Thanks for this David, you're absolutely right. I suppose I was comparing
poems on the internet to the current work in more many magazines, but the
histroical persepctive you give is fare more interesting.
best
ian
> >that the internet and
>digital technologies have led to longer poems. Of course long poems existed
>before (Pound and Olson could both go on) but i think poems written on
>digital media and published on digital media tend to be longer becuase the
>medium has few space limitations<
>
>not sure about this, Ian. Our Victorian, and pre-Victorian, forebears went
>on, poetically, at considerable, even VERY GREAT length,
>a 500 to a thousand line poem was regarded by many as nothing more than a
>brisk morning walk. There were shorter versifiers of
>course, Mr GMH and Ms Dickinson for example, but an extended effusion was
>by and large a par for the course, think just of Shelley,
>Keats or Wordsworth, let alone, going further back, the goings-on of
>Spenser or Chaucer or Milton etc etc.
>
>I tend to feel, re the debate's subject, rather like the mountaineering
>argument: because it's there. Which leads one to 'it's there
>because it's there'!
>
>All the Best
>
>Dave
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
>& Painting Without Numbers
>
>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
>
>
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