Hi Robin,

Well, this seems too repetitive. One of Dave's primary points with the Duffy poem was that it did not portray "the reality of contemporary Britain" or "Edwardian servancy" as he felt that it _should_. He did not fault the poem for its "exclusion of the world," but that it did not portray that world according to his vision of it. And why should it really? I would expect that of _his_ poems, not Duffy's, she will include the world as she views it.

But I think it's boring to keep repeating all this, for as I see it, the issue was eliding the poem's obvious preoccupation with female desire in order to fault the poet for not measuring up to one's own standards, that are always posited outside of any reading of the poem.

I'm sorry, but I grew up in the autodidactic sticks of the West, I'm not a member of the extreme version of the New Criticism. Simply, I mean poems are made of language, nothing more, and that it is only in that language that they can create or express 'context' 'image' or 'form.' And in both your and Dave's arguments, I have heard the expectation that there should be some other authority outside of the poem, some authority which whatever name it might be given is dependent upon your possession of it, and ignores the reading of the poem in favor of the assessment of the poet.

No hard feelings, but I don't know as I care what Pope thinks about anything, I don't know as I'd consult him on any matter of any significance to me, so I might not mind if he were baffled.

And if you are reading Shakespeare's sonnets as interconnected, then you are reading them as one might read any sequence, as a single poem. My view here is that the reading of the particular work is of primary importance, that it's more important to read the poem than to measure the poet (of which measuring the poet against the poem and vice versa are variations)

Well, the Fanthorpe poem, or this part of the poem, seems to me to be sentimental and predictable. It is much _like_ the Duffy poem in that it creates an unexpected pairing, the girl and the dragon, while keeping the traditional romantic mode intact, if Duffy used Cartland like descriptions, these seem equally cliched, that line
"Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance." seems risible. Nor do I understand really how this meets those standards of no 'exclusions of the world', etc. Nothing much seems to be happening here.

Best,

Rebecca

www.thedrunkenboat.com

>
><<
>Filiation _is_ an unfortunate term to use here,
>>>
>
>... it was a bit of Deliberate Provocation.
>
><<
>particularly because the poem, oh, have we forgotten the poem, that began
>the discussion, is under suspicion for this 'illicit' and, by implication,
>incestuous, relationship. So it is an aspersion, casting a kind of sexual
>suspicion upon the generation of the text, hence, the "comes, somehow, out
>of" or "filiation" as if the Duffy poem were the ill-gotten child of the
>Larkin poem. And this sort of suspicion is generally cast upon texts by
>women poets as the same sort of suspicion is cast upon women poets when it
>is implied that their works are published because it all "comes, somehow,
>out of" their 'connection' with some editor or their good looks.

>Well, the Significant Void is the missing male, whoever it is that buys this
>finery and clothes for sexual favors, or perhaps it is male/s.  Hardy erases
>the man from this poem and that erasure is partly what overturns the
>conventional expectations of what it means to be ruined. What vanishes is
>the man and the sexual act, and what we are given is a conversation between
>two women.
>>>
>

>
><<
>I'm also curious how do you know that this Significant Void is deliberate on
>Hardy's part? There seems to be no more evidence for that than in the Duffy
>poem, no less either. In both cases, it seems to me to be there in the
>context created by the language.
>>>
>
>I'll have to think about this one. U.A. Fanthorpe? <G>
>>>
>
>A marvellous poet, witty and wry.  She has a Selected out from Penguin, as
>well as lots of individual volumes.  My personal favourite poem (well, I
>suppose it's her anthology poem, but still ...) is "Not My Best Side" -- a
>triptych of voices, the Dragon, and the Girl, and St. George.
>
>Here's the Girl speaking:
>
>II
>It's hard for a girl to be sure if
>She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
>Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
>Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
>So nicely physical with his claws
>And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
>And the way he looked at me,
>He made me feel he was all ready to
>Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
>So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
>On a really dangerous horse, to be honest,
>I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
>What was he like underneath the hardware?
>He might have ache, blackheads or even
>Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon -
>Well, you could see all his equipment
>At a glance. Still, what could I do?
>The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
>And a girl's got to think of her future.
>
>(Bah -- went to the trouble of scanning and OCRing this, and it's on the
>Web!  Here you'll find the complete text:
>
>http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/438.html
>
>... and two other poems, if you click on her name.)
>
>Actually, there are ways that this poem would link into the themes we've
>been discussing.
>
><<
>But again, all of this talk of who is the progenitor, who is the heir?
>Why the preoccupation with the genetic transmission of the word?
>It gives a whole new meaning to Plath's, daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm
>through, don't you think? <G>
>>>
>
>I really MUST give up on those philoprogentive metaphors ...  A male sort of
>thing, mibee.
>
>:-(
>
>I was going to go on to explore the idea of
>influence/response/counter/inheritance/(plagarism) in terms of the relation
>between Katherine Philips and Anne Bradstreet, and John Donne, but I've
>prolly said more than enough already for one post.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Robin
>