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I suppose no one’s going to like being called dull or stupid but you’re right about the ‘imaginative gusto’ and the way it moves beyond the petty. > On 8 Mar 2018, at 12:35, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > I was thinking of MacFlecknoe actually. It's too funny to be fully malicious. The impression is of imaginative gusto, rather than spitting asperity. > >> On 8 Mar 2018 12:21 pm, "Jamie McKendrick" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> Mac Flecknoe? >> Mature in dullness from his tender years, >> Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he >> Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. >> The rest to some dull meaning make pretence, >> But Shadwell never deviates into sense... >> >> It can’t have been a happy moment, either, to be on the receiving end of one of Catullus’s devastatingly funny attacks. Which included Caesar. >> As with Shelley’s denunciatory poem about George III, or another against Castlereagh. >> >> These days, though, poets tend to reserve their cruelty for prose. Not being skilled or witty enough to do so in verse...? The death of Satire as a form? >> (i remember the first student lecture I attended by the great Scottish Dryden scholar, Reverend James Kinsley, explaining that the term originally meant a ‘hotchpotch’. He left us to work out how it had metamorphosed into an C18th genre.) >> >> Luke’s first point is still worth considering - that ‘it tends to reflect badly on people’. I think if these attacks are directed against someone holding power or who has the power to reply in kind they don’t look as bad. When directed against a group of people who are disempowered they come over as cowardly and vile. >> Jamie >> >> >> >> >> Sent from my iPad >> >>> On 8 Mar 2018, at 09:08, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>> >>> Byron, probably. Pope, maybe, Dryden, possibly not. Fortunately avant-garde poets are excepted from this charge as their intended targets can't understand the insult. >>> >>> (That is a joke, ok ??) >>> >>>> On 8 March 2018 at 01:54, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>>> > "poets are sensitive" >>>> >>>> Verbal sadism, if not aggression, tends to reflect badly on people, I think. I wonder which poets find an intrinsic value in hurting others with their words? >>>> >>>> Luke >>>> >>>>> On 27 February 2018 at 21:16, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>>>> > newsflash "poets are sensitive" >>>>> >>>>> How can I be sure, of that? Are poets sensitive? >>>>> >>>>> Luke >>>>> >>>>>> On 12 February 2018 at 18:24, Rhys Trimble <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>>>>> nothing to do with political correctness just a few of us feel that luke was symptomatic of a POSITIVE CHANGE which is evident in the list's recent liveliness and to criticize was a little bad form as in general his influence has been very good and remember that was the second comment aimed at him by you >>>>>> >>>>>> newsflash "poets are sensitive" >>>>> >>>> >>>