From bentley at midcoast.com  Wed Dec  1 06:44:58 2004
From: bentley at midcoast.com (Bentley)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 06:44:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Top Ten Most Beautiful Words
References: <1d7.311daf70.2ede80bb@aol.com><3D5D10D4-434F-11D9-9150-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>
	<6.0.2.0.2.20041130221529.03c32cc0@mail.ilstu.edu>
Message-ID: <008301c4d79b$2ff1e060$20662745@S0028976576>

As Americans, we are a bit uninventive about such a name.  We simply call it 
a "bachelorette" party.  I think this is partly because it is a fairly new 
tradition here.  "Hen Night" is a much more fun term.

Bentley
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Morgan" <wwmorgan at ilstu.edu>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 11:19 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Top Ten Most Beautiful Words


> At 10:12 PM 11/30/2004, you wrote:
>
>>Now if only I knew what a hen night was my day would be complete.
>>
>>mIEKAL
>
> Hen night is the female equivalent of Stag night in British pre-wedding 
> customs: the bride and her friends get together to do whatever they do. 
> Is there an American equivalent?  For the groom in America, there's the 
> Bachelor Party which more or less equals the Stag night of British 
> practice, but what is the name, if any, of the female gathering among us 
> in America?
>
>                                                         Bill Morgan, just 
> back from his older son's Bachelor Party
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec  1 08:05:26 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:05:26 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] TOP 10 WORDS OF 2004 
In-Reply-To: <AE600AD2-4350-11D9-9150-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>
References: <006101c4d618$31a877e0$76b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41AD7B46.2112.127C45@localhost>

On 30 Nov 2004 at 22:22, mIEKAL aND wrote:
> TOP 10 WORDS OF 2004
> 1. blog
> 2. incumbent
> 3. electoral
> 4. insurgent
> 5. hurricane
> 6. cicada
> 7. peloton
> 8. partisan
> 9. sovereignty
> 10. defenestration

At Seventeen

Every single male cicada
	Woos the female ear --
But even big boys haven't made a
Noise enough that "See you later!"
	Isn't what they hear
As yet another female bade her
Love-sick-voiced cicada satyr
	Dry the starting tear.

Off he skulks to sulk among a
	Crowd of other males,
Complaining how he thought he'd sung a
Song to make her think he'd hung a
	Moon or  two -- but frails
Expect these days a guy has strung a
String of stars and smoothly swung a
	White tie with his tails.

Tens of thousands drone a drone a
	Lone guy can't get near --
A deep, intense, sustaining moan, a
Strong erotic undertone a
	Girl can't help but hear;
And when at last the girls have flown a
Round then there's a wobbly groan a
	Lust that's all too clear.

Who will be the lucky winner
	She'll take in her arms?
Though every guy's an eager grinner,
Every guy's a green beginner,
	New to love's alarms;
Every guy's a willing sinner
Blind to taller, blonder, thinner
	Female bugs' charms.

Choice is made: the tree of guys is
	Womanless once more.
Scorned, the multitude reprises 
Love's old song whose chorus rises,
	Louder than before;
Another girl! More wild surmises
There among them while she sizes
	Up how they implore.

And so it goes, the women choosing
	Out of many nopes
A yep that seems at least amusing;
Leaving those refused enthusing
	Over foolish hopes --
Where cruising, boozing, using, bruising 
Leads to losing love's confusing
	Game to nicer dopes. 

And so we leave that male tree humming
	Piled with pulsing peers
Who sit there thumbing on the plumbing
Hoping their refrain's becoming
	Music of the spheres
So they needn't keep on thrumming --
Or wait another spirit-numbing
	Seventeen more years.	





From tad at opus40.org  Wed Dec  1 08:56:19 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 08:56:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kooser
References: <54.379f0b51.2ecd6bf5@cs.com><00a601c4cd60$a1ad2510$77b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><001001c4cd7c$2ba292d0$6601a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<001901c4d740$74bda180$9ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <007a01c4d7ad$8a662300$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>

I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bob Grumman 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 7:55 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser


  Almost two weeks ago, the Mole wrote:

  "Obviously, there's something wrong with me, if even Grumman, who believes that all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students, and all Iowa Plainlay poems are traditional poems, doesn't see a twist of irony in this. Also, in a different sense, the concept ot Kooser as the ultimate middle America Traditionalist...oh, well." 

