The list might enjoy this, by Bob Holman, borrowed from
http://poetry.about.com/arts/poetry/library/weekly/aa052599.htm
Victor Hugo's Best Stanza
Paul Valéry (1871-1945) was a wild and expansive critic as well as a
marvelous surrealist poet. T.S. Eliot said he “illuminates like the flash
of an empty cigarette lighter in the dark.” In this day of sound-bites and
45-second MP3 samples, 30-second MTV poems, try on M. Valéry’s response to
a request to submit his choice for a favorite verse of a master poet’s.
from Victor Hugo’s Best Stanza:
Paul Valéry : "Very politely, you ask me to do something I disapprove of --
you want me to pick some special verse from Victor Hugo’s work which seems
to have a special excellence. I do not at all like the process of
separating out the “purest” or “best” part of a poem. Isn’t this like the
way children eat cakes -- picking out the almonds to crunch, feeding the
rest to the dog?"
John Tranter, Jacket magazine
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