On Thu, 19 Aug 1999 [log in to unmask] wrote (in his Armitage voice):
> "Here's a Poetry Testing Kit. It can't produce a precise result in terms of
> a poem being good or bad - it's more a finger-in-the-wind, rule-of-thumb
> job, that might tell you why you like a poem (or why you don't). Remember,
> the reading of poetry is not an exact science [ . . . ]
[and so on, down to: ]
> The Acid Test. This is the final test and the one that really counts. It's
> like a test for the mystery ingredient that separates a truly great tomato
> sauce from its rivals. It's the X-factor, although it might be to do with
> the author's experience of poetry. [ . . . ]
It's the chatty verbosity which gets me - how long it takes saying not
very much. We're a long way from the direct hands-on stuff in Pound's "A
Few Dont's for Imagistes" here, or the terse specific hits of Bunting's I
SUGGEST:
[ . . . ]
4. Fear adjectives; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
[ . . . ]
Never explain -- your reader is as smart as you.
RC
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