Rosetti:
"Pulp Fiction" was just a lame pun about fruit...pulp. Aheheh. I thought it
marginally better than bringing out the old one that ends "no, I've got a
nosebleed". The actual economy of sensation in the poem (Goblin Market, for
those who've just joined us) is an interesting topic in itself. The poem
certainly pumps up the volume in some surprising (for the era) places.
Canons:
If I honestly think that some poems are better than others - and who
doesn't? - and if I honestly think that it's not just me thinking that, and
that some poems really *are* better than others, then it seems to me that
one of the games I can play with myself (and then others) is to try to line
up my responses to poems and poets in order of intensity (of liking or
loathing), and maybe try to reason in more detail about why they stand in
that particular order.
The Leavisite project is just that with big bright yellow nobs on. It is -
up to a point, and this is unquestionably a bit of a stretcher - quite an
*inclusive* project, in that the reasoning process it initiates is meant to
be "distributed" among an admittedly fairly select group of co-
conspirators. That is to say, there's a social impulse at the heart of it:
one can respect Leavis' intention to engage in a conversation, even whilst
refusing to respect the boundaries he attempted to place on that
conversation (*You're* not invited. Neither are *you*).
I sometimes think that even Bloom is really only trying to get a response,
to get a conversation going. Pretty daft way to go about it, waving about
that enormous inflated bladder on a stick, but even so.
Vi vs Emacs:
Emacs, but for absolutely no good reason. Probably vi if I'd learned that
first instead. I've found the Emacs psychoanalyst a boon and a helpmeet
from time to time, however.
Dominic
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