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)
----- Original Message -----
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]