On Tue, 9 Jun 1998, R I Caddel wrote:
>
> - well, I've had a go at VFT which doesn't feel like the last word to me,
> would welcome other takes, and I'll undertake to do the same for Gael -
> tho he's awful old... Anyone up for a quick primer on DR & HM? Feeling a
> little hard-pushed in the kitchen here, could use some help...
>
Thanks Ric for your post on Veronica F-T. I have only read the poems in "A
Various Art" which seemed to me heady mockeries on (being) Cambridge
Tripos material. If the totem is "the lark", it is a leavis-cagey one.
Her 'lyrical voice' reminds me of Dorothy Parker:
My dignity dictated
A restrained farewell
But I love you so much
Dignity can go to hell
etc etc
That expression of heterosexual ennuie is the inexorable result of natural
rhyme selection. Though perhaps I should posit that the genealogy is
Verlaine rather. Not that I venture to suppose that "Viagra"/"in the
buffa" is a more stimulating rhyme, but rather that the content moment (on
the love relationship) when she adopts the regular metre and full-rhyme
is telling.
I could not get on with "Poetic Artifice". Yet that work seems so poised
to be dated one could imagine it being of great interest to intellectual
historians. I would like to read more of her poems, but I heard that
the literary executors are prudent about giving permission for reprints.
Karlien
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