/lit/ - Literature

>>20460290
This is a vague claim, but I think poetry has to be based on a genuine engagement with language, and a fundamental aspect of language is that it develops as part of human history, so if you deny that aspect and try to write like you actually are a 19th-century Romantic you're blocking off the kind of openness to language's autonomy that's essential for good poetry. That doesn't mean you can't use archaic elements - Wallace Stevens for example often writes in a deliberately grandiose and archaic way - but you have to consciously work with the weirdness and pastiche-ness as one of the poem's elements.