My lab assistant showed me her text.
This is a perfect example of how the elites want to sever from the collective consciousness any "prior information".
This text is about "modern american poetry". It is intended for second semester freshmen or first sophs who are not "majors". One would THINK that if the colleges, and textbook, "editors" REALLY want to educate the "general populace", then there should be at least some small reference to the people who started it all.
There is not a single work in the text that has any kind of "rhyme scheme". (well there may be one, but I basically threw the book down after I had perused about half of it.)
a) eliminate any reference to "old fuddy stuff".
b) eliminate any context
c) equate "modern with interesting"
Each piece is free form, stream of consciousness, stuff that is peppered with all sorts of anatomical references or violent references or the sly remark that any kind of illegal action is ok, use of any and all forms of mind altering material is taken up with glee(although there were one or two that did not). Some of them "have a point" but usually in the last few lines and only after a long and drawn out bunch of randomly strung together verbiage.
But there is no reference in the book or by the teacher to Ferlinghetti, James Joyce(yes not U.S. but a progenitor), Ginsberg, Burroughs or Kerouac, Zwirling, Cassady.
And the difference between "them" and the "new crop" is that the new crop do not have "the art to do it well". It is a melange of mediocrity purporting to be art.
In other words...... the student is going to leave the class with the impression that "new", therefore "good" poetry is all stream of consciousness and have no context that this stuff is a very poor wannabe version of what came before.
There is one work that is an almost direct lift from a poem in Cony Island of the Mind.
An especially telling condemnation of the whole enterprise is the "references" section. I was stunned to see that of the close to a hundred references, there was not one to a published BOOK. They were all blogs, or some websites.
Now, one COULD argue that the provision of websites lends a certain "modernity" to it, but I checked. I found just a couple of the authors that actually had had a BOOK published, the others were "vanity published" books.
Now....did Kerouac, and Cassady etc. do "underground stuff" and were they "not recognized" by the evil mainstream? Would they have probably "vanity published" if it had been common then? Would they have probably put their work in blogs.... ummm I don't think so...... but the diference will tell in a few years because those "old people" were published in BOOKS...... VERY QUICKLY, the general public caught on to what these people were doing and they were very QUICKLY published.
Just as with "global warming"..... the mini-ice age in the 1800's, which had temperatures five degrees lower than now...is what we are "warming up" from.....and it is not taught in schools AT ALL and has not been for years. So since nobody has HEARD of it....there is no context for the discussion today.
In like manner, the "mainstream student", if this is the general approach.....will have no sense of history of the real groundbreaking paradigm shift in the U.S. from even 80 years ago...
And the very people that teach the class and are the "editors of textbooks"...complain that "the American people don't like poetry....STOOPID people!".
grrrrrr
grrrrrrrrrrr again!!!
I really hope that the gentle readers of old woodsmoker's rant will take it upon themselves to reach up to the shelf, or dig out the box from the garage.... and find those wonderful tomes that provide CONTEXT.... and read some of it to the kids, grandkids....whoever, so that at least some.... students will have a little appreciation of what came before and can therefore put into context what is written today.
woodsmoke
This is a perfect example of how the elites want to sever from the collective consciousness any "prior information".
This text is about "modern american poetry". It is intended for second semester freshmen or first sophs who are not "majors". One would THINK that if the colleges, and textbook, "editors" REALLY want to educate the "general populace", then there should be at least some small reference to the people who started it all.
There is not a single work in the text that has any kind of "rhyme scheme". (well there may be one, but I basically threw the book down after I had perused about half of it.)
a) eliminate any reference to "old fuddy stuff".
b) eliminate any context
c) equate "modern with interesting"
Each piece is free form, stream of consciousness, stuff that is peppered with all sorts of anatomical references or violent references or the sly remark that any kind of illegal action is ok, use of any and all forms of mind altering material is taken up with glee(although there were one or two that did not). Some of them "have a point" but usually in the last few lines and only after a long and drawn out bunch of randomly strung together verbiage.
But there is no reference in the book or by the teacher to Ferlinghetti, James Joyce(yes not U.S. but a progenitor), Ginsberg, Burroughs or Kerouac, Zwirling, Cassady.
And the difference between "them" and the "new crop" is that the new crop do not have "the art to do it well". It is a melange of mediocrity purporting to be art.
In other words...... the student is going to leave the class with the impression that "new", therefore "good" poetry is all stream of consciousness and have no context that this stuff is a very poor wannabe version of what came before.
There is one work that is an almost direct lift from a poem in Cony Island of the Mind.
An especially telling condemnation of the whole enterprise is the "references" section. I was stunned to see that of the close to a hundred references, there was not one to a published BOOK. They were all blogs, or some websites.
Now, one COULD argue that the provision of websites lends a certain "modernity" to it, but I checked. I found just a couple of the authors that actually had had a BOOK published, the others were "vanity published" books.
Now....did Kerouac, and Cassady etc. do "underground stuff" and were they "not recognized" by the evil mainstream? Would they have probably "vanity published" if it had been common then? Would they have probably put their work in blogs.... ummm I don't think so...... but the diference will tell in a few years because those "old people" were published in BOOKS...... VERY QUICKLY, the general public caught on to what these people were doing and they were very QUICKLY published.
Just as with "global warming"..... the mini-ice age in the 1800's, which had temperatures five degrees lower than now...is what we are "warming up" from.....and it is not taught in schools AT ALL and has not been for years. So since nobody has HEARD of it....there is no context for the discussion today.
In like manner, the "mainstream student", if this is the general approach.....will have no sense of history of the real groundbreaking paradigm shift in the U.S. from even 80 years ago...
And the very people that teach the class and are the "editors of textbooks"...complain that "the American people don't like poetry....STOOPID people!".
grrrrrr
grrrrrrrrrrr again!!!
I really hope that the gentle readers of old woodsmoker's rant will take it upon themselves to reach up to the shelf, or dig out the box from the garage.... and find those wonderful tomes that provide CONTEXT.... and read some of it to the kids, grandkids....whoever, so that at least some.... students will have a little appreciation of what came before and can therefore put into context what is written today.
woodsmoke
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