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Doug, yes Aileen makes an important & useful distinction regarding notes. Reading over her two posts I'd say her bias is toward unity. Perhaps your bias tends in the other direction , as does mine. I wrote a poem last year that concludes with a two-line parenthetical statement. All my trusted readers had the same reaction "You can't do that. It's an after thought, an aside. Besides, it contains a literary allusion!") My reaction: Exactly--I wanted to undermine the unity of the poem. My parenthesis is functionally a note in the sense that you mean. As for the other sort of note--the contextualizing or informational sort--I'd agree they probably ought to go at the end of the text unless one wants some immediate effect. All the recent discussion about notes is predicated on the conception of the poem-as-text, don't you think? I was somewhat critical of Jon Corelis' recent cri-de-coeur regarding the poem as utterance, but the idea has stuck with me, at least in so far as it defines one end of a spectrum. In the present discussion, such a conception of the poem would be at the opposite end of the continuum from the annotated text. (Aileen & Jon, apologies if I have misrepresented your views.) jd ====================== Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts, box 5750 Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 315.268.3967 [log in to unmask] http://web.northnet.org/duemer http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html ====================== Through the loop of the rusted padlock a blade of green . . . In the bed of a rusted war truck the farmer begins his rice [John Brandi, from Stone Garland, 1999] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%