  I see I never replied to this post--probably because it's insane.  I, of course, do not believe all workshop poets are
  traditionalists.  I've been a workshop poet myself.  I define a certain kind of poem as an Iowa Plaintext Poem (or some such term).  All such poems are traditionalist by definition.  Not all poems by Iowa poets are Iowa Plaintext Poems, nor all poems by workshop poets, nor all poems by people associated with Iowa University or Iowa State (whichever pioneered in the teaching of what I now call Iowa Plaintext Poems, if I call them that).

  Kooser's poetry seems extremely conventional to me.  I'll have to read it again to see if it's sometimes or mostly what I'd call Iowa Plaintext Poetry.  I probably won't because I don't care.

  --Bob G.
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Bob Grumman 
      To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
      Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:20 AM
      Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser



      >>From the Kooser article. Does anyone else find this as funny as I do?
      >
      >
      >His teaching career resumed at the University of Nebraska in the 1970s, when he taught creative writing to nontraditional students

      What's funny (to me, at any rate) is the term, "nontraditional students."  I visualize people in clown-suits.  Or people being students in some way other than listening to lectures, reading and taking notes.  Can't say I can think offhand of a better term to use, though.  I'd probably say, "older students than the ones just out of high."

      --Bob


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From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec  1 09:54:35 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:54:35 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Top Ten Most Beautiful Words
In-Reply-To: <008301c4d79b$2ff1e060$20662745@S0028976576>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKEIBJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

 
{    As Americans, we are a bit uninventive about such a name.  We simply call it 
{    a "bachelorette" party.  I think this is partly because it is a fairly new 
{    tradition here.  "Hen Night" is a much more fun term.
{    
{    Bentley

Maybe it's me, but I've never heard "bachelorette party" before, and yet
I've heard "hen party" all my life, which is already so long you'd be
both amazed and appalled.

Hal     "The thing to remember is that each time
           of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas
           when you're dead it's hard to find the
           light switch."
                     --Woody Allen

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Wed Dec  1 10:07:02 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:07:02 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <20041201150702.81433.qmail@web52609.mail.yahoo.com>

Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
beautiful phrase in the English language?

Jeff

=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec  1 10:21:02 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:21:02 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <20041201150702.81433.qmail@web52609.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEIDJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

   
{    Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
{    beautiful phrase in the English language?
{    
{    Jeff

Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."

Hal                              Today's Special
                                        G(e)nome
                http://www.xpressed.org/fall03/genome.pdf
Halvard Johnson       
halvard at earthlink.net
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/
   



From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec  1 10:33:01 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:33:01 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <20041201150702.81433.qmail@web52609.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <41AD9DDD.28030.99A908@localhost>

I think it was Franklin P Adams, or Wilson Mizner, or one of that 
crowd.
M


On 1 Dec 2004 at 7:07, Jeff Newberry wrote:

> Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
> beautiful phrase in the English language?
> 
> Jeff
> 
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
> 
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
> http://mail.yahoo.com 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 





From memexikon at mwt.net  Wed Dec  1 10:33:29 2004
From: memexikon at mwt.net (mIEKAL aND)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:33:29 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEIDJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <59E64442-43AE-11D9-9150-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>

[My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]


Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm

The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is almost 
over.

Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example - 
organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.

More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
have been sent in by email and letter.

German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you 
just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".

"Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a 
railway junction.

And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used to 
take toothbrush and shampoo.

Germany's most beautiful word?
Lebenslust - zest for life
Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
Teufelsbraten - rascal
Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
Glueck - happiness
Liebe - love
Mitgefuehl - compassion
Pusteblume - dandelion
Sehnsucht - longing
Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
Source: Deutscher Sprachrat

The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in 
Mauritius as first prize.

The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors, 
musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's 
most eloquent football manager.

The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, with 
renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few 
years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.

These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.

So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved 
"Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?

Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to make 
its decision by October.



From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec  1 10:35:30 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:35:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEIDJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
References: <20041201150702.81433.qmail@web52609.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <41AD9E72.2730.9BEE9C@localhost>

> {    Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
> {    beautiful phrase in the English language?
> {    Jeff
> 
On 1 Dec 2004 at 10:21, Halvard Johnson wrote:
> Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
> phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."

the murmur of innumerable mucous membranes






From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec  1 10:42:47 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:42:47 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <59E64442-43AE-11D9-9150-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEIDJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
always.

