Yes, then there's Berryman's DREAM SONGS: multiple personalities, multiple
biographies, multiple contexts.
Alan Jenkin's Greenheart also comes to mind...spooky in that it seems to cut
away from its fictional premise into a pure heart of darkness...
Gerald
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2001 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: biographical poetry
> Hmn,,,
>
> I had to miss out on the original, so thanks for posting it Steve.
>
> What, to carry on my last question, do we make of books like Susan Howes's
> Pierce Arrow, and many of her other poems?
>
> Where, to bring it home (for me) to Canada, would we put Atwood's Journals
> of Susannah Moodie, Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid,
> Scobie's McAlmon's Chinese Opera & The Ballad of Isabel Gunn, Bowering's
> George, Vancouver, & many other such book-length poems? Admitedly, many
are
> written in the first person, but history almost always is an important
> context, & they do play off what is known biographically about their
> titular figures...
>
> It get's very complicated I suspect...
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> Beauty
> is to lay hold of Love
> is the leave
> to
> Charles Olson
>
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