So poetry in English became serious when someone tried rock climbing in ice
skates, Bob? Is that why they're lying on the ground (I presume the climber
is too). It's crampons you need, not skates.
Ok, I'm being jokey, but, if this refers to the Prelude (does it?) it seems
to have forgotten there was a lot before that, with or without skates,
unless nobody's told me that Caedmon or the poets who wrote Deor or Wuld and
Eadwacer or Beowulf were all fanatical skaters and would be playing major
league hockey if they were alive now.
Maybe it refers to the Thames freezing over in the 17th century, and Jonson
and Donne and Mr Shakespeare et al have all left their skates off while they
slip into the Mermaid for some sack?
Ok, (again), I don't know what it refers to, but the image of ice (very
shiny stuff) drowns whatever faint glow that latinate luminescence has while
the following lines are ordinary old-style litcrit fustian with the
well-worn mountain of an image that must be a stump by now so many people
have trodden it ( anyhow too Parnassus is a Greek mountain with a ski centre
or two and a lift nowadays as well as ancient cave-dwelling muses with a
repressed hobby of tearing tuneful males apart not the place to go ice
skating I'd say)
It'd work better as a history of Scottish art painting (minus the references
to England and poetry of course) but with a clergyman and a ribbon or two
thrown in.
I hope that helps!! (you did ask)
best
Dave
On 6 September 2011 19:58, Bob Grumman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> the luminescence of the ice skates
> lying where poetry in English
> made its first major ascent
>
> I'd greatly appreciate feedback as to whether or not
>
> 1. it works as a poem?
>
> 2. what it means as a critical statement about the history of poetry in
> English is clear?
>
> 3. its meaning as a critical statement (if clear) makes sense?
>
> It is intended to be both poem, albeit a (very minor) poem-within-a-
> larger-poem, and a critical statement.
>
> --Bob
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
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