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Glad you saw the funny side, it was most +meant+, Doug, it was written very
quickly, in a few minutes before being due to go out to a social event, it
does always amuse me how we English who can be the most ineffably polite
people in the world are also among the rudest. The secret schizophrenia of
Angleterre.

Apropos of it another matter that intrigues me is the 'personal' in poetry -
a very small number of my own pieces are directly personal, but most just
project feelings which may be partial reflections of what I feel but are, I
hate to say, just 'material'.

Just off to run into my walls!

Best

Dave



David Bircumshaw

Leicester, England

Home Page

A Chide's Alphabet

Painting Without Numbers

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 3:52 PM
Subject: Re: Prose poems


Playing off & with cliché, shifting tones, cutting through bullshit: that's
a prose poem, too Dave. Which I laughed at, as I hope I was meant to.

I have enjoyed all the posts of pps, & agree with Rebecca that definition
keeps running into walls. I recall that I used to think I could define
poetry, & I'd think my latest definition finally covered the field, until I
read something that fell outside it but I loved, & had to abandon and/or
expand it again, till I finally gave up that game...

Doug

Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320      (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm

        now I long to give up cigarettes
        and change the sheets on my carboniferous bed;
        O baby, what Hell to be Greek in this country -
        without wings, but burning anyway

                        Gwendolyn MacEwen