Ah but now you're bringing sulphate into the vulgate and speed reading and
speed writing and I'm afraid my ole ticker just can't take it these days.
But: poetry for the nose - now THERE'S a concept!
cheers
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh Tolhurst <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 11 July 2000 10:17
Subject: Re: I Met A Traveller With An Ampersand...
>David,
>
>Don't know if this is helpful but there's
>another poem in that anthology Minter/Brennan
>have edited, which is about amphetamines and madness
>(Oh God please, not a new thread) called "Lamentable
>dancing" and it finishes with the line,
>
>'bent like an ampersand around the beat.'
>
>
>No, personally I don't wave placards over technical matters,
>most of my poems eschew ampersands and the like,
>others get into them because they somehow suit the territory
>of the poem in question.
>
>If anything, whatever style is de rigeur is more likely
>to be eschewed by moi.
>
>If Mr Corelis would excuse the back row for piping up,
>that is.
>
>Hugh Tolhurst
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: David Kennedy <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 4:31 PM
>Subject: I Met A Traveller With An Ampersand...
>
>
>> Thanks to Roddy for explaining what he meant and 'soz' from me for not
>> reading the original post carefully enough.
>>
>> I'd still like to pursue this further though - both Roddy's post and
Peter
>> Howard's swipe at poets who might think they're being innovative but no
>> longer are.
>>
>> Both areas still strike me as curious. I can partially understand Roddy's
>> impatience with people dressing up conventional work with stylistic
>pointers
>> in an opposite direction - how about naming some poets? But: there's
>another
>> view that says surely it's a matter of choice determined by the
>> circumstances/subject of the poem. This is my own experience. Sometimes
>> starting every line with a capital letter looks stupid but at others it
>> seems just right, etc. And we still seem to be erecting a list of shoulds
>> and shouldn'ts.
>>
>> Going on to Peter Howard's point: if what he says is true then what is
his
>> response to all the poets who are still writing as if Ashbery,
>postmodernism
>> etc never happened? Are they aping as opposed to being traditional? Are
>you
>> going to make the same charge against the poet writing a sonnet and/or
>using
>> the pentameter: well, of course, they're not actually working in a
>> particular poetical tradition they're just aping?
>>
>> My point here is a double one: (a) I still detect unjustified antipathy
>> towards innovators and (b) aren't all the things that Peter calls 'aping'
>> actually on one level stylistic locators i.e. a way of signalling where
>the
>> poet thinks he or she belongs? Just like writing a sonnet in fact. For
>> example, I've always thought that John Hartley Williams's use of the
>> ampersand, shortened forms like 'cd' and 'wd', strange enjambments was
>> precisely that i.e. a playful way of signalling that he's skewed to the
>> mainstream in important ways but is not a full-blown non-mainstream
>writer.
>> But again I'd like to see discussion of poets with examples. Otherwise
>this
>> thread is just a case of people waving placards at each other.
>>
>> cheers
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|