Indeed, indeed, Doug
I tend to use a standard line length
except when I don't of course
but i have never really thought of standard line length as partic trad I
am always varying from it to a greater or lesser degree
i suppose it is, in some ways... trad, I mean; my reading of what came
before modernism saw the tiredness of much that was written rather than
the inappropriateness of particular forms
and when did the change start -- no let's not go there - i've just been
dipping into riding and graves redefining modernism as contemporary, or so
it seems as i study through shouts and mobile phones, and it aint the same
thing
recently i have been rereading of and about robert graves a lot. he was
there in my childhood and youth, much as we get some names voxpopped at
us now; and there was a documentary on him on tv which had a tremendous
effect on me -- i might wonder why now, if i saw it, i was but a teen
one thing I remember was his advice to take a poet as a model and really
get yourself into that poet, imitating them, the whole bit, hard work,
hard work, and that impressed me
knowing nothing i went for thomas wyatt, which might be a poor choice. i
certainly didn't know enough background but i got a lot out of it; though
the white goddess stuff always seemed cobblers
so recently i got the latest collected, not the three volumes with all the
apparatus because i am unlikely to persist to that degree but a chunky
paperback with a fine photo portrait - Brandt I think...
and i've been reading
*some of it is very good
cue peggy lee -- is that all there is?
so maybe i too have become adhd / zapping / etc
my sensibility has changed perhaps.
it's not short attention span as such; but electronic handling of data may
have a lot to do with it
*
i think you're wise re cumulative effects of portraits... they tend to be
slight on their own... mine, that is
seriously, thanks for your comments: they're always considered, always
intelligent... if i dismiss / ignore them sometimes be sure it is not
casually
let a thousand weeds grow, eh?
L
On Tue, August 30, 2011 21:13, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> AH, well, Lawrence: many more, eh?
>
>
> I can see a series of such 'portraits' as cumulatively interesting, &
> more so in the accumulation. My thought on its traf qualities had t do
> with the more or less standard line length, & the narrative quality.
>
> Also, an innovation for oneself might look not so much so to oner who
> sees that as a specific given method.
>
> When writing a rejection, one should try to be clear & coherent...
>
>
> Doug
> On 2011-08-30, at 2:06 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
>
>> Lots of interesting points here, Doug. Well, points.
>>
>>
>> I think of everything I do as *being in a tradition(s)
>>
>>
>> I hadn't thought of this as theatre, but i am content with that.
>>
>>
>> I write lots of stuff something like this. I have a catch all title of
>> _Portraits_, and this could well fit in there. It's more a portrait than
>> a snap but I presented is a snap to fit. it's not not a snap!
>>
>> I offered a whole pile of portraits to a very innovative publisher a
>> while back and it rejected it because there was, i believe this is it,
>> no innovation. I couldn't really tell what the problem was because the
>> rejection letter was so incoherent. (I was interested to note that a
>> devoted self-proclaimed innovator could not express themselves
>> clearly.) There was also, I detected, some embarrassment.
>>
>>
>> I was already glad because there were a number of really infelicitous
>> poems there - together with lots of innovation of a quiet kind - and I
>> had regretted submitting it.
>>
>> I suppose I'm asking questions. The starting point of the poem was that
>> first line which was taken unchanged from a posting on another list.
>> In
>> context it was even more bizarre, and posing.
>>
>> I don't know the person that well, and demoted them there and then on
>> my list of people to get to know. Instead, I set about portraiting
>> (There I
>> go again using the language innovatively).... portraying, speculatively
>> a person who could say such a thing
>>
>> It was a way of dealing with my anger at the person who had been
>> posturing politically
>>
>> The only snap bit of it, truly, was done with a mouse and cut and paste
>> on that first line. The rest was photoshop
>>
>>
>> Lawrence
>>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> Wednesdays'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10
> .html
>
>
> It is natural to speak of your own weaknesses so winsomely they will seem
> strengths, as if everyone else is inadequate if they do not have your
> inadequacies.
>
> William H. Gass
>
>
-----
UNFRAMED GRAPHICS by Lawrence Upton
42 pages; A5 paperback; colour cover
Writers Forum 978 1 84254 277 4
wfuk.org.uk/blog
----
Lawrence Upton
Dept of Music
Goldsmiths, University of London
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