Intense poetic moments of insight and evocation

In The Resistance to Poetry (2004), James Longenbach claims that ‘Distrust of poetry (its potential for inconsequence, its pretensions to consequence) is the stuff of poetry.’ The Australian poet Laurie Duggan has based a career on a creative distrust of poetry, or at least a certain kind of attitude to poets and poetry. Duggan is especially suspicious of the idea of the poet as inherently interesting. As he said in an interview in 2001, ‘I really don’t think I’m very interesting in any broader sense than my friends must feel. Partly there’s just the sheer amazement that a life – my life – can be written out like this.’