Re: biographical poetry
Thanks for that, Klaus. I haven't thought much about the
biography/epic link. Contemporary poets are usually ironic, domestic,
or elegiac in their concerns. As you suggest, a person's death is
often a cause for biographical reflection. Australian poets sometimes
get mildly lambasted for their facility with the form. (The speed
with which elegies appear, especially after the death of a poet, can
sometimes be a little startling). My guess is, though, that
Australian poets aren't all that different from their international
counterparts. Any thoughts?
Cheers,
David
Dear Dr. Cooey,
thank you for setting this topic on the
agenda. In my opinion very much depends on whether
"biographical" means "epic" or not. In my own
experience as a writer (mostly in German) I often felt challenged to
write a poem by the death of someone. That could imply looking
for a formula for this specific life and its end. Thus a
biographical poem could develop from an epitaph - e.g. in the line of
Rilke's little poem
"Lord give to everyone
his special death / a death which grew out of the life he lived
/ fruit of his love, concern and suffering." (Somewhere in
his Stundenbuch, my translation)
Cheers
Klaus Haacker
----- Original Message -----
From: David
McCooey
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 2:16
AM
Subject: biographical poetry
Hi,
Some of you might remember me (hi Jill!, hi Pam!). I used
to be on this list a couple of years ago. I'm back and enjoying it
very much. Anyway, after a few weeks of lurking I thought it time to
participate.
I'm currently writing an essay on biographical poetry. It
seems to me that very little has been made of this. Discussion of the
autobiographical in poetry is, of course, ubiquitous. There are less
poems that are biographical and fewer that could be described as
'biographical essays in verse'. A few random examples are FT Prince's
marvellous poem on Rupert Brooke or Mary Jo Salter's on Robert Frost
or Bruce Beaver's on Rilke (a metapoetic link
here).
Elegies, obviously, are biographical, and there's something
of a sub-genre in work that deals with family history and parents:
Anne Stevenson's Correspondences, Jon Stallworthy's A
Familiar Tree, Michael Hofmann's poems about his father in
Acrimony and so on and on. Poems such as the latter are clearly
also autobiographical - intersubjective, we might say.
At the other end of the scale we have clerihews and (ahem)
double dactyls. And there are some wacky poems for kids mixing nation
building, education and verse, such as A Book of
Americans.
Enough already...I'd be interested to hear if anyone else is
interested in biographical poetry and (there is a good deal of
self-interest in this bit) if they have any favourite biographical
poems that may not be well known.
Cheers,
David
--
________________
Dr David McCooey
Lecturer in Literary Studies
Honours Co-ordinator
School of Literary and Communication Studies
Deakin University
Geelong
Victoria
Australia 3217
ph: 61 3 5227 1331
fax: 61 3 5227 2484
[log in to unmask]
--
________________
Dr David McCooey
Lecturer in Literary Studies
Honours Co-ordinator
School of Literary and Communication Studies
Deakin University
Geelong
Victoria
Australia 3217
ph: 61 3 5227 1331
fax: 61 3 5227 2484
[log in to unmask]