Nobel Prize-winning Poetry

Harold Pinter delivered his Nobel lecture to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm via tape yesterday--the full text of the speech is available at Art, Truth and Politics. The speech contained such gems about "art" as this:

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

That explains so much to me about Pinter's writing. Such a discussion of his life's work. Did he win that Nobel for his body of work? or for the fact that he hates the United States? And now, for a short selection of the writing that won this man a Nobel, available at: God Bless America

Democracy There's no escape. The big pricks are out. They'll fuck everything in sight. Watch your back. Harold Pinter Februrary 2003

Well, wasn't that special? Pinter himself, describing his artistic process instead of ranting about the US, says this of his poetry:

"Sometimes, in poems, I am only dimly conscious of the grounds of my activity, and the work proceeds to its own law and discipline, with me as a go-between, as it were. But as you say, if not conscious, so much the better" from Pinter: The Playwright by Martin Esslin pub Methuen 1970

He should stick to writing plays where, hopefully, he is more than dimly conscious.