Jordan & Ron on "vagueness". I commented to Ron, but I don't think I got it right either. Poetry is not "more primitive than politics". One can intepret or intuit the political aspect of any experience or situation.

I guess what always bothers me is the equation "moral high ground = poetic innovation". Morality always seems easy for the moralists; therefore it can become a function of style, the sword & shield of whole literary movements.

Undoubtedly the state of a culture - its educational & moral values & standards - will be reflected in its literary styles. But these are HARD TO READ in contemporary circumstances. How much harder to invest & bind them into literary-progressive movements.

Art & poetry are always being marshalled into somebody's scheme for world improvement. But to create an original work of art is a different & more difficult undertaking, because the work is a kind of end in itself : and AS AN END IN ITSELF it makes a statement about the nature of experience which jars with programmatic or politically-correct (in anybody's system) this-leads-to-that projects for world improvement.

None of these formulas (mine included) get it right, because we want to hear it straight from the work of art itself; we want the voice saying YES or NO to come from the poet & the poem, not the commentator. Criticism & comment are dogged by this inherent irrelevance, always talking AROUND something not yet achieved. I suppose someone has noted this constitutive flaw (in fact the deconstructionists did : but their mistake was to think that such flawed theoretical discourse was all there is).