Dave

I fel she's quite frangible enough to pass as a poet. Talking of
frangibility, that seems to me just the quality that poets I like have when
they are 'being present' at readings - if I am correct in glossing frangible
as a mixture of fragility and tangibility.

Les Murray, for example, has it almost excessively - so tangible, so fragile.
John Ashbery pushes fragility. UA Fanthorpe, interestingly, pushes
tangibility especially because she uses an extra physical presence (another
reader alongside to vary the 'social' voice who comes across, however, as
fragilely not UAF).

Am I also correct in interpreting fragile as including vulnerability? And
tangibility as including conviction? In which case, Sharon Olds gets my
vote as the poet in whose physical reading presence I - I as the community -
am provided with the most opportunity to be made frangible myself.

If you see what I mean.

Best

Claire

In a message dated 07/06/01 23:21:01 GMT Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

I am so impressed that you have this wonderful poet in your community, my
own observations have been along the lines that poets are rather fragile on
social awareness, altho' possibly wanting secretly to save the world, as it
were, and I'd say with some certainty that my own sense of peopledom
presence is a rather frangible one, and not backed up with a confidence in
dealing with 'issues'.

Nor ever a likelihood of being a 'literature officer'.

Best