A gem of a quote from John Latta

Sometimes the quality of writing to be found in poetry blogs is so exceptional both author and writing deserve special mention. Here's a gem I recently discovered at John Latta's Isola di Rifiuti.

I can't honestly say I've seen a better characterization of the spirit of our poetical times than this: this is T.S. Eliot stuff! And I can't say anyone is likely to find poetry commentary as erudite and creative as Latta's. Jerome Rothenberg does come a close second (in case I'm accused of favouring the traditionalists). I've begun to read Latta for insight and enjoyment: intelligence of commentary based on wide reading as well as his own uniquely stylish prose. All significant writers possess both.
_________________
                                                                     2


Contemporary trends assume that art is like a fountain, when really it is like a sponge.
   They have decided that art ought to gush, but it ought, rather, to suck up and absorb.
   They assert that art can be divided into categories according to means of representation, when actually it is composed of organs of perception.
   Art must always remain among the spectators and see things more clearly, more truthfully, more perceptively than the others, but in our day it has resorted to using face powder and dressing rooms and displaying itself on the stage. It is as if there were two forms of art and one of them, knowing that it holds the other in reserve, allows itself the luxury of perversion, which is tantamount to suicide. It makes a display of itself when it ought to get lost in the top gallery, in anonymity, and be unaware that it cannot help being discovered, that while shrinking in the corner it is afflicted with a glowing translucence, the phosphorescence that goes with certain diseases.