HOBART

Muldoon has a line in “Sleeve Notes” where he’s talking about Leonard Cohen and he says, “his songs have meant far more to me / than most of the so-called ‘poems’ I’ve read.” Most of us have given up the idea that popular music is not an art form. There’s a way that popular music does what poetry used to do: it brings people together in a common conversation, and there’s a definite sense in which poetry over the past fifty years has become less and less of a popular art form and more a cloistered pursuit. I make the obvious distinction between Wordsworth and Jay-Z, but I don’t make a distinction in the impact they’ve had on my life. Each of them has provided me with what Kenneth Burke calls “equipment for living.

11 notes
See Post tags #Michael Robbins #Paul Muldoon #Leonard Cohen #Alien vs. Predator #Jay Z #Paris Review #Kenneth Burke