This is what I think too, Lawrence.
On 2-Aug-05, at 8:51 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
> a good ear is the best writing tool
I've just been reminded of Hugh Kenner's take on Williams's famous
little poem about the red wheelbarrow, in which he sets it as prose to
demonstrate that it simply is not the same.
'Try it over in any voice you like,' notes Kenner, 'it is impossible.
... To whom might the sentence be spoken, for what purpose? ... Not
only is what the sentence says banal, if you heard someone say it you'd
wince. But hammered on the typewriter into a *thing made*, and this
without displacing a single word except typographically, the sixteen
words exist in a different zone altogether, a zone remote from the
world of sayers and sayings' (Homemade World 60) [this in Perloff,
Differentials xxix]
That, I think, is one of the points you're making. Well, it's one of
the ones I am....
Doug
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
I give up these words easily, they are easy
to give up, like changing currency before
a border: the cursive line between mountain
and sky, say, as perfect a mismatch as any
made in heaven.
Méira Cook
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