Canonicity

Due to my sensible decision to spend most of last week writing my thesis, I haven't posted for a bit. I intend to respond to this commendable, if provocative article by Sean O'Brien soon, but, in the interim, I'll post a link to it:

Read Poetry: it's quite hard

In summary, O'Brien performs a neat deconstruction of the idea of 'relevance' as it pertains to the engagement between young people (perhaps I'm still one of his implied constituents, and my students certainly are) and the reading of poetry. I don't think his examples of poets we should read are great- Plath, for example, seems to be taught in schools only in light of her 'relevance' to a contemporary trauma culture- but the essential sentiment is bang on the money. More to follow.

Jx