Sue, Arthur , Ann,

Hope you don't mind me throwing in my hapworth of wheat. The question (if
too
poetic?) leads to other questions. A new poet
writing this today could expect to get a bit of jip because the work is too
poetic, or to be ignored because people couldn't identify with it.
However this doesn't seem to have prevented any of us from enjoying it in
the present. Presumably we would argue that we make some kind of allowance
for it as we read? What if such work were lost in a suitcase for a couple of
centuries, could such an unknown poet expect to make a late breakthrough on
the basis of this allowance? What if someone were to place side by side such
a lost work and one as capable but written in the present in an old style,
would it be
prejudice that made us lift the lost work first?

Might it be the case (paradoxically) that the poetry of the past is best
appreciated by young
people new to poetry because it matches their minds? The "graduation"
to the poetry of experience may occur in parallel with their own lives.
I don't know but guess this is commoner than people developing an
enthusiasm for modern poetry and then working backwards through preference
for the old. The later poetry, just as the later life, may be seen as an
addition to the former
 rather than a replacement.

What if popular modern work were catapulted back in time to be read by
Sidney Lanier,  what would he make of it? What deficiencies in it might he
identify, or would he  say, "This is vastly better than anything I know. I
must catch  up." ? What if popular modern work were catapulted forward in
time to poets in the future? This would offer them few
surprises, because they would already know it as old work. "Yes,
the early 21st C stuff was interesting enough, and I still enjoy reading it,
but it lacks in ....". Might they say that it was not in touch with
something essential (splendidly exemplified
in their own work)?

Colin
(in a mood for rhetorical questions)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sue Scalf" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: (no subject) (Ann and Arthur)


> Arthur and Ann, as beautiful and pleasurable as this is, today it would be
> frowned upon as too poetic.  More is the pity.  Sue
>
> <<  But on a sudden, lo!
>    I marked a blossom shiver to and fro
>    With dainty inward storm; and there within
>    A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine
>    A bee
>    Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily,
>    All in a honey madness hotly bound
>    On blissful burglary.
>    A cunning sound
>    In that wing-music held me: down I lay
>    In amber shades of many a golden spr
>                       Where looping low with languid arms the Vine
>    In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine
>    Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight
>    Herself unto her own true stalwart knight.
>
>
>
>   >>
>
>