Sorry, Matthew--didn't mean to imply that we'd disposed of the subject in an
earlier thread but rather that it's interest had already been exhausted in
the here and now apart from the potential flame war that seemed in the
offing. ("The Management," as Chris Emery drolly calls us, were getting
back-channel complaints of rudeness, hurt feeling, etc.) Anyway, I just
rushed in impulsively in hopes of averting any nastiness that might arise
from a discussion of (to me) manifest insignificance, but of course not
everybody finds it so--and _you_ are never boring in any case!--so have
away, we and all, and pay me no mind!
Candice
> I was a bit puzzled, too, Candice, when you said we'd been through the
> question of pronouns exhaustively before. Are you sure it was on this list?
> I do remember a discussion of my own personal bete noire, poems that use
> 'you' supposedly to tell a real person a lot of things they must already
> know - as in _Birthday Letters_. It was a long time ago, and may have been
> on britpo, which I belonged to at the time. Somebody came up with one of
> Hardy's great poems to *his* dead wife, and effectively silenced me on that
> one. I still think that most of the time the effect is unbearably pompous,
> and there are a lot of poets who seem to think anything is a poem provided
> it's in the present tense and addressed to a lover, or the past and
> addressed to a dead relative.
>
> If this is becoming a bore, I had better stop. For me, as I've said, it's
> crucial - the question of pronouns, like the question of form, is one that I
> have to settle for myself all over again every time I write a poem. And
> while I accept that 'we' can also be a symptom of self-importance, I believe
> some poets successfully claim the right to speak for others. I could quote
> lots of examples, but the one that sticks in my mind is the end of
> _Briggflatts_:
>
> Night, float us.
> Offshore wind, shout.
> Ask the sea
> what's lost, what's left,
> what horn sunk,
> what crown adrift.
>
> Where we are who knows
> of kings who sup
> while day fails? Who
> swinging his axe
> to fell kings, guesses
> where we go?
>
> Best wishes
>
> Matthew
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