Word: muir
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Muir spoke in New Lecture Hall on "The Public and the Poet," the fourth in his series of six lectures as Norton Professor...
...poet must not, however, use this refusal to pander to public taste as an excuse for obscurantism and the rejection of all audiences, Muir asserted. A poet always needs an audience for which to create. Often he doesn't find it--or it doesn't find him--until late in his career. He must therefore create it in his imagination. "Many of Yeats's poems were written this way, before he had found their audience," Muir said...
...Much experimental poetry of the twenties has made young poets mistakenly believe that they, too, do not have to write for an audience," Muir asserted. But these experiments were made to get poetry out of what seemed a dead end. Since they succeeded, Muir said, there is no longer any excuse for a similar disregard of the need for an audience...
...obscurity of these experimental poems seems to have given many critics the impression that poetry cannot be good if it isn't difficult," Muir said. They refuse to accept young poets who find themselves at liberty in a natural tongue, he stated...
...They forget that naturalness does not necessarily come easily," Muir concluded