<<The poem should stand for itself.>>
I'm not sure that this is so, or even can be so. Aren't poems always
embedded in a social context? I'm suspicious of this sort of
universalism, though I also think the poem has a "responsibility" to
be accessible to its reader. The reader, though, is a highly fluid &
variable construction.
jd
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Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, box 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
[log in to unmask]
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
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Sing so dogs bark, oxen bolt,
So a girl walks out on her lover.
Sing so dogs bark, bulls bellow,
So the old coot crawls out of his hut.
[Mekong Delta 1971, trans. John Balaban]
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