Ah, now that's an intriguing question & leads off in many directions.
Although I take Jeffrey's point, I think that taking up the great
experiments & working them further is in its way still experimental, &
I recall bpNichol's comments on the 3 kinds of poets, those
researchers out at the edge, those who learn from such research &
practice it (on their own terms, & making such experiments actually
rather 'experimental' for themselves, their working), & those who work
in the larger garden of tradition.
Are such works as Paterson, Maximus, Briggflats, the martyrology, to
name just 4 (let alone many others I could point to, including
something like Debbie: An Epic) truly nothing more than borrowings
from those 2 Jeffrey mentioned?
On the other hand, is a poem that teaches us how to read it as we make
our way through it not working a kind of didacticism?
I would certainly agree that the Cantos are full of (a) didacticism.
So, too, for some of those I mentioned above, or, say, Duncan's long
poem (over many books), Passages.
(Of course, I betray my biases, with these titles...).
Doug
On 24-Apr-10, at 8:58 AM, Tim Allen wrote:
> But isn't it the ghost, or trace of the didactic - the didactic as
> hanging construct etc?
>
> Tim A.
>
> On 24 Apr 2010, at 15:02, John Herbert Cunningham wrote:
>
>> A great deal of Lisa Robertson's poetry is built up on the
>> shoulders of
>> Virgil, as she freely admits. 'XEclogue' is Virgil's Eclogue. 'The
>> Weather'
>> is Virgils' Georgic. Both of these are highly didactic forms and,
>> as used
>> by Robertson, remain so to a large extent.
>> John Herbert Cunningham
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Tim Allen
>> Sent: April-24-10 7:30 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: didactic revival
>>
>> Could you expand on that John. I've gone through layers of Lisa
>> Robertson's and pretty sure I went through the didactic layer pretty
>> quickly.
>>
>> Tim A.
>>
>> On 23 Apr 2010, at 22:01, John Herbert Cunningham wrote:
>>
>>> Robertson's poetry is extremely
>>> didactic?
>
Douglas Barbour
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The secret
I was immediately set upon by two or three
critics, who hurled sophistries and
maledictions at me that were astonishing
in their dimness.
Jorge Luis Borges
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