Poetry the Holocaust and Intellectuals

This week I went to a lecture at the University of Chicago about a couple of Jewish Poets from Poland. I usually enjoy lectures but of course almost anything at the University of Chicago is archane and opaque and this lecture was as well.

It was a bracing experience to listen to people ask questions that could be asked with an economy of language but instead they were asked in the most verbose way possible I guess to show off their Ivy league educations? Or just simply listening to statements from people in the room that have no sense and no focus but sound great out loud....

I have become very tired of the inches of flavorless creme that sit upon the layer cake of Poetry. There seems to be a desire to make everything into some sort of Gnostic discourse-some sort of secret knowledge instead of stepping back and seeing the work as art.

I realize that someone has to get all this grant money that is floating around and that without the grant money most of these intellectuals would have to get jobs and work for a living and so creating an epistomological hermaneutic of the three sentences in a poem is essential to get funding. Sometimes I think Henry the VIII th had it right that we ought to clean out the monasteries and show the monks how to work for a living!

I must say however that I prefer a poetry that is engaged in the world and most of these intellectuals are posers. Sitting in a room with 'intellectuals' I keep wondering where are the writers and poets? so I sat through this lecture- listening to the visceral turned into cool intellectualisms and wondered about humanness in poetry.

I remember as a Child seeing paintings done by Death Camp Artists and being really moved I think I was 8-10 years old. I would have been more interested in how the poetry faced off against horror.

Pianists and Painters and Architects dont do this they create art- why must poets?