4 July 2003

Dear Ian Ayres,

Forgive this delayed response; I was rather overwhelmed with incoming items after my 10 day absence in France. I appreciated your giving me your book as well as your kind intentions.

Alas, I fear I’m too old-fashioned for most of today’s poets. I like my poetry to sing--as once was its function--like the chaps we studied at school and like Tony Harrison of today and those who write for the Literary Review Competition which demands poems that rhyme, scan and make sense. I am often moved, which I expect to be, and I can understand what they are SAYING!--something I rarely can in the current styles; my mind wanders. Many of these people simply write prose, then cut it up into short lines and, voila! it’s a poem. I don’t think so.

Poets such as Allen Ginsberg and artists like Picasso studied their craft and the rules (every art form has its rules--there is no freedom without fences) so they can do anything they like be it good or awful, but they do it by choice, not because they know no better; they paid their dues.

I find too much negativity, condemning and whining in much of today’s work--many self-absorbed or too much show-off erudition. Many far too hung-up on bodily functions. Our bodies are miraculous instruments and should be revered--especially sex, the closest we get to our Creator. Some of it just silly nonsense. There is little of higher insights into our human condition to help us rise on our upward spiral journey of evolution or universal emotions raised above the banal.

Well, you get the picture of where I’m “at”. Thank you for trying anyway.

Sincerely,

Carolyn Cassady

Carolyn Cassady Letter: Van Gogh's Ear, Volume Three : page v.

Copyright © 2004 by French Connection Press/Committee on Poetry

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