Mar
03
2009

On Greatness

datePosted on 16:14, March 3rd, 2009 by EKSwitaj

Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

There has been some talk about greatness in the poetry blogosphere of late in response to a piece in the NYTBR. This is my response:

5 Reasons Not to Talk about Greatness

1.
It is so much less interesting than flaws.

2.
When people see something as beautiful,
ugliness is created.
When people see something as good,
evil is created.
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

3.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
-Audre Lorde

4.
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
-Emily Dickinson

 5.
 I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
-James Joyce, Ulysses

10 Things I’d Rather Talk about Instead
Black and White Cherry Blossoms, photograph by Elizabeth Kate Switaj

  1. cherry blossoms
  2. cats
  3. vegan jello
  4. my sister’s bichon
  5. photography as folk art
  6. jellyfish
  7. red wine
  8. social justice
  9. translation
  10. poems

While the original article includes some fair points about the smugness and fetishizing tendencies of US po-biz (in which I myself am at times implicated), the driving question is not the one that needs to be asked.

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categoryPosted in USA, poetry | printPrint

2 Responses to “On Greatness”

  1. Isabel on March 3rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    yeah I pretty much agree. gosh what a dull piece that was, I couldn’t even get through it. it made me wish frank o’hara were still alive just so he could write some really funny tumblr post (and I totally think frank o’hara would have a tumblr, a real blog being too weighty-seeming for him – though he’d register his own domain name) mocking it.

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  2. EKSwitaj on March 4th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    It’s interesting to think about poets who’ve passed and how they would deal with the Internet, isn’t it?

    Given Dickinson’s prolific letter-writing (for instance), I can’t help but suspect she would have involved herself somehow in blogging or social media. Probably some critics would thus accuse her of being insufficiently reclusive to be the Dickinson of her age.

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