Thursday, November 1, 2018
CE
What is hilarious about that Clayton E. letter is how he defends his poetry - by quoting horrifically, obviously, staggeringly inept examples of it. The lack of self-awareness is astonishing. After one quote, he say, "it may not be great poetry, but..." Well, no, it isn't. The opening gambit of placing all poetry above all criticism is also priceless, since Perloff is able to turn around and ask, well, what defines something as poetry?
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3 comments:
Have you met him in person? I haven't, but I've heard he is hard to take. "Kind of awful," my friend said. If you read some of his essays on what he went through to translate Vallejo, especially that introduction to the PP translation with Barcia, you see he believes every banal thought he has is deep and precious (and that he is God's gift, etc.).
I haven't. I reviewed something once, volume of his translations, and he wrote me huffily. Even though my review was positive, he didn't think I had highlighted enough some translation that he had thought very important.
It fits.
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