On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Desmond Swords
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
> The frequent allusions/liftings from various renaissance dramatists are
> perhaps a clue here as they tended to throw in everything but the kitchen
> sink... biblical/classical allusions/poetry/romance/slack street talk. In
> some ways Stearns is in some ways re-inventing that.
>
Glad someone said this, because it was along the lines I was thinking, but
the overall debate seems rather rabbinical.
I think the original claim about the influence of Wasteland and Wake was
used in a context to beat up everything than has come afterward, which I
find pointless. To focus on The Wasteland, as I think the discussion
rightly does for the most part, Eliot grabbed from LaForgue, Appolinaire,
The Elizebethans, drama and cinema overall, etc., and got a huge helping
hand from Pound. The vaunted "jump cuts" are not much more than you find
all over Shakespeare. I agree with Robin that The Pisan Cantos are a better
work than The Wasteland (though I don't think the distance in my regard is
as much as in Robin's), so I don't see fit to care that The Wasteland came
first chronologically. I see here a very narrow grounds for evaluation
established post-facto to accommodate a pre-selected pair of works.
For the more general claim that there has been no major poetic innovation in
a century or so, even if I were to agree, I'd say "so what"? You could say
that Petrarca's major innovations led to a centuries-long efflourescence of
fresh, vernacular poetry throughout Europe, and you could easily argue there
was nothing to match that register of innovation in those centuries, or even
since, but does that really matter? Even if there have been no innovations
in a century (which I certainly don't believe), it would seem to be a bit of
trivia with no substantive implications.
--
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