I should mention that at the site where that review appears there is a
frequent contributor, Dr. Salemi, who appears to be a poorly programmed
bot.
And my fingers were equally poorly programmed when they put an
apostrophe in the plural "writers."
On Sunday, July 15, 2001, at 01:39 PM, Michael Snider wrote:
> There's a brief review (very mixed) by Arthur Mortensen of Gioia's
> latest book at http://www.n2hos.com/acm/rev052001.html He likes the
> poems better than I do, I think. Gioia is far from the best of the
> writer's he's been associated with.
>
>
> On Sunday, July 15, 2001, at 01:18 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>
>> It's probably unfair to base a judgement on one poem selected at
>> random, but
>> ... From Dana Gioia's website:
>>
>> (I don't think I've quoted so much as to violate copyright -- material
>> quoted in the context of fair comment -- OK, moderators?)
>>
>> The Next Poem
>>
>> How much better it seems now
>> than when it is finally done-
>> the unforgettable first line,
>> the cunning way the stanzas run.
>>
>> The rhymes soft-spoken and suggestive
>> are barely audible at first,
>> an appetite not yet acknowledged
>> like the inkling of a thirst.
>>
>> abcb has to be a cop-out. This is much the easiest of the quatrain
>> forms.
>>
>> And that first verse -- the last line finally reaches regular iambic
>> octameter. Is this deliberate (I think there could be a case made out
>> for
>> this in the larger context of the poem, but ...) or is it that the
>> rhythms
>> of lines 1-3 [especially line 2] simply aren't in focus?
>>
>> And behind the whole poem, the ghost of Auden. In fact, I'm tempted to
>> say
>> the poem is a bad pastiche of Auden. "No jumble box of imagery"
>> (Gioia) --
>> "Jumbled in a common box" (Auden). If I want to read Auden, I'll read
>> Auden, not Auden-and-water.
>>
>> The music that of common speech
>> but slanted so that each detail
>> sounds unexpected as a sharp
>> inserted in a simple scale.
>>
>> That "detail" -- the only way to make rhythmic sense (and the context
>> of the
>> rhyme with "scale" emphasises this) is to twist the normal
>> pronunciation of
>> DEtail to deTAIL. This after a line mentioning the music of common
>> speech
>> (sic!). Or is this a complex postmodern example of irony?
>>
>> OK someone, convince me why I should bother to read another Gioia poem.
>> Maybe this isn't typical? But ...
>>
>> Robin
>>
>
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