Yes, the sestina makes a great bicycle - so many gears! I find there's
something rather Oulipoid (Oulipovian?) about it - a feeling of form driving
sense, and sense driving back, which is fairly cognate with this poem's
to-and-froing between mind/body and light/dirt.
I always wanted to send this one off to H. Bloom, just to see what he'd
say - some way up his street, I should have thought. I thought I'd lost it
until it turned up in a clear-out the other week - despaired of
reconstituting it again from memory, even with the mnemonic head-start
provided by the form itself. I am generally very bad about keeping copies of
things, so the more kept by other people the better. Erminia is welcome to
put it on her Transference site.
I don't know about "post-jesuitical", btw. I've always been a bit jesuitical
full stop. As in the joke where the Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines
and Jesuits are arguing over which of them is most divinely favoured, and a
dove appears at the window with a note between its beak which reads "All
orders are equal in My sight. Signed, God S.J.".
Dom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 5:41 PM
Subject: Re: A Gnostic Lesson
> Dom
>
> I agree with the praises so far given, but would want to note that the
form
> certainly helped to construct those dichotomies, as I'm sure you'd agree.
> Oh the cycling of a sestina! The glroious repetitions, even when you can
> slightly change a term, or at least its grammatical site. A damnably
> difficult form, & this is a good one.
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> I can always
> go back to
> fertilization,
> kimonos, wrap-
> arounds and
> diatribes.
> Lorine Niedecker
>
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