David, I agree. My own take on why such poetry gets written is that the
poet feels that poetry is another branch of prose fiction writing--such is
the encouragement towards this end present in many creative writing
classes. In contrast, most songwriters have never been to such classes,
hence their less literal and less-novelistic type of writing. I suppose
this is why songs mean more to people than many poems do.
On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:28:50 +0000, David Bircumshaw
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I was at the Star City exhibition in Nottingham yesterday and was
delighted
>to see a handwritten Russian plan for the Venera rocket's flight which
>included the names of the planets such as Mars and Jupiter but yet
Merkur
>and Venusa and most of all Zem. Short for Zemlya. Which is the
planet you
>live on, if you're Russian.
>And the trouble with the style, the voice, the assumptions of the
Armitage
>poem, and countless exercises that inhabit the same territory, is that
they
>preclude, cannot imagine, insist that the reader rejects, the possibility
>that not only are there people living on the Planet Zem but also that
it's
>the same one we breathe upon too.
>It's an imaginative foreclosure, necesary in the world made by
accountants
>and bankers. Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop' gets mentioned so often,
doesn't
>it, it's a finely modulated poem, and the idea of deep England it
evokes
>harks back to Shakespeare, it's a nostagia and a dream of peace in
Thomas,
>but when people quote it today all I see are estate agents signs.
Country
>villages equal money status now, and have done since the urban
property
>booms of the Thatcher period.
>
>On 17 February 2010 19:51, Robin Hamilton
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> Ah, it turned out all for the best, David. I was in such an irritated
>> mood that I chased down the entire version of "Do you rocker
Romany?" to the
>> memoirs of a traveling cheapjack in the late 19thC. So as a result,
not
>> only have I found a new authentic cant poem, but I'll also have the
chance
>> to sneer condescendingly at *both folk-song collectors (and if I
come across
>> yet one more scholarly folk song article that solemnly informs me
that Jack
>> Hall was executed in 1701 rather than 1707, I'll do ... I know not
what)
>> *and all those "It's all down to the Rom" bundles of misinformation
spread
>> broadcast across the Web.
>>
>> So it was as you might say a fortunate happen-tranche.
>>
>> Robin
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* David Latane <[log in to unmask]>
>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 17, 2010 1:36 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: Response to my criticisms of Armitage's poetry
>>
>> Robin: "Which was what I was doing when dave's poem happened
to catch
>> my eye. And
>> from that got sucked into this entire tranche of silliness."
>>
>> This has happened before here. . . . being Side-tranched.
>>
>> David Latane
>>
>>
>
>
>--
>David Bircumshaw
>"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
>You say are poems" - DMeltzer
>Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>The Animal Subsides
http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
>twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
>blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>
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