Sweet poem, Robin. Formally tight and all that.
But a freshness.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>> I've always associated the Southern Agrarians with the New Formalists:
>> both
>> groups reify form & write from an ideologically privileged position -- not
>> only write from it, but write to defend it. The difference is that the
>> Agrarians, especially Ransom, wrote several nearly perfect poems. Can't
>> say
>> the same for the New Formalists.
>>
>> jd
>
> My sense is that the New Formalists do their best to pretend Ransom
> especially doesn't exist -- he would call into question the tight cosy
> little world of metrical constriction that they persist in locating
> somewhere in the less interesting work of W.H.Auden.
>
> (Hm -- I've been in trouble elsewhere for naively pointing out the occasions
> where we find what might be called straight lifts from Auden in Dana Gioia.)
>
> The dipodic element in Ransom (more marked in "Captain Carpenter" than in
> "Piazza Piece") doesn't fit with the remit they lay down. But don't start
> me ...
>
> Incidentally, is it worth drawing a distinction between the Fugitive
> movement and the Agrarians? Mostly the same suspects, but the former was
> the earlier. I have the sense (but amn't well enough read in the area to
> defend this) that it was the second incarnation that was most limitedly
> Southern, a running out of steam.
>
> The link between the Fugitives, particularly Ransom, and that other New, the
> New Criticism, is neat -- did they practice what they preached or preach
> what they practiced?
>
> To finish (I've been meaning to inflict this on the list ever since the
> topic came up), a poem I wrote ages ago as a homage/allusion to "Piazza
> Piece". [Currently in print in _Pacts and Conjurations_ (Arrowhead Press,
> 2005), page 43.]
>
> MEETING WITH THE BLUE GIRL
>
> Strange to meet the blue girl, so suddenly, incredibly there,
> Perched on the corner of the stair, a fine disturbance of the way.
> She drew two lines with a pencil on the palm of her hand --
> Parallels, crosses, image of nothing happening.
>
> We ran along the tramways of our fear, no possible
> Mingling of gauges on those tracks, the grooves of change
> Which fix us. Destinations were events to encounter, pain
> The abstraction of a smile, bird fallen from a nest of moments.
> Born into the countries of our time, each living our
> Difficult lies: tragedy, we may say, is a certain colour
> Seen sometimes from the corner of the eye, in the air
>
> Brightness falls from it, from her, scattering from the blue girl,
> She there in her green time, I here in my grey,
> Waiting, both, at different corners of the stair.
>
>
> Robin
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