Lezama Lima. But which book? I'm guessing it's one of the collections of
essays.
If we're including dead people: Raymond Williams. But I read very little
theory or criticism.
Mark
At 07:24 PM 5/29/2005, you wrote:
>That's interesting, Eileen. What I have read by Vendler, admittedly not
>much (mostly in the NYRB), has got on my nerves a bit, very
>professorial, and her taste in modern poetry seems to me abysmal. Ricks
>, yes but - too, tooo. Worth revisiting, though. Perloff can be
>brilliant, certainly, and I was led to certain writers & works by her (I
>remember a wonderful piece on Pound's Gaudier-Brzeska book as modernist
>manifesto cum collage). Donahue I used to read quite a bit, but his
>Catholic moralistic bias began to get on my nerves. The others are
>unknown to me - perhaps the odd article by Lehman on the New York
>school. "For the pleasure of their pleasure" is very well put, wish I'd
>said it. Fred Pollack mentions James Wood, I see - what I've read hasn't
>sustained itself in that imperfect organ my imaginative memory. But I
>read him when I can. I'm definitely going to try Derrida again, Doug,
>since you recommend him so firmly - I think I'm just too dumb to get it,
>though. Verkalkt! What I liked about Paglia is that it was a chatty
>bisexually provocative version of Praz's *Romantic Agony* - but the
>latter can still draw us back for the urbanity of its style and sheer
>useless-information value, while Paglia has aged badly in that one is
>tempted to say "Been there, done that" & let bygones be begones. Now
>another name occurs - Calvino's lectures are magisterially mercurial.
>And for mandarin obscurity (to me, of course) there's a book I sometimes
>dip into, shaking my head in confusion, by the author of *Paradiso*.
>Mark knows whom I mean.
>mj
>
>Eileen Abrahams wrote:
>
>>There are many contemporary poetry critics whom I read for the pleasure of
>>their prose & for the pleasure of their pleasure: Helen Vendler, Christopher
>>Ricks, Marjorie Perloff, Denis Donahue, David Lehman, Timothy Steele, Mark
>>Jarmon, to name a few.
>>
>>
>>Eileen Abrahams
>>Ph.D. Candidate
>>Department of English
>>University of Texas at Austin
>>
>>On 5/29/05 1:40 PM, "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Right on, Martin. I pretty well agree right down the line with you.
>>>
>>>The question I come to now is: who would I re-read, not only for
>>>pleasure, although Davenport provides a lot of that, but to learn
>>>something truly interesting.
>>>
>>>On the other hand, I do get that from many of Derrida's works, too.
>>>
>>>Paglia never had that kind of style...
>>>
>>>Doug
>>>On 29-May-05, at 7:22 AM, MJ Walker wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Since I've been asked - Schadenfreude. The adjective is schadenfroh. I
>>>>found Camille very amusing & stimulating in SP, not so much in what
>>>>followed, which I have merely sampled. It/she seems repetitive &
>>>>obsessional. This review is apparently on the ball. CP obviously has no
>>>>idea about contemporary poetry & is just scattershooting from the hip.
>>>>It's like the broadsides aimed with dull regularity at so-called
>>>>difficult modern music (brrr - Schoenberg & Co.) Theory interests me
>>>>very little (since I seldom understand it - when I do it appears either
>>>>platitudinous or mad); I want the pleasures of the text & I want them
>>>>now. In this case (CP) the law of diminishing returns obtains - whereas
>>>>Guy Davenport, for example, just went on being as good as it gets, not
>>>>being ideologically driven. Are there any critics now active (Kermode
>>>>is
>>>>a survivor but one sees relatively little of him nowadays) whom one
>>>>reads as one did Empson, Kenner or Davenport - or, indeed, Duncan or
>>>>Thom Gunn - for the sheer enjoyment of the thing, while being
>>>>intellectually regaled? Heaney bores me, poetry or prose - which may be
>>>>my blankness. Und sonst?
>>>>mj
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Douglas Barbour
>>>11655 - 72 Avenue NW
>>>Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
>>>(780) 436 3320
>>>
>>>I think the land knows we are here,
>>>I think the land knows we are strangers.
>>>
>>> Al Purdy
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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