Dear Stuart
I seem to remember that Robert Graves once wrote a critique of The Lake Isle
of Innesfree (probably spelt that wrongly) which amusingly faulted Yeats on
some matters of fact.
Glen Phillips
Stuart Flynn wrote:
> With regard to the Gioia poem that has been discussed recently, there have
> been very good points made, I think, on metrical matters. I would like to
> raise a point on content in that poem, as perhaps a prelude to some
> discussion on accuracy in poetry.
>
> The poem refers to the introduction of 'a sharp into a simple scale'. As
> musically-literate list members will know, many "simple" scales have sharps
> in them as a matter of course (and others have flats), so what Mr Gioia
> presumably means is 'introducing a sharp into a C Major scale' (or relative
> A Minor scale, before any stickler jumps on me).
>
> Of course, that level of "detail" (however that word is pronounced) would
> be difficult to introduce without bogging the poem down with exposition.
> Still, I think that that introduces the whole question of accuracy versus
> poetic licence and perhaps throws up the question of the validity of
> playing with ideas that one (to be charitable) cannot take time to employ
> fully, or of which (to be more direct) one does not have adequate command.
> Comments, panel?
>
> As a further example, and in the knowledge that I will sound like the worst
> sort of trainspotter or geek, I will refer to a poem by a well-known poet
> which made use of a reference to chess and made an analogy - I cannot
> remember the exact words - "Botvinnik considering his move at the 1949
> chess olympiad." Having been a keen tournament chess player a number of
> years ago, I remember clearly that the first chess olympiad after the war
> was in 1950, and the first one in which the Soviet Union (which then world
> champion Botvinnik represented) participated was in 1952.
>
> Does this admittedly sad level of knowledge on my part, or on the part of
> other equally sad individuals, negatively affect the poem? For me, it
> does, because every time I see something that strikes me as clearly wrong,
> it undermines my confidence in the writer, and I wonder how many other
> mistakes there are in a given text that I don't recognise through lack of
> knowledge on my part. Errors of this sort can easily be corrected, but I
> would always feel uneasy about pointing them out to the writer for fear of
> giving offence. I would be curious to hear of other examples of mistakes
> in poems noted by list members, as well as views on how far one should take
> this approach of demanding veracity from poetry, which is I think not
> unrelated to various well-known statements to the effect that poetry should
> be at least as well written as prose.
>
> While I am motivated to post, and with reference to the discussion of
> poetic personae in relation to Pessoa and so forth, well-known list member
> Erminia and I did arrange a meeting recently. I can now very happily
> confirm that, contrary to views expressed in the distant past, Erminia does
> most certainly exist. Doubtless someone will now question whether I exist,
> but that is another story. I note that there might be a meeting between
> two list members at Michael Snider's reading. Have there been other face-
> to-face meetings between list members who first met on-line?
>
> Thank you all for your patience.
>
> Stuart
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