Hal
  
{    [My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]
{    
{    
{    Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
{    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm
{    
{    The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is almost 
{    over.
{    
{    Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example - 
{    organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.
{    
{    More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
{    have been sent in by email and letter.
{    
{    German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you 
{    just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".
{    
{    "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a 
{    railway junction.
{    
{    And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used to 
{    take toothbrush and shampoo.
{    
{    Germany's most beautiful word?
{    Lebenslust - zest for life
{    Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
{    Teufelsbraten - rascal
{    Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
{    Glueck - happiness
{    Liebe - love
{    Mitgefuehl - compassion
{    Pusteblume - dandelion
{    Sehnsucht - longing
{    Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
{    Source: Deutscher Sprachrat
{    
{    The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in 
{    Mauritius as first prize.
{    
{    The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors, 
{    musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's 
{    most eloquent football manager.
{    
{    The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, with 
{    renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few 
{    years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.
{    
{    These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.
{    
{    So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved 
{    "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?
{    
{    Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to make 
{    its decision by October.
{    
{    _______________________________________________
{    New-Poetry mailing list
{    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
{    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
{    



From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec  1 10:43:52 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:43:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <41AD9E72.2730.9BEE9C@localhost>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEIEJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


{    On 1 Dec 2004 at 10:21, Halvard Johnson wrote:
{    > Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
{    > phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."
{    
{    the murmur of innumerable mucous membranes

Nice flow.

Hal



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec  1 11:13:48 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 11:13:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kooser
References: <54.379f0b51.2ecd6bf5@cs.com><00a601c4cd60$a1ad2510$77b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><001001c4cd7c$2ba292d0$6601a8c0@MoleHQ><001901c4d740$74bda180$9ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<007a01c4d7ad$8a662300$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <019301c4d7c0$be7b2290$4bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....

Well, Mole, can you tell me what's not insane about saying that I believe all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students after my telling you more than three or four times that lots of people have attended poetry workshops who are not traditionalists as poets--or in other respects?

(Note: I value you as a poster despite the fact that you sometimes post things that seem insane to me.  I'm sure you know that, but Marcus may not.)

--Bob G.
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Bob Grumman 
    To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
    Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 7:55 PM
    Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser


    Almost two weeks ago, the Mole wrote:

    "Obviously, there's something wrong with me, if even Grumman, who believes that all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students, and all Iowa Plainlay poems are traditional poems, doesn't see a twist of irony in this. Also, in a different sense, the concept ot Kooser as the ultimate middle America Traditionalist...oh, well." 

    I see I never replied to this post--probably because it's insane.  I, of course, do not believe all workshop poets are
    traditionalists.  I've been a workshop poet myself.  I define a certain kind of poem as an Iowa Plaintext Poem (or some such term).  All such poems are traditionalist by definition.  Not all poems by Iowa poets are Iowa Plaintext Poems, nor all poems by workshop poets, nor all poems by people associated with Iowa University or Iowa State (whichever pioneered in the teaching of what I now call Iowa Plaintext Poems, if I call them that).

    Kooser's poetry seems extremely conventional to me.  I'll have to read it again to see if it's sometimes or mostly what I'd call Iowa Plaintext Poetry.  I probably won't because I don't care.

    --Bob G.
        ----- Original Message ----- 
        From: Bob Grumman 
        To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
        Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:20 AM
        Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser



        >>From the Kooser article. Does anyone else find this as funny as I do?
        >
        >
        >His teaching career resumed at the University of Nebraska in the 1970s, when he taught creative writing to nontraditional students

        What's funny (to me, at any rate) is the term, "nontraditional students."  I visualize people in clown-suits.  Or people being students in some way other than listening to lectures, reading and taking notes.  Can't say I can think offhand of a better term to use, though.  I'd probably say, "older students than the ones just out of high."

        --Bob


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From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec  1 11:38:04 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 11:38:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kooser
In-Reply-To: <019301c4d7c0$be7b2290$4bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41ADAD1C.1862.D536AA@localhost>

> I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
> 
On 1 Dec 2004 at 11:13, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Well, Mole, can you tell me what's not insane about saying that I
> believe all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students
> after my telling you more than three or four times that lots of people
> have attended poetry workshops who are not traditionalists as
> poets -- or in other respects?
> (Note: I value you as a poster despite the fact that you sometimes
> post things that seem insane to me. I'm sure you know that, but Marcus
> may not.)

How did I get brought into this? Tad's scansion may be rough, but 
I've never even intimated that he's insane.

