Thanks for that thoughtful post, George. Nice to see something engaging with
the actual poem in question.
Dave wrote:
> Not a good idea on Geraldine's part I'd say: in the first place the Donne
> poem she exploits has no direct connection with what she's writing about, in
> the second it is not a good idea to extensively quote someone who is so
> obviously a better writer, the whole thing reads to me like petulant
> graffitti. What I receive from it, what is transmitted, is Geraldine's
> desire to be noticed, it is not that I doubt her concerns about the Gulf War
> (and why she is so freaked out about poor old Hopkins eludes me) but I don't
> feel that splattering one's ego all over the echoes of history is going to
> do anything to stop the next murder in Iraq.
I rather disagree with David's comments, which seem to be personal jibes
rather than about Ms Monk's poetry. It is hard to imagine that any poem will
"do anything to stop the next murder in Iraq"; I am not sure that can be
levelled as as a literary accusation, since I can't think of any poem that
would have that effect, including Donne's; and it seems rather a wilful
misreading of the poem as naïve political activism, which I don't believe it
is. Nor does poetry's practical lack of utility seem a good reason not to
write about the things that concern one in one's time.
Best
A
On 14/2/06 11:25 PM, "George Hunka" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dave, I found it fairly easily. The navigation is a little unintuitive
> (it does begin on 4 of 8; Ms. Monk's essay begins on page 1, and the
> best way to get to that is by reading through the entire poem, which is
> broken up on those later pages).
>
> At least Monk's essay and work explicitly acknowledge the communion and
> community of souls, though her approach will threaten, in that
> post-modern spirit, the romantic notion of the Poet as Individual
> Creator. Well, that notion has never been true--only 250 years ago we
> had Pope's Iliad and Odyssey, much the same spirit (for how much of Pope
> is intertwined with Homer there). It was a brave move to go from Hopkins
> to Donne, one of the most sensual of the Metaphysicals; she draws the
> accusation of aesthetic necrophilia to her I suppose, but I do think
> that at least in this case the issue of the mating serves her purpose.
> Monk explicitly states that her aims are political as much as
> aesthetic--"Unlike Hopkins whose poems introduced a dichotomy of social
> and political injustice my Roman Rumourals were a total appropriation of
> poems by men but reworked and signed by a woman. I liked the fact that
> they may have disapproved of such a heresy. A form of retribution and
> redressing from the future but a retribution that is intended to be
> complimentary towards the work," she writes. I suppose one could argue
> about the quality of the work (I like this poem a lot myself), but her
> project, I think, is very supple, and an honest project.
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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