Pierre Joris wrote:
>
> > In my opinion, Mr. Lake has provided some of the most acute
> > analysis on the
> > degeneracy of contemporary poetry and its causes.
> >
> "degeneracy of contemporarty poetry," hmm, sounds like "degenerate art," a,
> uh, critical, term used in some countries in the thirties.
> _______________________________________________________________
>

It sounds like an organic metaphor -- a social order is an organism and
"decays," degenerates, becomes "decadent."

In tributary social orders (all pre-capitalist class societies) there
might have been a certain rightness to the organic metaphor.

But capitalism may become increasingly brutal and destructive, but it
always arises from its own ashes, as fresh and brutal and destructive
(and as capable of producing good art) as ever. It won't ever die a
natural death I fear. And it will continue to produce new aesthetic
forms. The charge of degeneracy shows a lack of imagination in the
critic.

Carrol