A2Kers, where are you? Where is everyone?

Unable to comprehend what I read? Did you not say, as quoted above, this list of great American poets in the 20th Century?

Maybe you should dust off a few of those thousands of books you claim to own before you go around talking ****, telling people they don't know what they're talking about. Do you realize how stupid you look? Just read the last few pages of this thread--it's hilarious.

So, care to dig that hole deeper? I can hardly see you down there.

Huh? What in the hell are you talking about? Are you saying that Simic is not an american poet?

Simic was born in Belgrade, which was then in Yugoslavia. Growing up in war-torn Europe as a child shaped much of his world-view. In an interview from the Cortland Review he said, "Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me. In addition to my own little story of bad luck, I heard plenty of others. I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed in my life." Simic immigrated to the United States with his family in 1954 when he was sixteen. He grew up in Chicago and received his B.A. from New York University. He is professor emeritus of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives on the shore of Bow Lake in Strafford, New Hampshire.




Compared to Eliot,Pound and Stevens, Simic is just a mouldering piece of **** who writes his best poetry for gays.

Here is another list of Great American Poets of the Twentieth Century. Do you see Simic on the list?

20th Century Poets
The Twentieth Century has seen an emergence of an unprecedented number of poets from around the world. Twentieth Century poets include some of these poets.


American 20th Century Poets

Maya Angelou
John Ashbery
Margaret Atwood
Coleman Barks
Amira Baraka
Robert Bly
Louise Bogan
Billy Collins
e.e.cummings
T.S.Eliot
Mary Frye
Ivan Granger
Robert Hass
Jane Hirshfield
Langston Hughes
Daniel Ladinsky
Thomas Merton
W.S. Merwin
Edna Millay
Mary Oliver
Adrienne Rich
Wallace Stevens
Elaine Maria Upton
William Carlos Williams


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You had better go to a bookstore specializing in poetry for gays, I am sure Simic will be listed there.

Now you're just mad. I would be, too, if I were expsoed as a posturing intellectual, and racist homophobe to boot.

You already said you haven't read Simic. Am I supposed to take your criticism seriously at this point, simply because you got mad and said Simic's writing is for gays?

You claim to like Whitman. Guess what? He was gay. But you already knew that.

Read Simic's poetry and then tell me he's an "American" poet. And you have yet to explain how Dylan Thomas and W.B. Yeats are American.

Also, what significance am I supposed to apply to this list you cut and pasted? Did you notice there are African Americans included in it? Aren't you appalled?

Gargamel wrote:

Also, what significance am I supposed to apply to this list you cut and pasted? Did you notice there are African Americans included in it? Aren't you appalled?
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Are you so dense that you think that race equals ideology? Are you so dimwitted that you think that every Afro-American is a left winger? Are you so unconnected to reality that you think that everyone who lives in the South is a racist?

There are a number of Afro-Americans who would not only make good Senators but would also gain the maximum financial support I could give.

Candidates?

l. Thomas Sowell

2. Shelby Steele

3, Bill Cosby


Ted Kennedy is white but his heart is blacker than the heats of the majority of Afro-Americans. Skin color does not make people different. Ideology does. The problem is that because of most of the propaganda spewed by the race carders like Jesse Jackson and/or Al Sharpton, the large majority of blacks have joined in on the absurdities of victimology.

Huh? What in the hell are you talking about? Are you saying that Simic is not an american poet?

Simic was born in Belgrade, which was then in Yugoslavia. Growing up in war-torn Europe as a child shaped much of his world-view. In an interview from the Cortland Review he said, "Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me. In addition to my own little story of bad luck, I heard plenty of others. I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed in my life." Simic immigrated to the United States with his family in 1954 when he was sixteen. He grew up in Chicago and received his B.A. from New York University. He is professor emeritus of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives on the shore of Bow Lake in Strafford, New HampshirE

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Anyone who has lived in the USA since he was sixteen, and became a professor emeritus at U of New Hampshire is, by virtue of those facts, an AMERICAN POET.

Let's put Simic aside for a moment. You also included Yeats and Thomas in that list. Which you are, above, quoted as calling a list of great American poets.

Please explain, genius.

Yeats and Thomas in what list?

