What Mark said, esp. in that first paragraph.
Hal
"A paranoid is someone who knows a little
of what's going on."
--William S. Burroughs
Halvard Johnson
================
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On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 9:16 AM, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The taste of poets, myself included, is usually pretty close to home: one
> likes what one finds useful for one's own craft, cares passionately for what
> one learns from. Adequacy in the abstract simply doesn't count, for most of
> us. It's not a matter of dispassionate, disinterested canon-building.
>
> Re: "the deal": I don't see how anyone can argue with the notion that when
> one derives one's manner from a pre-existing body of work one begs
> comparison. Hell, to be so profoundly referential is to enter into public
> dialogue with the older work.
>
> Re: narrative. Personally, not a problem for me, though I seem to be
> incapable of sustaining it for very long. I love, for instance, Koch's A
> Season on Earth (both rhymed and narrative). I didn't love this particular
> narrative.
>
> Mark
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> >Sent: Aug 6, 2009 10:35 AM
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
> >
> >I'm not so sure, Fred.
> >
> >I mean I see all too many 'poems' in some version of 'free
> >verse' (which Pound reminds us is never 'free' to the person who knows
> >what s/he's doing) that are far too prosey, & boring. In pretty well
> >all the 'kinds' of poetry going.
> >
> >And, as I've just been reading John Newlove again (a Canadian poet of
> >terrifically powerful understatement, etc, for those who've never
> >heard of him), as well as a bunch of others ranging across straight
> >lyric through narrative kinds to philosophical lyric, etc, I'd say
> >that, if we're wiling to admit that readers out there are, in fact, as
> >eclectic as writers are (& as both writers & readers committed
> >'sincerely' [never know how to take that word any more] to the kind[s]
> >they like), that whatever 'the deal' is, it's a rather loose
> >formulation....
> >
> >With lots of infighting among those who are sure they know 'the
> >deal'...?
> >
> >Hey, just look at us!
> >
> >Doug
> >On 5-Aug-09, at 2:25 PM, Frederick Pollack wrote:
> >
> >> Re "should be in prose": Wordiness and padding is of course a flaw.
> >> But I often see this argument applied to lines that are neither,
> >> rather deliberately rich in detail, lucid, and, horror of horrors,
> >> narrative. A kind of strained nervous cleverness, constantly trying
> >> to invent *some meaning or response for what one is reading - this
> >> readerly state, inevitable when reading Raworth or Prynne or Brian
> >> Henry or Laura Moriarty or Susan Howe etc. etc., seems to be the
> >> *only permissible one to advanced opinion.
> >>
> >> *That's "the deal."
> >
> >Douglas Barbour
> >[log in to unmask]
> >
> >http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ <http://www.ualberta.ca/%7Edbarbour/>
> >
> >Latest books:
> >Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> >http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> >Wednesdays'
> >
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
> >
> >There are as many fools in the world as there are people.
> >
> > Sigmund Freud
>
