Dear Joe & others
I am deeply shocked
Wendy Cope is one of the finest poets in Britain. The quality of her work is
beyond question. It is therefore quite outrageous that anyone should
criticise it.
Surely you can see what she is doing with cliche and metre. You don't need
me to explain. I suggest you read the work. There isn't anything wrong with
any of it.
I wonder what your agenda is.
L
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Duemer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 June 2000 02:02
Subject: Re: Wendy Cope
| <<And, Joe, I expect I wouldn't call the piece satire either: "a
| plain and slightly witty derisive attack" would be more accurate.
| You're right: really good satire draws reluctant agreement from a
| hostile reader. This doesn't do that, I'd guess. But it makes me
| fond of her a little.>>
|
| It makes me not fond of her at all, Gabe. It's cliché, the sort of
| easy language any creative writing teacher would try to coax toward
| the actual. And it is a metrical horror--that's why I was willing to
| admit it might be satire, satire often employing bumpy meter as a
| foregrounding devise, a sort of "nudge, nudge," as the old Monty
| Python skit has it. I usually don't offer my own work on the list,
| especially not as a counter example to something I am criticizing,
| but here are the first & last stanzas of a much longer poem, the
| title poem of a new collection I've just begun peddling. I offer it
| because it tries to imagine with language situations similar to
| those in the Cope & Ryan poems. A companion piece to this poem,
| titled "Pornography," appeared in the last number of Stand.
|
| Magical Thinking
| Du nombre des amoureux sains . . .
| -VILLON
|
| "Dick-for-brains," I heard a woman say under her breath, contempt
| streaking her voice like staphylococcus. It's true the man walking
| away with shoulders pitched forward was graceless-a doofus-or
| an honorable fool-some of us grow up never learning where to put
| our hands when talking to a woman, or whether the jacket ought to be
|
| buttoned or unbuttoned & under what circumstances, ergo cit.
|
| [ . . . ]
|
| That is why we also hate him, for he engenders disgust with
| ourselves.
| For he puts everything we've earned to the test-Dick-for-Brains
| demands
| we prove ourselves against the Devil, who is willing to admit he
| likes crawling
| into bed with women & likes thinking about it as much as doing it,
| though he recognizes, because he is the Devil, the ontological
| differences
| between doing & thinking. He knows it is here that thinking matters
| most.
|
| ======================
| 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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