Devil’s Advocate: Dog Kennel Hill Project and the End of Dance

Devil sculpture, Tuscany, photo by piettoizzo (Creative Commons)

Adorno once claimed that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”¹, an accusation that has managed to upset quite a few writers and literary experts over the years. It’s difficult to say whether Adorno was being ‘serious’ or not; at any rate, perhaps his intended target was not poetry itself but the callousness and indifference of a poetry industry that, in the face of the evidence of overwhelming suffering, simply carried on as if nothing had changed. Suffice it to say that Adorno’s challenge did not signal the End of Poetry in the West. It did, however, prompt a fair amount of soul-searching among those brave enough to claim the job description of ‘poet’, forcing them to think long and hard about what, after Auschwitz, their poems could possibly mean.