I'm with Hal, & Jon, and etc. Why then read poems from the past in
which the references, often personal & of the time, are perhaps a tad
hard to 'get,' but in some cases can be looked up (& now we have
Google just sitting there waiting). I get Roger's point, & how he sees
this in terms of your poem, but there I disagree, as it seems to me
that to assert the speaker's place in that world that is a stage is to
place the earlier part of the narration in the poem.
If the poem is doing the heard work of rhythm, sound, push of idea
(I'll not say 'content' as such), then even if one feels s/he is
missing something s/he will still feel the pull of the whole...
At least that would be my hope (&, as we all know, & the publishing
data tell us) the poetry reading public isnt (& has seldom been) that
large anyway....
Doug
On 26-Sep-08, at 8:58 PM, andrew burke wrote:
> During the past week I came across a rising young poet of this
> parish, a
> doctor of literature and book-published, who had never heard of Robert
> Creeley. We can't pander to the ignorant. However, I do get Roger's
> point
> that we restrict our audience if we use references that are too
> esoteric. I
> had Gene Kelly in an earlier draft... maybe ...
Douglas Barbour
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Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
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Wednesdays'
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bleary with hashish at a ghazal dud show
in Kurdistan, soaring Muslim melodies
over a smoked-out Jamaican one drop
Brian Francis Slattery
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