Alison
that Rimbaud ended up writing dry reports is not necessarily a point of
admiration, your saying that:
> and on the contrary it seems to me that, when the
writing's not, as it very often is, exclamatory - spoken, eruptive
utterance - Rimbaud's syntax is ineffably _prosaic_ <
illuminates to me, if you can forgive the atrocious pun, the precise area of
the problem in discussing, defining, prose poetry, the exclamatory, eruptive
elements in Les Illuminations seem to me to be exactly what creates the
poetic tension that makes them memorable, the verbal jostling against the
written, as it were. It seems to me, yet again, that a level of agitation is
necessary in prose poetry, or else a certain 'flow', it's tricky to put
one's finger on these things, and I speak as someone who is definitely not
innocent of writing prose poetry, with your pieces I was very taken by the
tumble of imagery and too the emphatic sentences, yet too I felt that now
and again the locution worked against the character of the pieces, for
example, when you use phrasing like: 'It is true, nevertheless,' it not only
has a rather prissy and business-letter feel but also works against the riot
of imagery, it starts making one ask what is the underlying logic of the
poem, this is a very gentle criticism, I'm certainly not trying to be
dismissive, and I love the cheeky echoes, Rimbaud and Baudelaire!
Rebecca's mention of the evolution of prose poetry in French are quite
interesting, as they suggest to my excuse for a mind the question of
'material' : English is not the same as French, so what works well in one
may not in t'other. I was taken by your comment on using long lines leading
to the prose poem, I know the feeling, and reckon there's a lot more that
could be said on that.
All the Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
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Painting Without Numbers
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