Friday, September 09, 2005

Literary Quotes and Quotables For $1000

What is:

Most people ignore most poetry
because
most poetry ignores most people.

Adrian Mitchell

2 comments:

Letitia Trent said...

I wonder what that means. Is it talking about the old bogey, accessibility?

Nick said...

"I wrote this slogan to distract the attention of reviewers from the vulnerably naked poems in my first book. The trick worked. Way back then in 1964 most published poets in Britain were straight white middle-class male adults from Oxbridge. Since then, partly because of the rise of the oral poetry movement, there has been a welcome flood of books and performances by gay, non-white, working-class, women and child poets, many of whom haven't been to university. That's progress. But poetry, one of the great arts, is still largely ignored by the Arts Council, the press, TV and - its natural home - radio. Venceremos!"

-----------------------------Adrian Mitchell

I think I had more respect for him when I thought he was standing up for something he believed in, even though I disagreed with him.