Andrew, will order this when I get back from this trip up north. Otherwise it will just clog up my P O box. Title
already grabs me.
Bill
On Tue, Jun 24th, 2014 at 2:18 PM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Oh, yes, I am here. And, yes, I did use a list of my own making of
> definitions of poetry by various poets when we discussed poetry. It
> always
> started the ball rolling! I also gave examples of formal, informal and
> revamps ancient forms - plus looked at the English diction in
> translations
> and the variations of forms from their originals to the translated item.
> Sigh.
>
> I'd also like to announce the arrival of my latest collection from
> Walleah
> Press: 'One Hour Seeds Another'. It has a variety of forms, to say the
> least. (And I do often say the least.) $20AUD from
> http://walleahpress.com.au/ Here's a blurb statement:
>
> *Blurbs for 'One Hour'*
>
>
>
> In a voice that is simultaneously unified and diverse, Burke explores
> traditional and non-traditional forms, collaborations, etc in a restless
> avoidance of cliché or tired repetition.
>
>
>
> His poetry has an openness and candour that is a form of honesty. Mundane
> things - ants, birds, garden plants, pets etc - are seen so clearly that
> they are transfigured and made vibrant with luminous immediacy.
>
>
>
> Also, several moving elegies for dead friends draw on the powerful sense
> of
> memory that infuses the whole collection with depth and
> multi-dimensionality.
>
>
>
> - *Andrew Taylor (poet, friend, academic)*
>
>
>
>
>
> In *One Hour Seeds Another*, Andrew Burke is writing at the height of his
> powers. In this collection he has the confidence and quiet wisdom of
> someone who knows his particular patches of mind and craft and experience
> inch by inch, never ceases to be surprised by them, and has learned how
> to
> pass that surprise on to us, without spilling a drop. His pleasure, irony
> and compassion are contagious. You could give him five ordinary things on
> a
> table top and he would show you just how to place them, to let in the
> pleasure and the wonder.
>
>
>
> - *David Brooks (novelist, poet, essayist, editor)*
>
>
> On 24 June 2014 06:52, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Oh yes Lawrence.
> >
> > And Rush rejoices in how Housman and Arnold were confined to a poetry
> that
> > excluded Alexander Pope, Byron of 'Don Juan', et al!
> >
> > I recall my 1952 school text, the old Golden Treasury, which also
> ignores
> > Donne and Herbert.
> >
> > This Christopher Rush, writing on the Felix Dennis website (Dennis's
> death
> > is announced),
> > comes on openly as a former secondary teacher now a full-time writer, so
> I
> > was reminded
> > of the handouts teachers compile hoping to 'kick-start' young students.
> >
> > It's like a page in a dictionary of quotations, or a website of handy
> > quotes -
> > something a few lucky people never need, having done their own reading
> > already.
> >
> > I expect Andrew Burke, quondam writing teacher, to look down the list
> and
> > say:
> > 'I used to press six or a dozen of these on my groups -
> > now here's a knockout very long list that I can use.'
> >
> > Are you there, Andrew?
> >
> > Max
> >
> >
> > On 23 Jun 2014, at 11:22 pm, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > With respect, and friendship, these reminds me of why I wanted so
> badly
> > to
> > > leave the R C Church and could never bring myself to join a Marxist
> party
> > >
> > >
> > > L
> > >
> > >
> > > On 23 June 2014 13:42, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Here then are my two dozen standing stones.[writes Christopher Rush
> > >> http://www.felixdennis.com/subject/poetry-subject/poets-playlist/]
> > >>
> > >> (1) Poetry is more philosophical and serious
> than
> > >> history. (Aristotle)
> > >>
> > >> (2) The truest poetry is the most feigning.
> > >> (Shakespeare)
> > >>
> > >> (3) Poetry should be simple, sensuous,
> passionate.
> > >> (Milton)
> > >>
> > >> (4) Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
> powerful
> > >> feelings. (Wordsworth)
> > >>
> > >> (5) Poetry is emotion recollected in
> tranquillity.
> > >> (Wordsworth)
> > >>
> > >> (6) Poetry is the best words in the best order.
> > >> (Coleridge)
> > >>
> > >> (7) Poetry should surprise by a fine excess.
> (Keats)
> > >>
> > >> (8) If poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to
> a
> > >> tree, it had better not come at all. (Keats)
> > >>
> > >> (9) Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
> > >> (Flaubert)
> > >>
> > >> (10) Poetry is a means of overcoming chaos. (I.A.
> > >> Richards, literary critic)
> > >>
> > >> (11) Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
> (Frost)
> > >>
> > >> (12) Poetry is a way of taking life by the
> throat.
