> > On 9 Apr 2004 at 20:27, Helen Clare wrote:
> >> I think this is probably another attempt by Marcus to wind people
up -
> >> or at least create for himself an opportunity to be a "clever dick".
> >> Some small irony in that this has been treated as a serious
submission
> >> - an easy mistake to make for those familiar with previous
> >> contributions. If we have to tolerate him on this list can we at
least
> >> take him less seriously. Best wishes
> >
> > It's a perfectly serious submission; the craftsmanship in its
> > presentation is fully as skillful as any of yours. The notion that
> > you have to have a completely original idea in order to write a poem
> > would disqualify every poem I've seen in this forum -- nothing has
> > been completely original; it's all been about stuff that thousands of
> > other poets have written about for tens of thousands of years.
> >
> > Poetry is rhetoric, it's presentation, not thinking, not philosophy.
> > We all take our ideas from the common stock of human ideas and we do
> > our best to make them significant or important -- or just amusing.
> > And it's as honorable work to be amusing as to be significant. The
> > notion that only uptight old women of either gender who have no sense
> > of humor can be poets is a pernicious one.
> >
> > Marcus
>
> Marcus that reply took you 23 minutes
> could it have been better spent I wonder
> SallyE

So along with believing that poetry is always and only completely original
thought, you also believe that the amount of elapsed time and the amount of
work time are the same?

Marcus