Elisa New: recommendation

Transcript context

…Too removed from the worries of everyday life, too tenured. Do you agree or not? Should they be out on whaling ships? I think I should be. I think I can speak for myself here. I have stepped out of the academy by finding a way, a format, a distribution channel, and accepting the limitations of 24 minutes in order to speak to doctors, lawyers, postal workers, delivery people. I have said, “We who have lived in the academy ought to get out a bit.” [laughs] I can say for myself, I’m very happy to have gotten out in the world. What I have learned is that one doesn’t need very special equipment or even a lot of technical knowledge to read a poem, even a difficult poem, with deep understanding. What do you think of the notion of poets who do harm? T. S. Eliot, for instance — he claimed Milton, whom he thought was a great poet, but did more harm to 18th century poetry than either Dryden or Pope. Are there poets today — great though they may be — who are in a sense doing harm to poetry? And how should we think about that?…

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