A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.' It is 'sentimentality' that is to be avoided, like the fiddleback spider, being as it is 'the quality or state of being sentimental to excess or in affectation.' Again we are faced with a judgement call and must keep a sharp eye on our outpourings to insure they are not overly gooey. The intellectual elite probably believe that most of the lyrics songwriters create are 'doggerel' of one kind or another--that is to say 'trivial"...the young songwriter has now been warned about the implacable nature of the enemy. Under a rather large umbrella, preferred twentieth-century taste in art of all kinds has been characterized by a kind of detachment, or sangfroid. It is simply not chic to be carried away in one's emotional reaction to a subject. All serious communication or complaint must be carefully wrapped in a protective coating of irony and/or satire. . Jimmy Webb
Some Similar Quotes
  1. I'm not sentimental-- I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romanticperson has a desperate confidence that they won't. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. I drive around the streetsan inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality andpossible love. - Charles Bukowski
  3. It is, therefore, a great source of virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be possible to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet... - Hugh Of SaintVictor
  4. The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me. - Janet Fitch
  5. When it seems you are having too much fun, then a switch turns on in your head and makes you think; if only there were a way to take a snapshot of this moment and place it into a mason jar next to some peach... - A.H. Scott
More Quotes By Jimmy Webb
  1. A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility,...
  2. As I've grown - dare I say it - older, I had hopes of indulging my dreams of being a sailor.
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