> > >> (Frost)
> > >>
> > >> (13) Genuine poetry communicates before it is
> > >> understood. (Eliot)
> > >>
> > >> (14) Poetry is what heals by cauterising painful
> > >> emotion. (Felix Dennis - with apologies to Felix for my verbal
> > >> shorthand)
> > >>
> > >> (15) Poetry is what makes you more human than you
> > were
> > >> before. (Rush)
> > >>
> > >> (16) Poetry is what makes you fall back in love
> with
> > >> life when you have fallen out of it. (Rush again!)
> > >>
> > >> In addition to these landmarks, there were some general
> pronouncements
> > on
> > >> poets, all of which seemed to cast their various lights on my
> top-ten
> > cull.
> > >>
> > >> (17) The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of
> > >> imagination all compact. (Shakespeare)
> > >>
> > >> (18) The poet's task is to take this bronze world
> and
> > >> make it gold. (Sidney)
> > >>
> > >> (19) To the poet nothing can be useless.
> (Johnson)
> > >>
> > >> (20) The poet must preside over the thoughts and
> > manners
> > >> of future generations as a being superior to time and place.
> > >>
> > >> (21) The language of the age is never the language
> of
> > >> poetry. (Gray)
> > >>
> > >> (22) The language of the age is always the language
> of
> > >> poetry! (Wordsworth)
> > >>
> > >> (23) A poet is a man speaking to men.
> (Wordsworth)
> > >>
> > >> (24) Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
> the
> > >> world. (Shelley)
> > >>
> > >> There were others that sprang to mind. But life is short - and
> weekends
> > >> shorter. There were, however, two passages about poetry which I've
> > always
> > >> kept on a bedside cabinet composed of little grey cells on the
> left-hand
> > >> side of my brain. One is from The Cave of Making by another old
> bugger,
> > >>
> > >> W.H. Auden:
> > >>
> > >> After all it's rather a privilege
> > >> Amid the affluent traffic
> > >> to serve this unpopular art which cannot be turned into
> > >> background noise for study
> > >> or hung as a status trophy by rising executives,
> > >> cannot be 'done' like Venice
> > >> or abridged like Tolstoy, but stubbornly insists upon
> > >> being read or ignored.
> > >>
> > >> The second passage is from a lecture given by A.E. Housman at
> Cambridge
> > in
> > >> or around - I think - 1932. Housman said there was such a thing as
> sham
> > >> poetry, a counterfeit deliberately manufactured and offered as a
> > >> substitute, the best example of it being the kind of verse written
> > between
> > >> Samson Agonistes in 1671 and the Lyrical Ballads in 1798: the kind
> > >> dominated by intelligence, which involved, as Matthew Arnold also
> wrote,
> > >> 'some repressing and silencing of poetry ... some touch of frost to
> the
> > >> imaginative life of the soul'. The eighteenth century poets wrote
> not
> > out
> > >> of the depths but out of their heads, and poetry does not come out
> of
> > the
> > >> skull but out of the gut or soul. If poetry came out of the head
> the
> > >> Augustans would have written it rather better. And when you look at
> the
> > >> four eighteenth century poets who did write it better - Collins,
> Smart,
> > >> Cowper and Blake - you see at once why they did so, why they were
> able
> > to.
> > >> You see the only thing they all had in common - they were all mad!
> > >>
> > >> Aha! Remember Plato? 'He who without the Muses' madness in his
> soul
> > >> comes knocking at the door of poetry, and thinks that art will make
> him
> > >> anything fit to be called a poet, finds that poetry he indites in
> his
> > sober
> > >> senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.'
> > >>
> > >> It's dangerous to offer examples, but perhaps the last obvious madmen
> to
> > >> write true poetry were Dylan Thomas and R S Thomas - both Welsh!
> Larkin
> > >> put himself into a most effective poetic straight-jacket,
> successfully
> > >> creating the impression that he was almost sane. But he wasn't.
> He
> > >> wasn't simply the intelligent Hull Grump. He had the madness in his
> > soul
> > >> that Plato talked about. I read many contemporary poets on the
> other
> > hand,
> > >> and find them dismayingly sane. They have something to say but
> can't
> > say
> > >> them in the way that will move as Milton once moved.
> > >>
> > >> What is it about those six simple words of his - Housman asks - that
> > >> almost draws tears?
> > >>
> > >> Nymphs and shepherd dance no more
> > >>
> > >> Is it that they evoke a sense of that older England which Felix
> writes
> > >> about in one of my chosen poems?
> > >> Housman gives the only answer he can:
> > >> 'I can only say, because they are poetry, and find their way to
> > something
> > >> in men which is obscure and latent, something older than the present
> > >> organisation of his nature.'
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> 'Undercover of Lightness'
> http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
> 'Shikibu Shuffle'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
>
>
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