Beyond Post-Quietude: Definitions
Came across these definitions of kinds of poets. It's written to be about Arab poets such as Abu Tammam Ibn Zaydunl. What I like about this is the attention paid to the poetic environment wherein different kinds of poets arise. Particular plants do not grow in any kind of soil. Please read with the idea of applying to today's poets and poetic ecosystem.
From The Legacy of Muslim Spain, by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Manuela Marin
The second category is that of poets who initiate a new trend. The task is usually accomplished by a number of poets, sometimes over one or two generations, as happened in parts of Europe during the 19th century when the romantic trend transcended barriers of language and nationality; and in the Arab world in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century when romanticism became the major school. In such situations, the move is usually instinctive, answering a need, not only in the age but within in the art of poetry itself, for a change in a certain direction, when the poetic tools are ready for change (indeed almost crying out for it) and poetic sensibility has probably come to suffer from aesthetic fatigue and requires a different orientation. If the first category of poets helps enrich and develop a pre-existing trend, the second, that of the innovators, helps initiate a new one which grows, rather slowly, in the teeth of the previous one.
The third category of poets is those who establish a radically new method of writing poetry, working against great obstacles and proceeding beyond the expectations of even the most avant-garde critics. They are catalysts, who change the direction of poetry for their times and all future times. It is true that for such poets to succeed, the poetic tools of their times must have become sufficiently malleable to assimilate the radical change introduced, and poetic sensibility must have come to crave change and originality. Nevertheless, the kind of change these poet-catalysts impose on their contemporary poetry does not appear to be an inevitable answer to the poetic situation of their times, which could perhaps be improved, or, if need be, corrected through other, less radical innovative techniques. Catalyst do not necessarily arise out of the need of the poetic art for a radically new direction either in method or in diction or metaphor. They usually appear in an age of great poetic strength—indeed, they hardly ever appear in an age of poetic weakness, since their role is not to save poetry from its defects (radical change can never be imposed on a weak poetry), but dramatically to exploit one or more aspects of the artistic possibilities of their genre, and sometimes to combat the strong hold of a certain method before it leads to total poetic rigidity.
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Word Substitution
"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism."
"There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.
"We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art."
"Silence is so accurate."
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More Vrzhu History
Our recent post giving an overview of the history of Vrzhu Press has generated some interest in our vast Vrzhu Arhives. Of course in the current economic climacteric, our resources are spread extremely thin. Although it is true as stated (ibid.) that most of Vrzhu's records pertaining to it's early history were lost in the 1816 conflagration (just prior, coincidently, to the arrival of a phalanx of tax auditors), Vrzhu still possesses a healthy archive of secondary materials and incunabula. At present we can only provide the barest hint of what further work may reveal.
Vrzhu Archives, sublevels 3 through 6:
Here are a couple of recent finds unearthed from our archives:
1.The aftermath of a poetry reading given by Vrzhu author Baron Manfred von Thyssen-Spitzweggen (1787).
2. Experimental Poetic Field Detector, Vrzhu Research Test Center and Laboratory, Llanbederdyffryncynwyd, Wales, England, 1917
3. Vrzhu's first Print On Demand facility outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, circa 1898.
