I'm a bit late on this, but...agree with Mark about Hughes/Coleridge -
in fact Hughes is not playing in the same league as Coleridge, as he
knew very well, being one of Coleridge's best (if somewhat weird &
erratic) critics, see "The Snake in the Oak" in *Winter Pollen*. I would
only adjust Mark's "pretty well" to "superbly" (in the really great
poems), a term I would equally extend to Emily Dickinson, say, though
her work is more even in quality - just in case you had me down as a DWM
fancier.
I find this obsequious chanting of mantras like "words, whether spoken
or written, are arbitrary" really mystifying - can the perpetrator of
this diktat name anyone apart from Humpty Dumpty for whom this is true?
"Founded on personal whims, capricious" etc, or is there a speshul
So-Surean dikshonary in the meantime? In fact Saussure himself agreed
that linguistic signs are not "completely" arbitary, only "relatively"
so - and here I think the word "arbitrary" is being abused; "contingent
rather than necessary" would be more correct & avoid the confusion.
mj
Kasper wrote:
> Mark, you're right of course; that part of my reply was quite rash.
> objectively speaking all that is occuring is change, rather than
> improvement. it's just that as a witness of / participant in the
> change, I can't really help but see it as positive. :)
>
> KS
>
> On 20/09/06, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I can agree with much of what you say without accepting the
>> Hughes/Coleridge thing, or for that matter the onwards and upwards
>> thing. Poetry changes, which is not the same as improves. Coleridge
>> stands up pretty well, and I'd rather read Christabel any day than
>> any or all of Hughes.
>>
>
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