In the American Chronicle, Bruce Deitrick Price inveighs against the contemporary "McPoem," as he designates it, and yearns for a return to the Greek and Roman stuff...Here's a bit:
So, here’s what the McPoets accomplished: a torrent of boring poetry gave Poetry a bad rep. To judge by the proliferation of websites, more people may be reading long-dead Romans than are reading any American poets alive. What’s certain is that writers such as Catullus and Martial are perused with more visceral enjoyment than virtually all contemporary poets, because the dead guys are alive with sophistication and high spirits.
Poems from the Greek Anthology seems also to be more popular than ever. Wow! These poets wrote about every facet of life, including enemies, lovers, battles, and favorite boats. Here’s what poetry was like when it was young:
On a Thessalian Hound (by Simonides)
Even as you lie dead in this tomb
I know the wild beasts
still fear your white bones, huntress Lycas;
your bravery high Pelion knows,
and splendid Ossa
and the lonely peaks of Cithaeron.
Point is, this ancient poetry displays a directness, a force, a fullness of life that literature has traditionally possessed but McPoems abandoned.
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