The list I gave--http://www.poetseers.org/poets/20th-century-poets

Oh, you embarrass me, Gargamel--I am not a genius but you must be. I know quite a few geniuses like you. Those who prefer Simic to TS Eliot. Those who prefer Kandinsky to Michaelangelo. Those who prefer Elton John to Beethoven.

Those are the geniuses like you. They are the ones who truly understand Art. Not the old archaic crap painted by Michaelangelo but the truly beautiful insightful painting by Kandinsky which, of course, can be only truly understood by those who have the artistic mind. Not the old fashioned poems of Eliot but the liberating songs of Simic. Not the cacaphony of Beethoven but the modern sensibility of sweet Elton John.

T.S. Eliot sucks almost as much dick as Elton John does. And he is, like you, concerned with form over force, devoid of soul and substance. Unless you've snorted a line of Adderall and have access to one of the corner carrels in your area university library, or are a poet yourself, he ******* blows. Who reads Eliot outside of academe? Nobody. Certainly not you.

If Eliot is such a cut above the contemporary and "liberating," why the **** did you include him, above, in a list that includes BILLY COLLINS, the most pedestrian poet ever published? You cut and pasted this list of "Great American Poets," thereby defending their greatness, though I know you meant only to minimize a poet you've never read and to pathetically try to impress us as well-read.

Don't blame me for embarrassing you. Yours is the great mind comparing classical music to 1970s piano pop.

Oy! I like Eliot!!!

He was an amazing critic.

In the "Western Canon" subtitled--"The books and school of the ages" byHarold Bloom, the dean of American critics and scholars, He lists five writers from Czechoslovakia( now Czech and Slovak) who belong to the Canon. The Canon is, of course, the choice of books which are authorative in our culture. The Canon lists US writers as well as writers from foreign countries.

Simic, alas, is not listed under US writers or Czech writers.

The Czech writers are

Karel Capek

Vaclav Havel

Milan Kundera

Jaroslav Seifert

Miroslav Holub

Here is what Bloom writes about American Poets:

P. 522

"Wallace Stevens...is clearly a canonical poet, perhaps the major American poet after Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson. His only rivals appear to be Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot!!!

I was just waiting for you to drop the B-word. Where do I start?

I find it funny--and this was basically my motive for jumping into this conversation--that you seem to think that by holding fast to Bloom's Western canon you'll come off as an authority on literature. I believe my initial objection was to someone coming along and proclaiming his past as an educator, using this past as the basis for putting down posters who actually know what they are talking about, and then quoting Leaves of Grass, the go-to choice for dudes who want to sound smart but probably don't know so much about poetry beyond what they are told is great.

Harold Bloom has made a name for himself by telling people what is great, and while literature professors 60 or older fall over his every word, the rest of world sees no real reason to discredit literature written by authors not white or born before 1900. So, to correct you, the Canon is not necessarily what Bloom deems it to be. The Canon is what is being taught in literature courses (after all, academe is the only arena in which Bloom is relevant, despised or not) and what people are reading. And Bloom is increasingly being relegated to rhetorical history, the first couple weeks of English 200.

This is the part of my post where I ask you 1) Why does it matter that Simic is not on Bloom's list? 2) Which is your major issue, Simic's nationality or his "greatness" as a poet? 3) If I were born in Japan, of Japanese parents, spoke the language, lived there for fifteen years, and then moved to the US and made my name writing haiku and referencing my Japanese predecessors, would you not regard me as a Japanese poet? 4) Why do you insist on commenting on Simic at all when you have admitted to not reading him?

Now, ask yourself how seriously I take Bloom's quote lauding Eliot. At the time Bloom was developing his brand of criticism, he was desperately trying to belittle the Yale contingent of New Critics Eliot had spawned. What a tiny world it was and what a shallow pool of authors were at play. The discussion was not whether Slavic poets were "in the Canon" or not--it was whether Shelley and the Romantics were worth a ****. So he liked Eliot's poetry, big deal.

um ... I don't suppose you guys might think it's time to start your own poetry appreciation thread? There are folk who'd have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about here (going by the thread title) & might actually be interested.

Wonderful suggestion. Sometimes I actually check in here to see where everyone has been.

Well, ya know, roger ... there might even be some folk who actually want to address the thread topic, who have something new to say, at this stage, even! Makes it rather difficult ....

I know. That's why I went back and thumbed all the poetry references. There! Now they shouldn't blame you.