"I admit, still, to wanting some sign of what Pound also called rhythm,
which means that prose broken into lines tends not to cut it for me,
but Kasper's apparent dismissal of 'free verse' in is post undercuts a
lot of what he does as well as what he has said "
yes, good call Doug. I was in fact referring to free verse in an
ironic & disappointed sense; where 'free' is misconstrued by lazy
writers as a license to engage in banality & flaccid drama in the name
of poetry. I'm an immense advocate of free verse, vers libre, whatever
you want to call it; but I'm with Eliot all the way when he says that
'free' doesn't mean free from labour or attention or craft or
practice. it means free from constraints, which isn't a freedom like a
freedom from prison bars or from straitjackets because the
'constraints' of very traditional verse can aid the imagination.
usually, though, it's just there so that the authors at the time could
call it poetry from a marketing point of view. many structural
schemes, that is in most cases I've encountered, are arbitrary at
best.
KS
On 25/08/07, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is one of those things, just.
>
> Just like trying to 'define' poetry, which I admit to doing far too
> often in the past, always to find something that was outside my latest,
> ever widening definition, so that I had to redefine, adding further
> possibilities.
>
> I admit, still, to wanting some sign of what Pound also called rhythm,
> which means that prose broken into lines tends not to cut it for me,
> but Kasper's apparent dismissal of 'free verse' in is post undercuts a
> lot of what he does as well as what he has said (see above), & when one
> looks at such a master of line as Creeley, well....
>
> But, of course, as I read further in my long learning, I also read
> further back in history, finding all those great poems of he past
> which, however much I missed of context, still spoke to me.
>
> Trying to think of a poem without the need of any 'contextualizing'
> attempt by the reader I wondered about O westron wind, but proably not,
> & then Sapphos' fragments, brought to me, of course in translation, &
> which seem rather 'pure' as a result, but probably not, there are so
> many aspects/attitudes at work in our reading of her....
>
> Which leaves us, happily (because the poems are still there at least)
> in a quandary....
>
> Doug
> On 25-Aug-07, at 7:01 AM, Bob Marcacci wrote:
>
> > lack of scope
> 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
>
> Peace isn't even as good a sales item
> as poetry.
>
> W.H. Perry
>
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