The HyperTexts

Jack Granath comments on the Dr. Joseph S. Salemi Interview conducted by Mike Burch

Thanks, Mike. I don't think I would last long in that arena, but I like your defense of poetry as something any interested party can learn from and enjoy. If it's not that, if it's just something for technicians to ponder and autopsy, then it loses a lot of interest for me. I also like seeing a rationalist come up against your commonsense insistence on the emotional dimension of poetry. Dr. Salemi sometimes seems more like a champion of Neoclassicism than of the classical literature he loves (or I should say "approves," with Pope).

I do like his view that free verse and formal are fundamentally different things. A lot of the ruckus behind that split is just a matter of classification, in my opinion. If we grouped formal poetry with music and talked about them as the metrical arts—well, we'd probably have a ruckus of a different kind, but it might clear up some confusion about the divide between free verse and formal. It might even make sense of the hybrids you refer to. I just think that as long as meter remains Chapter 7 in the Intro to Poetry Toolbox, coming in right after the chapter on onomatopoeia, it's bound to be misunderstood.

As for the monarchical politics that Dr. Salemi favors, I just bounce away from the majority of what he has to say because of that. So it's good to get a window on it from time to time through an honest interview like this one.

Thanks again!
Jack Granath

To read the poetry of Jack Granath, please click his hyperlinked name above.

The HyperTexts