2.03.2009

As far as finding the "necessary" poetry, the Acmeists - Mandelstam, Akhmatova - often expressed a trust in the people at large to find it & value it. Russia is famous, in fact, for this sense of an "organic" literary culture - the high cultural value placed on literature & poetry.

But it's probably not so simple - certainly not a model easily transposed to these United States...

- if it works out, maybe, again, it's a synthetic process. The ultimate judgement resides both with the poets themselves, and with the people, the ordinary reader, the culture at large. There is some kind of conjunction of opposites between the vocational keepers of the flame, the maintainers of literary standards & taste - & the "common reader".

There is, nowadays, a lot of suspicion & angst on all sides about this particular conjunction of opposites. ("Official verse culture". The semi-Loyal ("post-avant") Opposition. Mass media. "Dumbing-down." MFA Industry. etc. etc. The worries.)

Probably involves "saving" (preserverant) miracles here & there, now & then. (Our Holy Exemplars, Sts. Herman & Emily, for example...)

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