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From: wab@reed.UUCP (William Baker)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: worst song ever
Message-ID: <1222@reed.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Apr-85 20:08:40 EST
Article-I.D.: reed.1222
Posted: Mon Apr  1 20:08:40 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Apr-85 05:38:53 EST
References: <309@ttidcc.UUCP>
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 22

> 
> And I rather liked "Drop-kick me, Jesus, though the goal-posts of life",
> "I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart" and "I've got tears
> in my ears from crying in the night over you."  They create such an
> immediate image, which is the function of poetry.



	So, creating an immediate image is the function of 
poetry, is it?  What a crock.  That is the most glib, shallow, and
generally foolish definition of poetry I have ever heard.
	I won't attempt to try to define it here.  After all, scholars
have been trying to do so since Aristotle (and probably before) wrote
the Poetics.  However, it's a cinch that the definition above would be
laughed at by anyone.  I'll admit that Tennyson would fit that
definition, but would E.E. Cummings?  How about Blake?
	I'm sorry that I am commenting in such a pejorative manner.
It's just that my literary training rebels at such a comment.  Really,
I should be used to it by now.  Such comments are forever dropping
from the lips of tech-heads who know no better.

					Bill Baker