Oops!! Sorry folks (and especially Candice and Michael) -- I can see now
that my original post was ambiguous. I quoted the first two stanzas of the
Gioia poem, and then [without making this sufficiently clear] a later stanza
where the Auden "borrowing" was most obvious:
"
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.
"
In fact, going back to Gioia's "The Next Poem", I see I managed to introduce
yet +another+ confusion by missing out the stanza where Goioa jumbles
Auden!! (I think I was trying to avoid quoting so that much I'd be
violating copyright.)
Thus (Gioia):
The music that of common speech
but slanted so that each detail
sounds unexpected as a sharp
inserted in a simple scale.
No jumble box of imagery
dumped glumly in the reader's lap
or elegantly packaged junk
the unsuspecting must unwrap.
Apologies.
Robin
> Well, it now appears that there was only one poem (by Goioa) all along! I
> don't know how many people besides Michael and myself misread Robin's post
> as comparing two stanzas of "The Next Poem" to a stanza by Auden, but that
> 3d "detail" stanza is in fact Gioia's as well.
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