At 05:33 PM 3/22/02 -0600, you wrote: >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 I don't believe Capitalism is natural. It is a mechanism that is fully steered by very large organizations whose sole purpose is to prevent its ideology from disappearing. If this were not the case, I would think we may have seen some 'organic' alternatives by now...