My concern about the misjudgements can be seen as a particular problem in
English experience, where, as I was telling Michael a while back, notions of
'form' and social and political hegemony have a certain link that might not
be actual elsewhere.
But I love Montale's 'flow', but again isn't that related to the material,
you can do that in Italian but English doesn't really allow it?
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 4:00 AM
Subject: Re: query
> I agree with this, David, though there are probably worse misjudgements...
> end-rhyme in my experience is a means not an "end" (it instigates overall
> sound effects).
>
> Erminia might be able to add something here, since I think Eugenio Montale
> is one of the masters at combining free-flow with end-rhyme... here's
> a rough effort in English where I tried to imitate something I heard in
> Montale... it's rather lumpy unless read with a lot of enjambment:
>
>
> ON VETERAN'S DAY [also: St. Martin's Day]
>
>
> You were born on St. Stephen's Day;
> we used to stone your flinty
> opinions, unruly boys, every night
> at the dinner table. Flighty
> moths, angry at the antique lampshade,
> our every word would avoid
> your slow midwestern interval -
> yawning morning after a carnival
> of unofficial nativity,
> laughter's rapidity
> bearing away your question
> on our shoulders (a mob's procession).
>
> On Veteran's Day it's left for me
> to understand: the low storm we brewed
> (spun top swollen to turbid flood
> of iron blades turning under the sea)
> - how this was just an echo
> of your glide into a maelstrom
> of stronger waters: circling time,
> one tentative promise before the law.
>
> Not that chaos of dusty rings
> below the statue - but broken fingers
> of slate, a fossilized Iron Range,
> whatever smolders and lingers
> in you (those cousins, foolish pride
> and the salt sepulchre none can hide).
>
> And what was withheld from us all
> was the arrowhead you had found
> the day before, in a mossbound pool,
> a manger of rocks the size of your hand.
>
> And it's left for me, the years
> whittled down to this crossroad, a splinter
> crying out in the dream, your mystery.
> 11.11.87
>
> Henry
>
> >
> >What matters in a poem, among other things, is the sound texture entire,
the
> >couplings of assonance and consonance, as well as rhythmic agitation or
> >excitement, and to conflate that with end-rhyme in the name of formality
is
> >the worst and repeated artistic misjudgement you can make.
>
|