Get on with your essay :-)
>From: Edmund Hardy <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Help! The grass is singing
>Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:13:45 +0000
>
>>Why do we think of W.C. Williams as happy, and Eliot as not.
>
>because we think of all that weight bearing down on Eliot, & of all that
>lightness & airiness just sort of rushing through Williams?
>
>Shakespeare's an upper because it's just delirious, all these people
>speaking in this incredible way
>
>I find Frank O'Hara a downer, but most people seem to think he's an upper
>
>then i find Kafka and Beckett and Thomas Bernhard to be uppers; but I find
>the plays of Noel Coward to be mostly downers, outright tragedies... Blithe
>Spirit
>
>>It is a curious subject, 'happiness' - somebody was talking about a
>>country
>that now does an annual Gross National Product index for "happiness".
>
>there's an interesting ethnography, gladwin & sarason's Truk: Man In
>Paradise (from the 50s) about a small-scale society on the island of Truk
>(a place known now for scuba-diving) where all material needs are supplied
>- plenty of fish, no nearby aggressors - but the society is torn by fights
>& accusations & psychological insecurities of all kinds - It's a stumbling
>block for a political theory of happiness...
>
>Edmund
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