Whew. Her 'errors' are suggestive.
But I enjoyed Sally's pieces, with their personal touches.
I have not followed Padel that closely, so can't really speak to her
qualifications. I sort of like the idea of her trying to bring science
7 poetry together, but noted one writer responding with a big,
helpless, no.
I read one of the pieces from her new book in the LRB & while it had
some interest as, um, biography, it did not interest me as poetry.
But that's me....
Doug
On 18-May-09, at 11:16 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> Oh boy, Libby Purvis has just chipped in!!!
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article6307735.ece
>
> "In a shockingly nasty and potentially libellous line (if quoted
> accurately) a former postholder James Fenton describes Padel and
> Walsh as "this hypocritical duo [who] have kicked a 79-year-old poet
> in the slats . . . because he stood in the way of Padel's ambitions"."
>
> Oddly enough, that was my own first response when I originally read
> Fenton's article:
>
> http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23692488-details/The+hounding+of+a+Nobel+poet+has+shamed+Oxford/article.do
>
> How the hell did this get past the London Evening Standard Lawyers?
> (And you can bet it was pre-vetted for libel.)
>
> Then I reread what Puris said, and did a double-take on "(if quoted
> accurately)" -- the article was *written by Fenton (not just "a
> former postholder" but a respected foreign correpsondent, as a poet
> a name in the frame to succeed Larkin and, to put it another way, a
> former Professor of Poetry at Oxford.)
>
> If Purvis has a case, why does she feel she has to imply that the
> Standard article was "quoting" Fenton rather than written by him?
> (And it's not the only case in this Purvis piece where this kind of
> elide takes place.)
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
and this is 'life' and we owe at least this much
contemplation to our western fact: to Rise,
Decline, Fall, to futility and larks,
to the bright crustaceans of the oversky.
Phyllis Webb
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