It's all a matter of 'feel', and 'feel' is quality that matter in such a
'primitive' art as poetry. You can always tell when people have been using
rhyming dictionaries, or other aides, there's a blank, null texture to the
result, hell, even with poets of the ability of Sylvia Plath or Dylan Thomas
it showed that they fell to the temptations of the thesaurus (that useful
tool for the adumbration of a basically Edwardian English vocabulary). Or
the early Auden's pasting together of 'best lines' from this notebook or
that. Inauthenticity gleams through in poetry, subversively to its
perpetrators.
regards
david bircumshaw
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Howard <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 01, 2001 6:24 PM
Subject: Re: cant is all bunk isn't it?
> On Sun, 31 Dec 2000, david.bircumshaw wrote...
>
> >I'm sorry, but I have a violent antipathy to all this: if you write, you
use
> >your own skin, not computer programs, nor thesauri, nor most definitely
> >rhyming dictionaries. Nor assontantal wordbanks. Writing comes from one's
> >own contingency, it is not a matter for calculation in a field of others,
> >anyone who relies on such aids shouldn't be claiming to be there in the
> >first place.
>
> I'm with Helen and Neville on this. I'll use anything that's useful. I
> can't see the virtue in eschewing technology from an arbitrary point or
> various aides-memoires.
>
> I suppose there is a danger of using a rhyming dictionary badly - maybe
> to find a word that rhymes that one wouldn't have thought of using. But
> one can also use it well, to find the right word one would have thought
> of using if one's memory had been better.
>
> Another good use of a rhyming dictionary is to confirm the sneaking
> suspicion that there *isn't* a word that rhymes and does what you want,
> and you're going to have to abandon that route and do a bit of
> unravelling. Saves a lot of time, that.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Peter
>
> http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
>
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