No wonder this paper is going under.
"The golf world idolizes Tiger Woods, sure, but duffers will still be heaving 9-irons into ponds long after Woods plays his last major. Poetry can’t be as confident about its own durability."
Um, why is it that poets need greatness? Why won't poets write after Ashbery?
Oh, because David Orr says so. Gee.
No point in arguing.
4 comments:
I'm wondering why he seems to think Tiger Woods is the last great golfer.
Well, clearly anyone who has time for BOTH golf and poetry is a person we should scramble to pay attention to.
Ohmigod, that article is soooo stoopid. The logic basically boils down to "X will never happen again because X hasn't happened again yet." There won't be another very good very popular U.S. poet because there isn't another one yet. There won't be another golfer the equal of Tiger Woods because there hasn't been one yet.
Unfortunately, this kind of "reasoning" is the sort of thing that passes for mainstream discourse in our sad country.
@ Stan,
So sadly true (about the discourse). Instances like this betray the TIMES' real goal of playing the role of educator, of "we're going to educate you so that you can be 'knowledgeable' about certain topics at dinner parties." Writing like this sustains conversational small talk that doesn't ask for intellectual rigor. You'd never ask someone you just met at a party to defend their statements, and writing and discourse like this takes advantage of this.
I can see it now, somewhere around a minibar: "Did you hear poetry is done for?" "So sad that poetry is in such a sad state of affairs." "There are no great poets anymore, like there USED to be."
I hear David Orr's next article is about how we will never find a cure for cancer because we haven't found one yet.
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