Kona says:
>Don Paterson has a wonderful quote on this in his
>essay "The Dilemma of Being A Peot" [sic], but
>unfortunately I don't have it to hand. I'll try to
>dig it out tonight. The core of his point is that "If
>you start with an *idea* for a poem [a purely
>intellectual starting-point as opposed to a deeper
>seed crystal of the kind I mean], you end up with a
>lousy poem". I appreciate that this is a
>not-uncontroversial point, but it certainly captures
>my own subjective experience pretty well.
Very much mine, too, which I thought I was saying...
I lean to Creeley's take on this, which is, approximately, 'if I knew what
I was going to say i wouldn't bother...'
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Although they are
Only breath, words
which I command
are immortal
Sappho (Mary Barnard trans)
|