Liz:
> cf: Larkin and Duffy
>
> this comparison strikes me as a kind of journalistic co-incidence
creation.
I don't know Duffy's work well enough (at all, yet!) to say. dave seems to
feel it's there, but Duffy herself scouts it, except for ...
> The suggestion that there is some kind of common ground over a 'girl's
> school' theme is just laughable.
... I +think+ this was [intended as] a joke, but by whom, Carol Ann Duffey
or the Guardian interviewer ... ? The "both Larkin and I are lesbians"
joke, which she herself makes (if you believe the way it was reported),
+does+ seem to be a direct-and-original quote in the earlier Guardian piece.
Which I wouldn't go to the stake for, mind.
> I dont know the context of the 'original'
> remark, but I have heard Carol Ann, at readings and in workshops talk
about
> the need to avoid inflated and self-consciously poetic language. She
favours
> simplicity of diction...... well? I've never understood her as meaning
that
> she dislikes language stretched and shaped, put under pressure to create
new
> meanings.
I think this is the problem (with the "interesting words" remark) -- there
is, as you rightly point out, a context in which this could be legitimate.
But as it stands ...
I've had no luck tracking it down to a source -- the November 2000 Radio 3
broadcasts were a bust (in this context, at least) -- CAD in five archived
audiofiles talking about her writing of children's poems.
I agree it's probably trivial -- the original context, that is -- but
there's also the reason why she singles out Heaney -- maybe the Original
Context would expand this? Otherwise, what you describe her as saying is
worthy but trite, and doesn't (quite) engage with the problematics of dave's
original citation of "interesting words". And leaves the whole doolaly
problem of CAD's version of Heaney's language totally in the air.
I'm not getting at you, and I'm not (I hope) being ultra-pedantic -- I
deeply distrust +anything+ quoted out of context, and my immediate reaction
is to try and get back to what was originally said. So I'm prolly a little
huffy here as I can't +get+ back to the origins.
> We have read a lot of anger about poetry/heirarchies/camps. I am hostile
to
> the attempt to make CAD stand for some kind of retrograde anti-language
> school. It isnt a fair reflection and it seems to me to be a misdirecting
> of energy.
I think this is back to the turn on The Remark vs. The Poems. Separate
issues, it seems to me.
... I got distracted on the Web search for Carol Ann Duffy (and so, many
thanks for the URLs to her work you give) via The Heaney Elegy Problem and
Baxter's Jerusalem Sonnets (for which blame dave and Doug Barbour
respectively).
Later, my ex-wife, back from her parents, rang up and said I could borrow
all the books tomorrow, so I may give up on the Web and wait for that.
She also [Mary] (unnervingly) said that I +must+ have heard Carol Ann Duffy
read as she [Mary] had been to a reading by CAD at Loughborough, chaired by
John Lucas, so I +must+ have been there ...
Now, as I don't have the least memory of this, either Mary's memory is at
fault, or mine.
:-(
Cheers,
Robin
(Oh, incidentally, my ex also rates Carol Ann Duffy's poetry +very+ highly,
and seemed shocked I hadn't read the poems. Which means the scoring-rate,
of those who've stated an opinion on the +poems+ on Petc and surroundings,
is currently two Definitely For (you and Mary), one Against (dave), me ruled
out though Total Ignorance, and Gill Spraggs ambiguous. Gill I'd see as
neutral -- she includes one CAD poem in _Love Shook My Senses_, but only
one -- as against, e.g., three by Charlotte Mew. I agree this is
Statistically Insignificant ...
R2.)
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