Marcus






From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Wed Dec  1 13:06:25 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 19:06:25 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Conduit
References: <62.4926f4f4.2ede52cd@aol.com>
Message-ID: <001501c4d7d0$798c3e20$128d3052@yourpk9x5fuc06>

I have thus posted this pOm also onto my Blog with my remerciements to the Author,

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 11:48 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Conduit


  In a message dated 11/30/2004 3:36:33 PM Eastern Standard Time, anny.ballardini at tin.it writes:
    Croce is a name (there is this Benedetto Croce, a much criticized critic
  He's the ostensible subject, shall we say.
  Finnegan


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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec  1 13:22:03 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 13:22:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kooser
References: <41ADAD1C.1862.D536AA@localhost>
Message-ID: <01bb01c4d7d2$a94ce770$4bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
>>
> On 1 Dec 2004 at 11:13, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Well, Mole, can you tell me what's not insane about saying that I
>> believe all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students
>> after my telling you more than three or four times that lots of people
>> have attended poetry workshops who are not traditionalists as
>> poets -- or in other respects?
>> (Note: I value you as a poster despite the fact that you sometimes
>> post things that seem insane to me. I'm sure you know that, but Marcus
>> may not.)
>
> How did I get brought into this? Tad's scansion may be rough, but
> I've never even intimated that he's insane.
>
> Marcus

I'm sure the Mole knows that I value him as a poster, but you may not know 
that. (Because you have suggested I do little but insult others.)

Bob G. 




From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec  1 13:43:52 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 13:43:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kooser
In-Reply-To: <01bb01c4d7d2$a94ce770$4bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41ADCA98.23557.14863E0@localhost>

Tad Richards wrote:
> >> I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
> >>
> > On 1 Dec 2004 at 11:13, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> Well, Mole, can you tell me what's not insane about saying that I
> >> believe all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students
> >> after my telling you more than three or four times that lots of
> >> people have attended poetry workshops who are not traditionalists
> >> as poets -- or in other respects? (Note: I value you as a poster
> >> despite the fact that you sometimes post things that seem insane to
> >> me. I'm sure you know that, but Marcus may not.)
> >
Marcus Bales wrote:
> > How did I get brought into this? Tad's scansion may be rough, but
> > I've never even intimated that he's insane.

On 1 Dec 2004 at 13:22, Bob Grumman wrote:
> I'm sure the Mole knows that I value him as a poster, but you may not
> know that. (Because you have suggested I do little but insult others.)

Sloppy thinking, again, Bob: you can value him as a poster for 
reasons that have nothing to do with whether you do little but insult 
others. You may value him as a poster you can insult with impunity, 
for example. 

My objection to your mode of discussion is not that you simply and 
only insult people -- it's that you employ ad hominem attacks 
whenever you find yourself disagreed-with strongly and well. You seem 
to think that name-calling is a valid argument, and you cannot seem 
to separate your views from your self, so that when your views are 
criticised you take that as a name-calling attack on you that 
justifies your name-calling attacks in response. That's the problem, 
not that you simply mindlessly initiate name-calling.

Marcus





From tad at opus40.org  Wed Dec  1 15:50:42 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 15:50:42 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEIDJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <013001c4d7e7$6e7009b0$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>

Isn't cloudcuckooland from someone or other's translation of Aristophanes?

Tad


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 10:42 AM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word


>
> Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
> for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
> always.
>
> Hal
>
> {    [My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]
> {
> {
> {    Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
> {    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm
> {
> {    The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is 
> almost
> {    over.
> {
> {    Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example -
> {    organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.
> {
> {    More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous,
> {    have been sent in by email and letter.
> {
> {    German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you
> {    just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".
> {
> {    "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a
> {    railway junction.
> {
> {    And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used 
> to
> {    take toothbrush and shampoo.
> {
> {    Germany's most beautiful word?
> {    Lebenslust - zest for life
> {    Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
> {    Teufelsbraten - rascal
> {    Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
> {    Glueck - happiness
> {    Liebe - love
> {    Mitgefuehl - compassion
> {    Pusteblume - dandelion
> {    Sehnsucht - longing
> {    Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
> {    Source: Deutscher Sprachrat
> {
> {    The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in
> {    Mauritius as first prize.
> {
> {    The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors,
> {    musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's
> {    most eloquent football manager.
> {
> {    The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, 
> with
> {    renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few
> {    years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.
> {
> {    These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.
> {
> {    So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved
> {    "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?
> {
> {    Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to 
> make
> {    its decision by October.
> {
> {    _______________________________________________
> {    New-Poetry mailing list
> {    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> {    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> {
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From tad at opus40.org  Wed Dec  1 15:52:08 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 15:52:08 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kooser
References: <41ADAD1C.1862.D536AA@localhost>
Message-ID: <014f01c4d7e7$a1ca1850$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>

