"Touche, MJ!" I did, accidentally (drop the "to" from "deign to touch") -
tho I suspect "to" is dropped for some other ironic reason which I cannot
fathom at the moment. Suffice it to say, I was probably joking about the
vigilant editor - in this case myself - who is rendered jobless in the face
of the occasional "perfect work".
In spirit I suspect I am closer to Alison here - I am drawn to work that is
spirited even if jagged on the edges. (Tho, ironically,I feel momentarily
bless when a poem comes down accurate without any formal doubt of its
realisation. My own work is more often jagged and I get anxious about
editors of the "perfection" or "tight formalist" cast - the way I feel the
air is sucked up out of me by, say, a Louise Gluck poem. I like to see a
loose thread - wavering - on a dress.
Thanks,
Stephen V
> Is this "deign touch" an Americanism? In my usage, it's "deign to touch"
> and it means "condescend to touch", but your context suggests another
> meaning.
> mj
>
> Stephen Vincent wrote:
>
>> As a publisher/editor in many previous manifestations, I have seen poets of
>> all kinds. Some that come with work that is 'cabinet finish' that I would
>> not deign touch in a month of Sundays! Yet, even in those cases, in terms
>> of putting a book together there remains my contribution to a book or mag as
>> to how the poems may best sequence (suggestion of different juxtapositions
>> of poems, etc.); then there are issues of determining typography and design
>> (where - as long as their eyes were not made of tin - I would often keep the
>> author in the loop).
>>
>>
>>
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