Also, Nathan, the unstructured reading in Princeton sounds great. What
are the entries that have particularly stirred a response from you?
Nathan Hondros wrote:
> Good point, Tad. I suppose I'll always be a dilettante in the proper sense
> of the word; I can't ever imagine myself going professional! Humility comes,
> I think, from realising I have much, much to learn. And yes, excitement is
> what I'm after.
> There (of course) being no definitive edition for the further education of
> the poet, here's my reading list so far:
>
> 1) William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity
> 2) Aristotle, Poetics
> 3) ST Coleridge, Collected Works in 16 volumes (I'll hunt for the relevant
> parts)
>
> There must be more out there.
>
> C'mon!
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 1:47 PM, TheOldMole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>> Might this not be a field in which being a dilettante could be a good
>> thing? The alternative, I think, would not to read one textbook but to read
>> all of them. I'd suggest Empson as a good place to start, but then I think
>> you'd have to follow him up with someone whose ideas run as counter to his
>> as you possibly can. I think Aristotle and Coleridge are a couple other good
>> places to start. But I'd suggest that dilettantism, coupled with humility,
>> is a wonderful thing -- "I've just read a book that excited me and gave me
>> new insights," rather than "I've just read THE book and now I understand it
>> all."
>>
>>
>> Nathan Hondros wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Can anyone suggest a good textbook on poetry and poetics? I've always
>>> preferred reading the poetry itself, but I'm trying to improve my
>>> knowledge
>>> and avoid annoying myself and others by being a dilettante. My reading
>>> about
>>> poetry has always been more practical rather than theoretical - books on
>>> prosody, Rilke's letters, Pound's advice, unstructured reading from the
>>> Princeton Encyclopedia, and various relevant and unrelated essays by poets
>>> I
>>> admire. But I fear this reading lacks depth and structure.
>>> Suggestions will be taken very seriously.
>>>
>>> Thank you!
>>>
>>> Nathan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Tad Richards
>> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
>> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>>
>> The moral is this: in American verse,
>> The better you are, the pay is worse.
>> --Corey Ford
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
--
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
The moral is this: in American verse,
The better you are, the pay is worse.
--Corey Ford
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