The idea of a poetry of minimal surface texture, with its complexities hidden at the bottom of the pool, under the bank, a dark old lurking, no fancy flavor, is ancient. It is what is 'haunting' in the best of Scottish-English ballads and is at the heart of the Chinese shi (lyric) aesthetic. Du Fu said, 'The ideas of a poet should be noble and simple.' Zen says, 'Unformed people delight in the gaudy, and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.'
—Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems
—Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems
Monday, September 12, 2011
