Some of this did ring bells. There is a kind of poem
that seems to be produced by reading currently
fashionable poets and then remixing their techniques
because the writer knows that's what a contemporary
poem sounds like, and hopes the right ingredients will
turn it into one. "The cook was an obstinate believer
in the influence of environment and cherished the
conviction that if you put rabbit and curry powder
together in a dish, a rabbit curry would result"
(Saki). Martin Blyth, on his interesting new web site,
complains of poems which are purely observational,
which observe minute details with great accuracy but
to little effect. I can see what he means, but such
poems were perhaps a reaction against over-abstraction
which is much worse. My own pet hate is poems full of
Heaneyesque noun-statements and no verbs, like it was
enough to plonk objects down on the page and hope
they'd turn into a poem. Verbs are what bring language
alive and make it move, and for me verbless or
near-verbless poems are dead on the page
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Sheenagh Pugh
http://x-stream.fortunecity.com/sonicst/68
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