Word: poem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Theodor Adorno read Celan's poem, he proclaimed that "After Auschwitz, poetry is barbaric." The problem, he felt, was that it was impossible to talk about the Holocaust without depriving it of its meaning, its force, its incomprehensibility. But he also knew it was impossible not to talk about the Holocaust and that doing so was to side with those who did nothing to stop it, with the people who claimed to have no idea of the camps just over the hill...
...everyone else who's still reading this poem...
...Show at which amateur poets compete for small cash prizes and the much richer reward of having their work heard by an enthusiastic public. The poetic abilities of many contestants may be open to debate, but the audience is always in top form. On a typical evening a rambling poem about using nuclear weapons to blow up political banquets brings raucous cheers. A watery ode to existentialism ("Nothing that is worth having actually is . . .") draws equally good-natured jeers...
...page. But optimists argue that any interest will inevitably translate into greater respect for the truly gifted. "People prize the spoken word," says S.X. Rosenstock, vice president of Poetry Society of America, West. "Whether it's Beat poetry or Dante, they want to hear it. Speaking any poem is a statement of your freedom...
Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department, has been writing a lot lately for the New York Times Book Review. His most pleasantly surprising submission, however, came last week with a clever poem that, no doubt, bears many messages about literature and modern culture. Let us know if you figure out what they...