Hey Fred, tastes differ. But I didn't find much to learn in these.
-----Original Message-----
>From: Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Aug 5, 2009 4:25 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 1:33 PM
>Subject: Re: "incapacity"/New Formalism
>
>
>OK, here's the deal. If you're going to write in
>an archaic dialect, let alone in forms mostly
>long out of fashion, you beg comparison with your
>models. The first fails badly measured against
>Marvell, and despite the several centuries since
>the latter seems more distant
>linguistically--what was Marvell's native tongue
>becomes here an affectation meant to create a
>sense of poesy. The others--Wordsworth, anyone?
>Might make decent prose, though, with some revision and a bit more bite.
>
>Best,
>
>Mark
>
>
>Doesn't sound like Marvell to me. Would Marvell ever have an idea or use
>diction like "the sudden failure of the past"?
>
>Re "should be in prose": Wordiness and padding is of course a flaw. But I
>often see this argument applied to lines that are neither, rather
>deliberately rich in detail, lucid, and, horror of horrors, narrative. A
>kind of strained nervous cleverness, constantly trying to invent *some
>meaning or response for what one is reading - this readerly state,
>inevitable when reading Raworth or Prynne or Brian Henry or Laura Moriarty
>or Susan Howe etc. etc., seems to be the *only permissible one to advanced
>opinion.
>
>*That's "the deal."
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