Thanks,

Colin


----- Original Message -----
From: "arthur seeley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2003 7:45 PM
Subject: Re: (no subject) (Ann and Arthur)


> Yes you raise some interesting points. For myself I have to say that
Lanier
> would appeal to me if he were writing today but I do think there would be
> many who would not like him.
> I was late to the library one night and the bell had gone to indicate
> closing in five minutes. We were allowed two books on one ticket and I had
> the one and as I was walking past the poetry section grabbed the first
thing
> that came to hand. That is how I found Gerard Manley Hopkins although I
> think sometimes he found me. Great poetry is always great, is, I truly
> believe, the truth of it.Regards Arthur.----- Original Message -----
> From: "Colin dewar" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 9:40 PM
> Subject: Re: (no subject) (Ann and Arthur)
>
>
> > 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.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >   >>
> > >
> > >
>
>