Having chewed a bit, Henry, and thus in masticular mood, I'm mindful of that
Joycean statement: 'The supreme question about a work of art is how deep a
life from which it springs' (think that's word-correct, I'm quoting from
memory)
Now that's a _big_ statement and liable to many interpretations, so almost
louche in its looseness therein, but whatever way one interprets the thought
it most definitely does not equate with something like 'The supreme question
about a work of art is its form'. Yes, form is essential, it guarantees
internal coherence, whether in free form or fixed, but as such it is a
vehicle of conveyance, not the message that is carried. Or sung.
Mindful of that Jamesian canard and see-through, when he, the clinger to
form, derided 'loose baggy monsters such as Tolstoy's 'Peace and War''. The
garbling of the epic's title is as much James's own as the little-minded
voice of the quote.
Thinking too of Les Murray's 'The Quality of Sprawl', and, to my mind,
Sprawl has it, spilling over the tight pentameters I mean parameters, and
tumbling over the boundaries of class, in every sense of the word, and
making connections, voltages of links, shocking, where none ever thought
them before to exist, like a thirty line sonnet wrapped in prose paper.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 5:14 AM
Subject: Re: query
> I'll chew on that a while, Henry, altho' I am sure that notions of form
are
> very close to the bland face of the Beast, but questions of idiom and
> diction are certainly there too.
>
> I haven't seen 'Speech, Speech!' yet, but I'm glad you raised that
> particular Hill as he is a poet whom I have furiously ambiguous reactions
> too: partly y'know coz of West Midlands links, he being from Bromsgrove
> originally, (in Worcestershire, that burry shadow of our one and only
> Warwickshire)
> and tho' from the same speech patterns I know (I recognise those 'Mershan'
> vowel harmonies a mile orf) yet too an inhabitant of the 'other lot', that
> is to say the class and voices of authority, a 'policeman's son' as one of
> his former students at Leeds once described him to me, years ago, while at
a
> party in Acocks Green, (just down the road from Hobbitsville) while
> completely slewed, which if you ponder it does indicate the strength of
the
> impression.
>
> 's all for now.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Henry" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 4:42 AM
> Subject: Re: query
>
>
> > Are you sure "notions of form" are the problem, David? Seems like
> > say if you look at "Speech, Speech!" by G. Hill the problem he's
> > confronting is one of diction & idiom. I think the deliquescence
> > (supposed) of meter & form is inseparable from those "problems" -
> >
> > When General Jackson
> > Posed for his statue
> > He knew how one feels.
> > Shall a man go barefoot
> > Blinking and blank?
> >
> > But how does one feel?
> > One grows used to the weather,
> > The landscape and that;
> > And the sublime comes down
> > To the spirit itself,
> >
> > The spirit and space,
> > The empty spirit
> > In vacant space.
> > What wine does one drink?
> > What bread does one eat?
> >
> > from Wallace Stevens, "The American Sublime" [1935]
> >
>
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