The worst news about metaphors (I found this out only a few short years ago, playing catch-up as usual) is that all the most celebrated neoacademic poets of our historical moment... don't think much of them.
On the other hand... maybe that's the best news about metaphors!
(Anyway how would they know -- they don't have any!)
This puts me in mind of the hilarious essay by Frank Sullivan (oh dear, from 1936!), called "The Cliché Expert Reveals Himself in His True Colors." Some of the clichés he bandies about were old-fashioned by the time I read it in the anthology A Liberal Education in 1967 or so, but it's still amusing. Between Tom's neoacademic poets, who lack metaphors, and the many "avant-garde" poets who seem to think poems are a form of standup comedy on the very subject of metaphor (with endless snarled skeins of erudite and literary pop culture allusions thrown in)—well, we're between a rock and a hard place, aren't we....
The worst news about metaphors (I found this out only a few short years ago, playing catch-up as usual) is that all the most celebrated neoacademic poets of our historical moment... don't think much of them.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand... maybe that's the best news about metaphors!
(Anyway how would they know -- they don't have any!)
This puts me in mind of the hilarious essay by Frank Sullivan (oh dear, from 1936!), called "The Cliché Expert Reveals Himself in His True Colors." Some of the clichés he bandies about were old-fashioned by the time I read it in the anthology A Liberal Education in 1967 or so, but it's still amusing. Between Tom's neoacademic poets, who lack metaphors, and the many "avant-garde" poets who seem to think poems are a form of standup comedy on the very subject of metaphor (with endless snarled skeins of erudite and literary pop culture allusions thrown in)—well, we're between a rock and a hard place, aren't we....
ReplyDeleteHey, Joe (as the folk ballad used say), it turns out the 3 million stooges you're talking about are the same 3 million stooges I was talking about!
ReplyDelete(It's a small world in the chilly wee hours of the morning...)
I'll just move over and offer you this hard place next to mine, here on the rock.
Well, that makes four of us (I'm counting NoMan as a member of the crew)on our merry way right about here.
ReplyDelete