Dear Peter
Thanks for the educative post; your message about Clark has begun to
filter through, sending me out on the long journey between "attitude"
and "response". Your point about Clark`s deliberately leaving out
his pastoral`s antithesis, the motivation to do so and the
repercussions of that absence, is an interesting one, and usefully
undercuts some of the criticisms I have made, tho` I`d still want a
critical discourse to engage in the aggressive oneupmanship which is
(I see) MY hallmark by "upstaging" (i.e. quoting) wherever possible.
How to know Clark`s "deliberately leaving out...&c."? Would it be
discernible (that deliberate exclusion/rejection which is also an
inclusion because holding at arm`s length) if you DID quote? Because
it seems to me that no reference to specific poems makes of your
discourse a set of spiritual exercises. They become the preparation
to read Clark which does away with the need to read Clark. Not so
much literary criticism as Yoga.
all best
robin
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