Hi Sally,
I know I'm butting in, but...
I think the BIG problem with using the specific words and phrasings you have
in the poem is how they're associated with words and phrasings in poems from
previous centuries.
The line you offer:
>lone gooseberry-tree these golden globes adorn?
and the one Christina also quotes:
Along your beach where tide's plash-wavelets drown
evokes, for me, comparisons with the kind of language Wordsworth and his
mates went on a crusade to banish from poetry! Such poetic diction wasn't
banished entirely: but very little adorned or ornate language seemed to
survive after Ezra Pound and his mates also got hold of poetry a century or
so later. And I felt it more like Keats, who often has a lusher, juicier
flow of words than Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted.
I agree with you that formalism never died - but it hasn't yet re-emerged
with anything like the following it once had, and it might not do! (And I'm
not sure, now, if I can make a musical comparison between Classical and Jazz
and Formal and Free...)
I guess I'd say we can echo what's gone before - but there's a difference
between an echo and an imitation... I'd add that I feel the way you use
adjectives in the lines - tufting, maurauding, prickled, sweet - is as near
imitation as it is echo.
But I'll say no more, since I'm butting in anyway!
Bob


>From: Sally Evans <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Shore Gooseberries ; Christina's objection
>Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 20:36:51 +0100
>
>Dear Christina,
>your comment about why a 21st century poet should choose to write in this
>way asks for a general reply and I shall begin to give it.
>First, to make a comparison with music, I love  these old classical systems
>and the noise they make. Would you forbid me to read Keats or Shakespeare?
>Then may I not write like them so far as I am able and willing, may I not
>use some of their systems? May I not enjoy, and attempt to share with you,
>lone gooseberry-tree these golden globes adorn?
>
>May I not attempt to pass on to you the romantic, tapestry-like feelings
>the
>walk on the beach provoked? Apparently not,  for you are not prepared to
>believe, ie you are not convinced,  that jane is real - and she is. If I
>had
>wanted to rhyme this line in any other of many ways I would have had no
>problem doing so. It is important to >me< to learn that you are not
>convinced, but I am not convinced you are "right" or indeed typical in not
>being convinced.
>
>I have actually been working on a second sonnet stanza to this, which goes
>in a very different direction, and your comment about "Jane" relates to a
>different problem I was dealing with. ie how to get Jane (and Colin) back
>into the poem near the end. Perhaps the answer is to leave them out
>altogether - but perhaps it isnt.
>
>I am sure you will see from painting that the painter with the skills to
>depict in the old way is the one who can confidently handle the apparent
>lawlessness of the new methods.
>Finally I have a right to write like this. You have the option not to read
>it. But time is on the side of formalists, I think. Large chunks of the
>poluation want formalist work and increasing numbers of editors etc are
>glad
>to see it among the chaos of present fashions.
>
>You will also notice that I have developed the system, as neo-formalists
>usually do. My rhyme scheme ie entirely made up of words ending in n, and
>this also carries through the rest of the longer poem. There is such a lot
>of choice in language, you can write a novel without e's in it if you so
>desire, and you can write poems in set rhythms that are romantically
>descriptive too.
>That doesnt mean everyone has to like them! either in total or any
>particular examples of them.
>all best
>SallyE
>
>
>on 9/8/04 9:38 am, Christina Fletcher at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>I wouldn't, for a moment, underestimate the skill behind this, SallyE but,
>as Roger writes, it's so very 19th century and it begs the question of why
>a
>21st century poet choses to write in this way?  I'm wondering whether the
>form's drowning the poem here?  Would you really say or think 'Along your
>beach where tide's plash-wavelets drown' or 'lone gooseberry-tree these
>golden globes adorn'?  If I, as the reader, suspect that the poem's a
>series
>of clever constructions I also wonder whether Jane's a real person or a
>name
>that rhymes and somehow, that seems extremely important.
>There are so many lush images in this.  The love of the place, the happy
>memories are a delight. So much worth keeping and reshaping into living
>language.
>bw
>christina
>
>
>Shore Gooseberries
>
>Along your beach where tide's plash-wavelets drown,
>cliff fresh above, a grass-bank scissor-torn
>abandons salt sand-pebbles, fossiled stone,
>where the heath-track runs through the burnlet's dene.
>
>By tufted grass and ragged rose-hip, thorn,
>lone gooseberry-tree these golden globes adorn,
>unseen before they ripened out of green,
>guards the old path, but now its wealth is known.
>
>Attack is imminent, the fruit falls down
>as we marauding children backward grown
>make good our gain from branches' prickled crown,
>appropriate the berries not the scene,
>
>retreat with sweet ingredients for cuisine,
>to share, like memories, with you and Jane.
>
>Sally Evans
>
>
>
>
Hi Sally,
I know I'm butting in, but...
I think the BIG problem with using the specific words and phrasings you have
in the poem is how they're associated with words and phrasings in poems from
previous centuries.
The line you offer:
>lone gooseberry-tree these golden globes adorn?
and the one Christina also quotes:
Along your beach where tide's plash-wavelets drown
evokes, for me, comparisons with the kind of language Wordsworth and his
mates went on a crusade to banish from poetry! Such poetic diction wasn't
banished entirely: but very little adorned or ornate language seemed to
survive after Ezra Pound and his mates also got hold of poetry a century or
so later.
I agree with you that formalism never died - but it hasn't yet re-emerged
with anything like the following it once had, and it might not do! (And I'm
not sure, now, if I can make a musical comparison between Classical and Jazz
and Formal and Free...)
I guess I'd say we can echo what's gone before - but there's a difference
between an echo and an imitation... I'd add that I feel the way you use
adjectives in the lines - tufting, maurauding, prickled, sweet - is as near
imitation as it is echo.


