Innovative literary directions

I would like to respectfully relate the following to James McKenna’s letter to the editor (Oct. 26). As he quoted the American writer and innovator, William Carlos Williams, I also quote Williams:

“All the ways and means we have of writing just go to prove that no one has yet discovered any one best way. Every creative writer will experiment, try out new techniques.”

I quote as well another American writer and innovator, Marianne Moore:

“What I write, as I said before, could only be called poetry because there is no other category in which to put it.”

I think it is obvious for me to state that we live in an age of innovation. However, some still feel the need to remain with the comfortable ways of the past and that seems to be the case with poetry. The literary expression of the past was appropriate for that past, but not for the present age of innovation.

Both William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore, other American writers, and writers from nations around the world, have presented innovative literary directions in their work since the early 20th century, at the same time that the other arts were also innovating.

So it is that I think there is good reason for writers in Maine and America to innovate with literary forms that would express the innovative spirit of our time and civilization.

Let us create, then, in the spirit of the new world of innovation that we all embrace.

Thomas Fallon, Rumford