Thanks very much for posting this link, Ali. I hadn't seen TEXT before and
found much of interest in the current issue: Alan Sondheim's inside account
of "Writing Online," Steve Evans's review of M.T.C. Cronin's _Bestseller_
(with its attractive notion of philosophical poetry that's "to some degree
attached"), and your own smart review of Alan Wearne's remarkable
(sub)urban/urbane verse-novel, _The Lovemakers_ (one of the pleasures of
which for me was renewing my brief acquaintance with the streets of
Melbourne).
And of course I found your article on Christine de Pisan's _Ditie de Jehanne
d'Arc_ fascinating, old meadevilist as I am. What a wonderful story it
is--and how well you tell it--of Christine's awakening to life and laughter
on hearing of the arrival of the prophesied _pucelle_, the virgin messiah of
medieval lore, in the person of a devout peasant girl whose military
competence seemed the greatest irony of all to the worldly Court poet living
penitentially under a self-imposed silence for the past eleven years in her
solitary abbey cell. The _Ditie_ resounds with personality even in its worst
translations, I've always thought, and thereby stands as testimony against
the conventional notion of epic as eschewing the personal--which makes me
very appreciative of your approach to it, including your emphases on voice
as a key element of epic (as well as lyric) poetics and on each woman's
unusual degree of competence in her sphere (_techne_ as a poetics of
personal life?).
The way you tease out Christine's _experience_ of Joan--as a radiance that
revived everything from the seasons in all their fineness to song as the
herald of a resurrected French sun (itself the portent of France shining
into nationhood)--makes Joan's words all the more moving (and resplendent)
when she finally speaks, a year after Christine's death and not long before
her own, of the voice she has been hearing since the age of 13--and
"rarely...without a brightness."
Thanks again for sharing this work of yours--Candice
> dear all
>
> some of you may remember the posts about the epic earlier on in the year. i
> kept
> flicking through them whilst writing the paper in the current issue of TEXT
> at:
>
> http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text/
>
> i'm preparing another one for the AAWP in november called 'epic situations of
> the
> contemporary narrative verse'.
>
> any feedback, positive or negative, is appreciated.
>
> Ali
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