Thanks Joseph - I was trying to express an ambivalence which would no
doubt have been clearer if we'd been talking rather than emailing.
On the one hand, there is a particular pleasure in reading a poem, or
having someone read your poem, so much in or familiar with the same
cultural embedment that no explanations are needed. There is a sense in
which I find this ideal, hence my careless use of should.
But I thought I also said that poems are, inevitably, embedded in a
social context; and I would (over dinner) go on to say that there is
another particular pleasure in the way a poem of one context can be read
in another. For this to happen, sometimes a note is necessary.
I have no problem, and often have great delight, in the sort of thing
Matthew is talking about, the stage direction or epigraph, or even the
perfect title, which sets the reader in a useful frame of mind or gives
some essential info; equally, 'notes' that become part of the poem, or
dialogue with it, or become a poem in their own right. The Ancient
Mariner marginalia seem to me to be dramatically in dialogue with the
verse poem (try reading it aloud with a partner whose voice is really
different from one's own), and I like the idea of 'paratext' to describe
them. It doesn't usually occur to me to think of such things as notes,
because they function as poetry.
In the same way, asterisks or numbers are great if they have a function
as poetry.
But I can't positively like notes that remain outside the poetry, simply
as a chunk of information. The question was asked, where should a note
be placed, and if it is this sort of note I don't think it belongs on
the same page as the poem. And asterisks or numbers that have no
function as poetry but simply draw attention to a note of that sort
strike me as clumsy.
Aileen
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