Yes, yes and there was John "Cockney" Keats. I'm still trying to work
that one out.
Wasn't Dante's work in the vernacular, the first in modern Italian?
Kipling - for all his faults and he had many in his later years - had
had a glimpse of the Other: he spoke an Indian dialect before he spoke
English. I re-read "Stalky &Co" recently and, being a native, I could
recognise some of the farms he described. That is before they were
turned into housing estates. I adored Puck of Pooks Hill, Rewards and
Fairies, Plain Tales. I even had a place for Barrack-Room Ballads when
I was younger. His poetry wasn't that Parnassian either, although he
detested modernism.
Roger
On 1/23/07, Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I don't understand this kind of generalised putdown. Coleridge is for
> my money one of the most delightfully inventive of poets. Kipling and
> even Tennyson (of whom I remain fond) have their moments too.
> Whatever the problems with him, Kipling could write a storm - read
> Said or Borges on his short stories. All poetry, no matter what shape
> it is, presents a formal problem; what counts is what the poet does
> with it.
>
> And back in the day, the language wasn't archaic. Just reading an
> enormous tome on Dante which reminds you that in 1290 just writing
> literature in Italian was totally radical. Milton's blank verse was
> the leading edge of its time - his introduction to Paradise Lost is
> aggressively brusque. Wordsworth and Coleridge brought "ordinary"
> language into poetry. Etc. For me, these people still hold that
> initial freshness, though you might have to scrape away a few
> barnacles of perception to see it. Cultures always need to neuter
> their artists so that, like good pets, they don't have troublesome
> offspring.
>
> All the best
>
> A
>
> On 1/24/07, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > What a weird quartet. I used to think the way you say you do in that
> > note, Kasper, but have changed somewhat. I mean, I can really admire a
> > lot of the poetry of at least the last two, without ever wanting to try
> > the same thing. I suspect a lot of modern writers feel the same way
> > about the great writers of the past.
> >
> > Doug
> > On 22-Jan-07, at 7:05 PM, kasper salonen wrote:
> >
> > > Kipling/Tennyson/Coleridge/Browning
> > Douglas Barbour
> > 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> > Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> > (780) 436 3320
> > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> >
> > Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> >
> >
> > the words come down on
> > the white page a dream of snow
> >
> > at mid-Atlantic.
> >
> > Wayne Clifford
> >
>
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
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