Edward Lucie-Smith, being a biographer as well as a poet, has some very detailed and
convincing portraits of historical figures, e.g. 'Caravaggio Dying'. My favourite
biographical poetry has to be Dorothy Porter's Akhenaten which makes me wonder; why
aren't there more historical poems? I don't mean just the 'poet-assumes-the-voice-of-
a-historic-figure-for-novelty-value' but more, well yeah, a totally researched
biographical poem. I mean, the possibilities are endless; and the publishers are
bound to be interested. Why couldn't 'The True Histroy of Kelly Gang' have been
written in poetry?
Ali
---- Original Message ----
From: David McCooey
Date: Thu 11/8/01 12:27
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: biographical poetry
Hi,
Some of you might remember me (hi Jill!, hi Pam!). I used to be on
this list a couple of years ago. I'm back and enjoying it very much.
Anyway, after a few weeks of lurking I thought it time to participate.
I'm currently writing an essay on biographical poetry. It
seems to me that very little has been made of this. Discussion of the
autobiographical in poetry is, of course, ubiquitous. There are less
poems that are biographical and fewer that could be described as
'biographical essays in verse'. A few random examples are FT Prince's
marvellous poem on Rupert Brooke or Mary Jo Salter's on Robert Frost
or Bruce Beaver's on Rilke (a metapoetic link here).
Elegies, obviously, are biographical, and there's something
of a sub-genre in work that deals with family history and parents:
Anne Stevenson's Correspondences, Jon Stallworthy's A Familiar Tree,
Michael Hofmann's poems about his father in Acrimony and so on and
on. Poems such as the latter are clearly also autobiographical -
intersubjective, we might say.
At the other end of the scale we have clerihews and (ahem)
double dactyls. And there are some wacky poems for kids mixing nation
building, education and verse, such as A Book of Americans.
Enough already...I'd be interested to hear if anyone else is
interested in biographical poetry and (there is a good deal of
self-interest in this bit) if they have any favourite biographical
poems that may not be well known.
Cheers,
David
--
________________
Dr David McCooey
Lecturer in Literary Studies
Honours Co-ordinator
School of Literary and Communication Studies
Deakin University
Geelong
Victoria
Australia 3217
ph: 61 3 5227 1331
fax: 61 3 5227 2484
[log in to unmask]
|