David’s thoughts emerge ahead of mine. But I wonder about calling it
Spenser’s amazing facility: these contradictions write Spenser as much as
he writes them. What’s amazing for me is not a claim that poetry makes up
for poverty—the owner of Kilcolman must have had some complex feelings
about the relation between poetry and poverty--but that this speaker, and
this poet, seems so keenly aware of the exact measure of his
powerlessness (“in lieu of”) as well as his power, his song. I can’t imagine
one without the other. Amoretti 75 depicts, literally sets in motion, the
very problem we’re discussing—a speaker arguing for an aesthetic
Neoplatonism, or only a poem, against a lady (or ladies), a culture, a
natural order that finds his project vain. Likewise, the crucial word in the
tornata, I think, is “recompense,” which reiterates the problems of deferral
all over again. The poem is not less moving for all of this—it’s more so.
---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 01:01:14 -0500
>From: Kenneth Gross <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: xxv
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>In re recent thoughts, especially David Miller's: I like to think that
>Spenser loved both his wife and his poetry, his poetic gifts, enough not
>to want to deny to the former any form the latter might lend her. A poem
>"made in lieu of ornaments," is a poem made in lieu of many worlds,
many
>_kosmoi_. He pretends that he's apologizing for his poverty by giving her
>ONLY a poem, but the boy knew better than that.
>
>Ken Gross
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