Gioia is a bit of a rebel. He has criticized modern poetry as being written by professional poets for professional poets instead of for the culture. In turn, many modern poets have criticized him. He is part of a movement which tends to use traditional rhyme and meter and write to appeal to the average person, in the vein of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.
On a related note, Stephanie Cohen at Acculturated writes about schools, teachers, and others who are trying to turn back the tide of eliminating serious literature from the K-12 curriculum.
In the late 1890s, American high school English curricula regularly listed works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Alexander Pope, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Daniel Webster, John Milton, William Bryant and Geoffrey Chaucer. Such authors were not just for those headed off to college. Students destined for workrooms—such as those who attended a manual training high school in Denver, Colorado—were still tasked with a similar English curriculum.Sunday is the Ace of Spades book club day. A number of published authors read AoS, and here they are at the Book Horde. AoS has their own page at Good Reads as well, where you can see what they are currently reading (The Abolition of Man), see the votes for their next book, and, if you join, check out their bookshelf, discussions, etc.
As Breitbart was fond of saying, politics is downstream from culture.
"...Alexander Pope..."
ReplyDeleteMost probably his Odyssey, or possibly his Iliad, as an English introduction to works that those who went to college in the 1890s would later be expected to read in Greek.
A number of years ago I was doing some research and came across a digitized copy of an 1850s era catalog for NYU. A prerequisites for admission as freshmen, applicants were expected to have already read a number of works in both Greek and Latin.
ReplyDeleteI don't know when it was dropped, but the requirement didn't last much longer, I think. We started shifting away from classical knowledge and toward science and modern knowledge.
Gioia is a bit of a rebel. He has criticized modern poetry as being written by professional poets for professional poets instead of for the culture. In turn, many modern poets have criticized him.
ReplyDeleteLet me rephrase that final sentence: many modern poets have criticized Gioia for speaking the truth.
I developed a loathing for poetry from English classes in high school and college. Years later I rediscovered poetry, making the realization that it is meant to be spoken and listened to.
As long as universities continue to provide faculty positions for professional poets, they will not feel the need to produce poems that those outside the poet cadre will purchase.