Thanks, Ric, for a reading treport at once terse, casual, & elegant. It
left me wanting to read the work of both poets--wanting to meet them,too, &
wishing I'd been there, despite the initial confusion (during many years of
curating readings, finding that the key to the space is missing has been
one of the many unpleasant surprises). Mention of a "warm Durham evening"
causes me to ask : is there a drought in Britain? We seldom get news from
Britain here. But last night, watching PMs' Question Time on C-Span, I
heard Blair en passant refer to the deputy PM's "rainmaking duties".
Also, who won the Cup Final? Also, since my computer was in the shop during
the Cambridge Poetry Conference, and when it came back, my server had lost
all my in-mail, I heard no reports of that event. Is there any digest I can
be sent?
Lastly, a quick note to Keston Sutherland, my question was genuine, to wit,
genuinely questionable ("would one in speaking of a raworth poem be more
likely to refer to its form more often than in speaking of a prynne" or
words meant to be to that effect), and your reply made me realize that, No,
there is no transcendence possible, there is no way of "lifting" to some
desiderated "overarching" "level" our discussions of poetry. A sees more
formal cues in P, B sees more in R : we can only speak, listen, &
reflect--which activities are not nothing--but cannot, but such process,
arrive at values that permit ranking or excuse the de gustibus partiality
of editors and anthologists.
Yours on Bank Holiday (Memorial Day here, where nobody I quizzed last year
knew what was being memorialized, beyond a vague "oh its for the Veterans".
. . And had no further response to mine, "But they already have a day" (Nov
11, Armistice Day to you). (My father, 3 years entrenched in WW 1, would
never pass the Cenotaph w/o saluting.) Turns out it's the day on which the
fallen of the Civil War are to be remembered. (Excuse that "fallen"--I mean
the slaughtered and the maimed). David B.
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