>From: Sally Evans <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Shore Gooseberries ; Christina's objection
>Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 20:36:51 +0100
>
>Dear Christina,
>your comment about why a 21st century poet should choose to write in this
>way asks for a general reply and I shall begin to give it.
>First, to make a comparison with music, I love  these old classical systems
>and the noise they make. Would you forbid me to read Keats or Shakespeare?
>Then may I not write like them so far as I am able and willing, may I not
>use some of their systems? May I not enjoy, and attempt to share with you,
>lone gooseberry-tree these golden globes adorn?
>
>May I not attempt to pass on to you the romantic, tapestry-like feelings
>the
>walk on the beach provoked? Apparently not,  for you are not prepared to
>believe, ie you are not convinced,  that jane is real - and she is. If I
>had
>wanted to rhyme this line in any other of many ways I would have had no
>problem doing so. It is important to >me< to learn that you are not
>convinced, but I am not convinced you are "right" or indeed typical in not
>being convinced.
>
>I have actually been working on a second sonnet stanza to this, which goes
>in a very different direction, and your comment about "Jane" relates to a
>different problem I was dealing with. ie how to get Jane (and Colin) back
>into the poem near the end. Perhaps the answer is to leave them out
>altogether - but perhaps it isnt.
>
>I am sure you will see from painting that the painter with the skills to
>depict in the old way is the one who can confidently handle the apparent
>lawlessness of the new methods.
>Finally I have a right to write like this. You have the option not to read
>it. But time is on the side of formalists, I think. Large chunks of the
>poluation want formalist work and increasing numbers of editors etc are
>glad
>to see it among the chaos of present fashions.
>
>You will also notice that I have developed the system, as neo-formalists
>usually do. My rhyme scheme ie entirely made up of words ending in n, and
>this also carries through the rest of the longer poem. There is such a lot
>of choice in language, you can write a novel without e's in it if you so
>desire, and you can write poems in set rhythms that are romantically
>descriptive too.
>That doesnt mean everyone has to like them! either in total or any
>particular examples of them.
>all best
>SallyE
>
>
>on 9/8/04 9:38 am, Christina Fletcher at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>I wouldn't, for a moment, underestimate the skill behind this, SallyE but,
>as Roger writes, it's so very 19th century and it begs the question of why
>a
>21st century poet choses to write in this way?  I'm wondering whether the
>form's drowning the poem here?  Would you really say or think 'Along your
>beach where tide's plash-wavelets drown' or 'lone gooseberry-tree these
>golden globes adorn'?  If I, as the reader, suspect that the poem's a
>series
>of clever constructions I also wonder whether Jane's a real person or a
>name
>that rhymes and somehow, that seems extremely important.
>There are so many lush images in this.  The love of the place, the happy
>memories are a delight. So much worth keeping and reshaping into living
>language.
>bw
>christina
>
>
>Shore Gooseberries
>
>Along your beach where tide's plash-wavelets drown,
>cliff fresh above, a grass-bank scissor-torn
>abandons salt sand-pebbles, fossiled stone,
>where the heath-track runs through the burnlet's dene.
>
>By tufted grass and ragged rose-hip, thorn,
>lone gooseberry-tree these golden globes adorn,
>unseen before they ripened out of green,
>guards the old path, but now its wealth is known.
>
>Attack is imminent, the fruit falls down
>as we marauding children backward grown
>make good our gain from branches' prickled crown,
>appropriate the berries not the scene,
>
>retreat with sweet ingredients for cuisine,
>to share, like memories, with you and Jane.
>
>Sally Evans
>
>
>
>

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