So you do mean a city-dweller.

What postings to this list strike you as nostalgic in this manner?

Should one (do you) read this into any  poem in which a selection of the
events or things in place in a particular rural setting at the poem's
moment are presented as baldly as possible, say Ponge's "Le Pré?"

I once had a professional entomologist as a student in a poetry class. He
wrote a detailed description of the complex insect traffic he had observed
in mid summer an hour before dusk in the vertical foot of space above the
top of the vegetation. His absolute wonder was palpable in the devotedness
of his attention, but in no other way. Was he a rural romantic?

How about a poem or for that matter any verbalization that opines that in
some ways some things were once easier for the poet and probably for
everyone else? In other words, when is it politics and when is it romanticism?

Complex matters.

I'm curious about this because a poet I greatly respect once said to me
after a reading "Now I understand. You're a romantic!" I was taken aback
for a moment, until I realized that he was neither criticising nor
praising. He was clearly delighted, but I have no idea what he meant--I
should have asked at the time. I know it's not what you describe, because I
don't do that. 

Mark


At 03:43 PM 1/20/2001 +1000, komninos zervos wrote:
>At 08:01 PM 1/19/01 -0800, you wrote:
>>Can you describe what you mean by romantic or "a romantic?" The definitions
>>are not universally agreed upon. Among some the terms are merely
>>expletives, like "adventurist" or "naive."
>
>a romantic, as i see it, is a person who refers back to a time or place as
>having been more wholesome or secure than the time and place they are in at
>present.
>a rural romantic, it follows, would express in their poetry the country as
>being a wholesome place, the country people as being wise if not worldly,
>and that our urban ills would be cured if we returned to a rural way of
>living.
>
>
>>
>>Sorry, I have some nasty habits, among them the need for sufficient
>>precision so that I know what I'm supposed to be talking about.
>>
>>Mark
>hope this clears things up from my end.
>
>komninos
>komninos's cyberpoetry site http://student.uq.edu.au/~s271502
>cyberpoet@slv site http://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/cyberpoet/
>komninos zervos, tel. +61 7 5552 8872
>lecturer in cyberStudies,
>school of arts,
>gold coast campus,
>griffith university,
>pmb 50, gold coast mail centre
>queensland, 9726
>australia.
>
>