic fountain, if only I knew what it meant...and to have Harold Bloom make prophesies about how "we" are poised before the onset of "a major art"...

But I want to protest...apart from the silliness of the hyperbole...if we are poised BEFORE the onset..does this mean it hasn't happened yet? That the poems here are merely suggestions of the quality sure to follow? And that phrase "a stand that fuses populism and elitism in poetic audience" sounds wrong. Shouldn't, at least, audience be either plural or preceded by an article? Or stand be stance? Or if you're making vatic utterance, confusing criticism with witchcraft are you exonerated from the rules of grammar meaning and common sense?

And this "I prophesy". Is the verb or the pronoun carrying the weight?

Though reading the intro it's good to see Bloom hasn't lost his sparkle and can't let the opportuntiy to have a swipe at "deconstruction" pass him by.

I hope the poems are better than the blurb.

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