----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
OK, here's the deal. If you're going to write in
an archaic dialect, let alone in forms mostly
long out of fashion, you beg comparison with your
models. The first fails badly measured against
Marvell, and despite the several centuries since
the latter seems more distant
linguistically--what was Marvell's native tongue
becomes here an affectation meant to create a
sense of poesy. The others--Wordsworth, anyone?
Might make decent prose, though, with some revision and a bit more bite.
Best,
Mark
Doesn't sound like Marvell to me. Would Marvell ever have an idea or use
diction like "the sudden failure of the past"?
Re "should be in prose": Wordiness and padding is of course a flaw. But I
often see this argument applied to lines that are neither, rather
deliberately rich in detail, lucid, and, horror of horrors, narrative. A
kind of strained nervous cleverness, constantly trying to invent *some
meaning or response for what one is reading - this readerly state,
inevitable when reading Raworth or Prynne or Brian Henry or Laura Moriarty
or Susan Howe etc. etc., seems to be the *only permissible one to advanced
opinion.
*That's "the deal."
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