----- Original Message -----
From: "MJ Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 5:49 AM
Subject: Re: "I'll Huff and I'll Puff"
> First reactions to this: both intense & laid-back, it's allegorical itself
> in a suggestive, unfixed way. It makes me think of Canetti (*Die
> Blendung*) and Rilke (the 10th Duinese Elegy) without actually referring
> to them, yes, and Zarathustra too: that is, it has a long historical
> perspective, while retaining your usual suggestion of alternative reality.
> Something is breaking down - a possible entente, but the breakdown may be
> the condition of the poem. Its sadness arises from the implications of the
> beginning, but the occasion itself is couched in terms of pleasing
> asperity. I like this very much, Fred - sometimes your long ones lose me,
> but that's my loss, not yours. Tremendously (the word is advised)
> concentrated & thought-provoking. Those walls are really "load-bearing".
> Martin
> P.S. I always have to correct the apostrophes in your texts - it's very
> difficult to read something with so many question marks all over the
> place. Don't you have Plain Text?
M.J. -- I PUT it in Plain Text!! If I don't they are transmitted
double-spaced. I don't know what's wrong -- maybe because the original text
is in my usual Century Gothic 12-point? --- Glad you liked this. The Tenth
Duino was a huge formative influence on me when I was 21, in '67. Sitting
in a dark apartment on northside Berkeley reading it, then trying almost
instantly (and quite unsuccessfully) to imitate it. --- At one level I see
the fool with the backpack, trying to barge in, as religious fundamentalism,
right-wing ideologues; at another in terms of Nietzsche's "slave revolt";
and at deeper levels as something integral to creativity (and even to
"taste"). Kafka, from the Zurau Aphorisms: "From the true opponent, a
limitless courage flows into you."
|