Candice wrote to Paul:
"You attribute certain kinds of poetic language to the
beginner, as I identify the kind of groundless comparison you and David were
attempting between a parody of a 19thc. children's verse and Alison's poem
with the naïve."
You see, you've lost me again, cher Candice. When was I attempting such a
comparison? All I said that Alison wasn't a novice poet, where did the naive
come into this? Paul might have been suggesting such, but his comments were
misplaced, as I'm sure he'll recognise, in time.
There is, I think, a kind of necessary naivety in poetry, especially at its
inception, one has to be 'open', gullible even, to break into verse, but
alongside come the critical faculties.
To lift a quote from another list and debate, poets need to be stupid.
Else we'd never write anything at all.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Candice Ward" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: Blueshirts
Take it easy, Paul. I didn't criticize you for mistaking the color; I just
corrected it. And I didn't say you were being too hard on Alison's poem
either, but rather that I shared your preference for hard or stripped-down
language in poetry. My comment about the novice (critic) paralleled yours on
the novice (poet). You attribute certain kinds of poetic language to the
beginner, as I identify the kind of groundless comparison you and David were
attempting between a parody of a 19thc. children's verse and Alison's poem
with the naïve.
(Jeesh!)
Candice
>> Hi, in the words of Bob Geldoff, ?Fuck the address?!
>> It doesn?t matter that their shirts were blue, or that
>> they wore shiny buckles, you catch my drift, that?s
>> all.
>> I?m going too hard? Well, in my opinion my criticism
>> is honest, if writers read my reviews of their work
>> they would write better poems and novels.
>> I didn?t imply that the writing wasn?t Yeats, I just
>> brought Yeats in to reject the idea that music can
>> substitute meaning, or justify meaning that is
>> nonsense in the pursuit of that music. And I think
>> that Facism, so obsessed with form over content, is a
>> useful context for understanding Yeats?late obsession
>> with the formal means, and the death of any kind of
>> tangible political project that he might have had in
>> mind, after the great poems circa 1916.
>> There are contradictions, such as the Modernists
>> rejection of Georgian poetry and its excesses, but
>> Yeats isn?t a Modernist is he? Or if he is, then he
>> can be categorised as a Mystic, a Georgian poet, a
>> writer of pseudo-William Blake poems, unlike Pound or
>> Eliot, who are more plainly in the Modernist camp.
>> When I criticise I don?t mean to offend personally, if
>> that is a response then it is unfortunate, but really
>> not my problem. If I offend artistically, or get it
>> wrong as we all do, then I don?t apologise for my
>> lapse of taste or faith, or descent into boorishness
>> (everyone needs a night in the pub, sometimes....).
>>
>> I had a terrible time with the flyer (ie Wagner et al)
>> which was just a publicity flyer, and invitation for
>> people to share their poems and stories, no one yet
>> has done so, I?ll be wary of doing such a thing again
>> (instead they all criticised my facts, RIENZI didn?t
>> wear a blueshirt, no he owns a fish shop down the
>> road, O yes, came on the boat from
>> Napoli...blah,blah,blah...).
>> ciao-ciao,
>> Paul Murphy
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