----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet Jackson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 8:20 PM
Subject: Re: Poems by others: Alan Sondheim, "strange energies"
> On 04/02/2008, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>> It's comforting to adopt a point of view after the disaster, whether
>> social, nuclear, or ecological. A poet can thereby escape all the fear,
>> thirst, hunger, pain, and killing, including his own, while seeming to
>> warn
>> about them. Beneath this poem is a well-worn Romantic conceit: "I shall
>> be
>> one with Nature, stone and tree."
>>
>
> comforting? that's an interesting point of view, I'm not sure about it.
> warning? I don't see a warning in the poem, merely a spacetime snapshot of
> the inevitability of the decay and destruction of all things. The poem
> merely describes, does not comment. Comment is left for the reader.
>
> Personally I enjoyed the surrealistic echoes, the language, of this poem
> but
> did not have any strong reaction to it. It seemed like something I had
> read
> before.
>
> Janet
> --
I sent a poem of mine called "Tipping Point" to the list on 1/26. Same
subject-matter, but not viewed from standpoint of post-apocalyptic peace and
emptiness. Which, by definition, we won't be there to enjoy. Rather,
ecological disaster was reflected in psychological. Not "comforting." -- I
agree that Sondheim's poem has been done before.
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