I'll go beyond this, Doug, if you don't mind, (one of the advantageous
of e-mail is that you can indulge in a monologue while having a
conversation) POETRY (note the capitals) is a naked state and
extremely embarrassing (paraphrasing or quoting , I can't remember
which, W.S. Graham there) but it's also very touchy-feely, it's close,
as it were.
At the same time it is hedged around by form, things you can whistle
to, like a sonata. They make a kind of protection, technique's the
thing!.
One of my paradigms for it is when one is out walking and the guy on
the street asks you for a few bob and you say no although you have
dosh in your pocket, and you feel very very guilty afterwards.
Then afterwards you indirectly write about it, like Thomas Hardy
remembering the woman he absolutely failed to love.
Best
Dave
2008/8/27 Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>:
> But surely he had some kind of case of irony? My memories of even Heart of
> Darkness suggest so; or is it just in the later reader?
>
> About the momeyed lacking talent or having it: I always liked Fifth
> Business's narrator's suggestion that they did have a talent, one they
> didn't want to admit to, that of being able to make money.
>
> Doug
> On 26-Aug-08, at 8:54 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>
>> Counter-intuitively, the Polish aristo lacked a sense of irony that the
>> Yank possessed.
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> Wednesdays'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> A little planet blues, for the
> deathwatch.
> A season of rictus riffs.
>
> Dennis Lee
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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