From: Stuart Flynn <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: On Gioia ...
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.
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(I posted this quote a week or so ago, but it bears
repeating) You are not alone:
"He was a poet and hated the approximate."
(Rilke: The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge)
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