> Marcus:
> What does "the look of it" have to do with it? How did you get "the
> look of it"? out of what I said?  Presentation in words, grammar,
> syntax, language!

Gary:
> Assume my rich uncle leaves me a fortune by any standard (a cliché
> that) and I can built any mansion I wish.  I find a designer to build the
> house I've always wanted - part tree house with a bit of FLW in it,
> waterfalls and  gardens all round, the master bedroom with a round bed with
> built in fridge, coffee maker, bookcases, toaster.  A puter screen and
> controls that lower from the ceiling and indoor plumbing.
> Which is more important - the design, my dream - or the copper, iron,
> wood, stone and wool it takes to build the complex?<

Depends on what context you're asking about importance in. Are you claiming
that because you dreamed it you're the architect or the carpenter? Are you
claiming that because the architect drew it he's the artist while you're merely
the owner and the carpenter is merely the craftsman? Are you claiming that the
carpenter is really the artist because he or she actually made the thing that
the architect merely drew and you merely dreamed?

> The real answer is neither is more important than the other.  They work
> together to give me what I want (and can now afford).<
> So with poetry.  The raw material is words, grammar, sometimes rhyme and
> meter.  The design is the way the poet puts those words together - which
> is a look - on the page.  And a sound to the ear - another way of looking.<

Are you tired of arguing on your side and now want to argue on mine for a
while? This is my point, Gary: that the poetry inheres in the presentation, not
in the "thought" or the "honest originality" of the ideas, or any such thing as
that. Poetry is rhetoric, not philosophy.

> And yes, that raven has stood on that highwayman's shoulder before...but
> perhaps not as cleverly constructed or imagined as by Poe or Noyes.
> Yes, countless poets - superior and inferior have declared love to their one
> true love, but perhaps not many so so well as Browning.<

And what makes Browning's so good? It's the presentation, not that trite old
idea of declaring one's true love or regretting a lost one or any of countless
other banal ideas. What makes the ideas non-banal, non-trite, is their
presentation, not their essences.

> And perhaps the Declaration is poetry to some eyes, albeit not all.  And
> if borrowed, who has done it so well - with the editors he had and all?
> (Except Lincoln in the Second Inaugural).<

Again, this is my point, Gary -- that it is the presentation and not the ideas
that make something poetry, and that presentation includes an intent by the
writer to make it poetry. As in any art, poetry has to start with intention --
the intention to make art out of the basic, trite, cliched, banal materials of
our human lives. Intention is not enough, as rhyme is not enough, as lack of
rhyme is not enough, as no one technique is not enough, to make any given
collection of words poetry -- but some things are necessary without being
sufficient.

As for "borrowed", well, that's exactly the point, isn't it? If you say it was
both borrowe and poetry you've abandoned your defense of Christine's and Sue's
arguments that nothing borrowed can be poetry; that only "honest originality"
can be poetry. And, again, I ask for an example from any of those who think
that what constitutes poetry is "honest originality" for an example. Even one!
I suspect the resounding silence about, and the obvious lack, of such examples
is ample evidence that they're simply wrong on the face of it.

But if you don't think you're wrong, then how about an example?

Marcus