Almost too much going on here, but a lot of interesting things said, & also
a few intriguing poems sent, & then Henry (Henry! wow, how nice to see you
here) makes a rather fine summation. Yeah, really. Let's get out of the
binary, & then we can allow that each of us has his or her own favorites
due to various personal histories etc.
Michael Snider remarks on people he knows who remember well made verses, &
that's true we do. I can repeat a number of songs just like that while I
can't always recite some of my favorite poets, but I don't think that has
to do with their 'form' (or what some would call, because they are not
metrical & rhyming, their formlessness) so much as it has to do with the
fact (I think it can be called that) that in 20th century schooling
memorization became less important, & the knowledge that we can always
check a book & read it again, has led 'us' to rely much less on memory. I
have many poems 'almost' memorized but need to check them & read them
rather than recite them. Nevertheless, they mean a lot to me. As in, say,
some Denise Levertov, whose work I too (& I thought it was obvious) prefer
to Rich's, but there are some Rich poems of great value. And then I have a
whole bunch of Canadians a lot of people here don't know too well (as the
Aussies will have a bunch of Australian poets many of poetryetc's members
won't know that well).
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
Beauty's whatever
makes the adrenalin run.
John Newlove
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