Still seems odd to me. Seems odd to my small acquaintance of damn fine
poets also. Tho pleasing yourself (as a reader) works. Not that I ever
have. High standards -- I would like one good line. Then again, humor
works for me and I am more easily pleased by that. As long as we aren't
imagining Joyce (for example) thinking about what the reader needs I can go
along with this in the poet as reader formulation.
There's some awareness of that what one writes will be read but it's such a
small part if the reader is thought to be one's contemporaries. The poem
makes other demands and, as I've said, I like the thought of the readers
being the dead -- or every other poem any good out there. One needs
something to push against...and this is a small part of it all. And then,
for me, in the kind of poem I would like to write what I want above all is
some kind of adequacy to what is out there and (for me) mostly gone.
How can I think about the reader when all these other demands are made? And
just who is my reader? Who should I imagine? And how is it that I am in a
position to know what he wants? Judging by the quality of the poems in,
say, the New Yorker, and imagining that they are actually wanted (a stretch)
it would be immensely depressing to write for that sort of reader. I could
try imagining my aforementioned small acquaintance of damn fine poets as my
readers but they would think I'm nuts.
On 10/31/07, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> It would seem odd if that was what Martin was saying, but I heard
> mainly that phrase, 'at least by evoking an response,' which to me
> simply means that writing one wants to reach out & touch an other (&,
> to get back to an earlier conversation, that other may be oneself as
> reader, always reading as you write).
>
> It seems to me that all art is an attempt to create something that will
> evoke a response. Certainly I, as viewer of a great painting, listener
> to great music, reader of great writing (always accepting that only I
> can make that judgment for me) am responding to said work of art.
>
> And that's the pleasure, surely?
>
> Doug
> On 30-Oct-07, at 11:08 AM, joe green wrote:
>
> > Do you consider the reader's need to not read a composition based on
> > what
> > you think the reader needs? Seems so very odd... and seems like a
> > formula
> > for endless repetition of the same.
> 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
>
> Perhaps, after all,
> there is no polite way to withdraw
> from the privilege of the first person.
>
> Méira Cook
>
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