Dear all,

You seem a very pleasant group of poets and scholars, though, for the life of me, I do not know how I was added to your list-serve.  As I am rather busy right now, could you please remove me?

With the greatest respect,

Aaron Poochigian
D.L. Jordan Fellow
Roanoke College
306 Hawthorne Road
Salem, VA, 24153


--- On Thu, 8/28/08, Sally Evans <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Sally Evans <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Question?
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Thursday, August 28, 2008, 5:22 PM
> In Oxford, "Greats" were the old writers who had
> stood the test of time, and 
> "Mods" were the modern writers, which meant from
> about the sixteenth century 
> onwards.
> One then spoke of great poets as those who had stood the
> test of time and 
> become generally accepted as very important.
> 
> I think it is a wholly pernicious term in contemporary
> times as poets and 
> artists are acclaimed as "great" prematurely and
> for commercial and 
> political reasons. If you like something, including a poem
> and think it is 
> "great" that is a very different use of the word.
> 
> By the old system, I would call Homer and |Vergil great
> poets, the Iliad, 
> Odyssey and Aeneid great poems. Moving on to the
> "Mods" I would also call 
> Keats and Shakespeare, Byron and possibly Tennyson great
> poets and Ode to a 
> Nightingale etc great poems. I think we might well be
> sparing of the term in 
> newer and contemporary times, instead talking of successful
> poems, memorable 
> poems, poems we really like and recommend.
> Above all, we should not think in terms of writing
> "great poems" as 
> individuals
> Sally Evans
> http://www.poetryscotland.co.uk
> http://groups.msn.com/desktopsallye
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Gary Blankenship" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 8:27 PM
> Subject: Re: Question?
> 
> 
> > What, in everyone's opinion, makes a poem great?
> > --Mairi
> >
> > Mairi, for me the questions are not what makes a poem
> great, but what 
> > makes
> > it good enough and what do I need to do to make it
> better?
> >
> > Back in the day, one of the best internet poets told
> me that on a scale of 
> > 1
> > to 10, most of us are a 1.5 to 2, a few get to 3, and
> a very, very few to 
> > 4.
> > And about the same time, I read the Basho considered
> only 10% of his haiku
> > worthy and only 1% superior.
> >
> > We might disagree about him, Willie, Emily and others
> we admire, but we 
> > can
> > admit the most we will do is approach their greatness
> from a distance. 
> > And
> > the only way we close that gap even a miniscule amount
> is study of better
> > poets and poems, their styles and techniques.
> >
> > I think greatness is a bit like art.  I know when I
> see it; but if I was
> > still a young lad in short pants, I might live past a
> century, before I
> > could honestly say, wow, I'm a 3.5.
> >
> > If you like it, it moves you, teaches you something,
> tells you something,
> > speaks to you, might even be you - call it great.
> >
> > Smiles.
> >
> > Gary
> >