Dear Orff, you seem to be taking a bit of a pounding for sticking to yr
beliefs - hang in there! These are hard working, diligent professionals
you're talking to and you're right to challenge their views, many of which
are, self-confessedly, formed long ago and could be up for a review about
now. I include myself in this. I'm looking forward to that lucid example
which is going to send me back to the texts with a woup and a wow...
For the present, there's just one point I'd make from your recent posts:
On Fri, 9 May 1997, orpheus wrote:
> No one I know can write that way... He combines a very fine ear with a
> a real grasp of English as it is spoken and thought.
I just don't get that "fine ear" - all I get is boom, orotundity, at a
pace consistently slightly behind normal heart rate:
The breaker humps its green glass.
You see the sunrise through it, the wrack dark in it,
And over it - the bird of sickles
Swimming in the wind, with oiled spasm.
(from "Tern")
I just don't hear it as "fine ear" - just a rather clumsy codge together
of stock effects claiming a specificity (all those "definate" articles) it
hasn't earned. As for "English as it's spoken and thought" (which
admittedly hasn't been a big concern of mine in poetry) - believe me,
mate, this isn't it: it's stuffed with artifice and allusion, cumbersome
syntax - a long way from this to how anyone here, including Hughes,
speaks - without, to my mind, being far enuff to make it innovative or
challenging. Am I missing something? I certainly hope so!
best,
___________________________________________________________
Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric
"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."
- Basil Bunting
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