Here's the first stanza of the three:
I take a taxi to the DMV
on free weekdays, and like a stowaway
observe the goings-on, this long ennui.
Too many lines inch forward to convey
futility at 10 A.M.--"Come stay
awhile and meet some interesting folks,"
joked one employee on the phone that day.
They stare, endure the PA drone, and coax
returning predecessors like an axle's spokes.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James C. Nohrnberg
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Spenser in Foster
The allusion to Spenser is presumably a strong one, yes?
-- since that's the first line of Amoretti 34, which is after a Petrarchan simile for love-lorn-ness (ship in distress), and is a comparison of the kind that gets used for the complaint of Britomart, who's tempest-tost emotionally, tho' she's on the shore, in the 3 stanzas at FQ III.iv.8-10. It may or may not be significant that the sonnet follows the one (Amoretti 33) on whether or not the poet can finish his big poem (the one in which Britomart appears), and where the sequent sonnet's phrase "tost with troublous fit" seems to find counterparts in the mental state of Britomart, "tossed long" with "troubled bowels,"
in the first of the three stanzas in question (III.iv.8).
(But I know absolutely nothing about what happens or comes after the first line of the 3 Spenserian stanzas in the Foster text--I think a book of poems about contemporary life in America (?).)
On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:39:54 -0400
"James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:10:45 -0500
> "CHRISTOPHER, DR. JOE R." <[log in to unmask]>
>wrote:
>>
>> In Brett Foster's The Garbage Eater (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern
>>University Press, 2011), one poem in Spenserian stanzas appears: "Lyke
>>as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde" (22). Three stanzas with a
>>modern setting.
>
> [log in to unmask]
> James Nohrnberg
> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
> Univ. of Virginia
> P.O Box 400121
> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
|