I don't know the Spanish original, but on the basis of the translation (and
Bellitt tends to destroy whatever he touches) it's not one of Neruda's
best. But comparison with the Neruda was, I would have thought clearly,
neither my strategy nor my point.
Poems for me are of no value unless they're the process of discovery.
That's what I care about and assume Doug cares about. This, on the
otherhand, is workshop basket weaving (apologies to any basketweavers out
there). One may build a lifetime career on such, but one doesn't build
poems in the sense I've indicated. Butn perhaps these verses are an
aberration--I don't know other of her poems.
I wasn't criticizing her "ends," I was criticizing her poem, but the ends
seem dubious enough--to make a confection out of a set of "poetic"
mannerisms.
This poem is at best decorative.
I assume you disagree, or maybe you think that decorativeness is enough.
I wish I had time to go thru the poem in detail for you, but I don't--it's
that or get a decent night's desperately needed sleep.
Mark
At 05:28 PM 1/31/2001 -0800, Mark Baker wrote:
>How is the Neruda poem, which in translation has none of the
>rhythmic play or rhymes of Page's poem, less of a "Hallmark Cards"
>poem (itself a cliche of an insult) than Neruda's? The quotation from
>Neruda serves as more than epigraph. Page's poem is one of a
>series that adapts the *glosa* to her own (apparently beneath-
>contempt) ends. She allows her mind to play with quotations she's
>remembered and improvises from there, calling upon a lifetime of
>writing poetry. Isn't this at least remotely allied to the everything that
>I believe Mark Weiss cares about in poetry?
>
>Mark Baker
>
>Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>> It's beneath contempt, and it goes against everything that you or I care
>> about in poetry. But it may serve the occasion the way Hallmark Cards serve
>> birthdays and weddings.
>>
>>
>
>
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