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ah constraints: & Rilke. I came to him lat, compared to you & Fred, but I found the Elegies illuminating. As to a play of constraints AND specific referentiality, I mention, once again, George Bowering's Kerrisdale Elegies, wherein, he mimics the original, but specifically in (Canadian, Vancouver) terms, making a poem very much his own, yet impossible without the 'original.' What's interesting about oulipo, Harry Mathews, & their conception of constraints is that such tend to work much as trad forms do, but as they are invented by the writer for that specific writing they feel both constraining & freeing at once.... (well, for those who use them well, I suppose the sonnet, villanelle, etc, do too). Doug On 25-Apr-07, at 6:47 AM, MJ Walker wrote: > I think the following quotation from an interview with Harry Mathews - > http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/wuc/foreignness -, one of > my favourite writers, addresses questions raised by Dominic & others > about referentiality &/ or constraints: > I find that what most > intensifies the reading experience is the awareness that a hidden > pattern or structure exists, without one's exactly knowing what it is. > This makes the reader sit up and pay attention.< > This has certainly been true of my reading over the decades, whether a > writing pattern or a thought system is concerned. I can almost exactly > parallel Fred's experience with Rilke's Elegies, first read in 1962 in > Leishman's version with the facing original, then the original alone > in a 2ndhand Insel edition picked up in a Freiburg bookshop in the > mid-60s that I still treasure - in fact, I'm still wondering at/about > the underlying set of concepts & correspondences when I read them, the > point being that that wonder intensifies my receptiveness to the text. > It's a question of "poetic density" as Mathews says later in the > interview (which reminds me of Pound's "dichten=condensare"). > Probably all old hat to you, but it just struck me anew this morning. > The problem with Chinese (or any?) poetry in translation is that a web > of implied reference & concepts must be verbally created by the > translator to avoid sententiousness - Pound and Brecht manage that, > Waley & Graham sometimes. - Stray thoughts from a stray cat. Speaking > of cats, either a cat or someone else deposited a cat foetus complete > with placenta next the breakfast table in the bowered area before the > house I mainly live in. A gift or a warning? We buried it with due > honours at the pathside nearby before breakfasting. > mj > > -- > A man may write of love, and not be in love, as well as of husbandrie, > and not goe to plough: or of witches, and be none: or of holinesse, > and be flat prophane. - Giles Fletcher the Elder. > > Douglas Barbour 11655 - 72 Avenue NW Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9 (780) 436 3320 http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy) http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664 Light weighs light, to the hand, to the eye. Feel it in two places. Robert Creeley