Harold Bloom [photo by Sue Mingus]
. . . the whole jazz tradition from at least Amstrong on features what was called “cutting.” And cutting is the pure instance – from the Greeks on, and it was revived by Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche – of the agonistic spirit; the agon or the contest. The last cutting contest I heard was the rather unequal match between the extremely brave Branford Marsalis and Sonny Rollins – very brave of Branford. Of all living masters in jazz now, Rollins is surely the greatest extant…… Among poets it’’s always a competition. Mr. Stevens and Mr. Eliot existed at the same time. Mr. Eliot thought well of Wallace Stevens and published him in England by Faber & Faber. Stevens refused to say a word about Eliot in prose, though it entered into the letters occasionally and it was family tradition; that’’s how they told me he didn’t like Eliot or his poetry. Didn’t like the fact that Harmonium had been crowded out by The Waste Land in 1922……
Harold Bloom in conversation with Chris Lydon, at Bloom’s home in New Haven. http://www.radioopensource.org/at_home_with_harold_bloom_3_the_jazz_bridge/
from the archive; first posted June 30, 2008
Go to Source
Author: The Best American Poetry
