Why Breathe at All If Not to Be Inspired?

Recently I saw a video of a well-known academic poet— "poet" should be in inverted commas, because what his schtick is, is to take writing belonging to other people, and read it, or print it, as though it were his own—in which he goes to a newsstand, buys a daily paper, then begins to read it with all the pomp and self-importance as though it were poetry itself. This gentleman has also appeared at the White House where he is said to have read the traffic report (or something of that ilk) to President or Mrs. Obama (or their adjutants after they had left the room) under the guise of poetry.

Presumably this is "conceptualist" poetry in the extreme. He has edited an anthology of the genre.

A friend of mine looked at the video, and wrote:

I watched [it]. I consider people like that the enemy. He gives me no hints that he at all understands the words (the lingo) he is using beyond a surface level. He's a self-conned con-man who has found a way to stroke his own ego.

The problem with people like him is that you cannot argue with them, simply because they don't understand the field enough to argue with them. (Kind of like a discussion of nuance of color in painting with someone who only knows the words and meanings of the colors of the rainbow.) So you cannot win an argument. Or, more exactly, the only people who will see that you are revealing him as a fraud are the people who already see him as a fraud. Everyone else don't know enough to be able to see through the hogwash because all they know are the colors of the rainbow themselves.

So, as said, I consider people like him the basest of enemies, who only merit being laughed at. (Which is not to say I might not enjoy trying to show that he does not know what he's talking about.)

It is not my intention to mock him; an anonymous poster (or posters) about whom I have written has (or have) expressed an unbridled hatred toward this professor probably well beyond his significance outside of but the smallest of academic spheres. No doubt power and authority provoke rage when they are abused; yet this particular form of intellectual abuse seems sanctioned by the culture at large, hence the gentleman's appearance even at Pennsylvania Avenue.

But I wonder. Genuine work is being created daily; how has it gotten so hedged out by those in academic circles that scarcely a note is registered? Brendan Dempsey has written an epic poem, for example. Now, I have not read too much of it: I await its appearance in print form, because my eyes will not tolerate extensive screen scrutiny. It occurs to me, even if the work proves to have been a failure, the appearance of an epic itself is a notable achievement. (Obviously, I speak from bias, having produced two myself, here and here.) In the case of Dempsey's work—again, without understanding the scope of the whole—I can attest for certain that there occur lines of brilliance or of beauty. So much could be said for Keats's efforts in the creation of a long poem.

"To have that kind of fame..." —as one of my sonnets asserts—what could be more laudable of humanity (or even to have failed in the attempt)? "It is by our intentions we are known": perhaps not to posterity, but certainly to God, or to ourselves. Which only reinforces my wonderment. What kind of cynicism drives someone to set that kind of ambition aside, and to rest content, while proclaiming himself an advocate of poetry or even a poet, with parrotting the appropriated language of others? All artistic creation depends upon interpretation of pre-existing material; but without the unique individual synthesis, how can it be worth anything. It calls into question the life; for, as Dempsey's poem asks, "Why breathe at all if not to be inspired?"