Wait a second! I think I'd prefer insane to rough scansion,


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser


>> I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
>>
> On 1 Dec 2004 at 11:13, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Well, Mole, can you tell me what's not insane about saying that I
>> believe all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students
>> after my telling you more than three or four times that lots of people
>> have attended poetry workshops who are not traditionalists as
>> poets -- or in other respects?
>> (Note: I value you as a poster despite the fact that you sometimes
>> post things that seem insane to me. I'm sure you know that, but Marcus
>> may not.)
>
> How did I get brought into this? Tad's scansion may be rough, but
> I've never even intimated that he's insane.
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk  Wed Dec  1 16:04:16 2004
From: hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk (gbemi tijani-mst)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 21:04:16 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6,
	Issue 2-most beautiful word post-back fr mst
In-Reply-To: <200412011546.iB1FkmAn026240@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <20041201210416.52596.qmail@web26008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

...Buoyed by your maintaining the fervency of poetic thinking and reflections into past versification by poets & artists too..Admittedly one word doesn't make a phrase let alone an epigram-or even a Japanese haiku..Even then because hardly can any writer or poet or students of writing generally ignore beautiful entities,answers,solutions,feedback,people ,places and related mental states...i reecho Irving Stone ,the wellknown autobiographer of Sigmund Freud & Charles Darwin saying in PASSIONS OF THE MIND -a psychoanalytic biographical truthful finess  of Freud 's career at Viena , Austria-that YES is  the most beautiful word in any language....Isn't this literarily correct -if not philosophically or metaphorically beautiful depending on the individual desideratum?
gbemi tijani mst

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Kooser (The Old Mole)
2. RE: Top Ten Most Beautiful Words (Halvard Johnson)
3. Most Beautiful Word (Jeff Newberry)
4. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Halvard Johnson)
5. Re: Most Beautiful Word (Marcus Bales)
6. Re: Most Beautiful Word (mIEKAL aND)
7. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Marcus Bales)
8. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Halvard Johnson)
9. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Halvard Johnson)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 08:56:19 -0500
From: "The Old Mole" 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <007a01c4d7ad$8a662300$6701a8c0 at MoleHQ>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Bob Grumman 
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views 
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser


Almost two weeks ago, the Mole wrote:

"Obviously, there's something wrong with me, if even Grumman, who believes that all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students, and all Iowa Plainlay poems are traditional poems, doesn't see a twist of irony in this. Also, in a different sense, the concept ot Kooser as the ultimate middle America Traditionalist...oh, well." 

I see I never replied to this post--probably because it's insane. I, of course, do not believe all workshop poets are
traditionalists. I've been a workshop poet myself. I define a certain kind of poem as an Iowa Plaintext Poem (or some such term). All such poems are traditionalist by definition. Not all poems by Iowa poets are Iowa Plaintext Poems, nor all poems by workshop poets, nor all poems by people associated with Iowa University or Iowa State (whichever pioneered in the teaching of what I now call Iowa Plaintext Poems, if I call them that).

Kooser's poetry seems extremely conventional to me. I'll have to read it again to see if it's sometimes or mostly what I'd call Iowa Plaintext Poetry. I probably won't because I don't care.

--Bob G.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Bob Grumman 
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views 
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:20 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser



>>From the Kooser article. Does anyone else find this as funny as I do?
>
>
>His teaching career resumed at the University of Nebraska in the 1970s, when he taught creative writing to nontraditional students

What's funny (to me, at any rate) is the term, "nontraditional students." I visualize people in clown-suits. Or people being students in some way other than listening to lectures, reading and taking notes. Can't say I can think offhand of a better term to use, though. I'd probably say, "older students than the ones just out of high."

--Bob


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------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:54:35 -0500
From: "Halvard Johnson" 
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Top Ten Most Beautiful Words
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


{ As Americans, we are a bit uninventive about such a name. We simply call it 
{ a "bachelorette" party. I think this is partly because it is a fairly new 
{ tradition here. "Hen Night" is a much more fun term.
{ 
{ Bentley

Maybe it's me, but I've never heard "bachelorette party" before, and yet
I've heard "hen party" all my life, which is already so long you'd be
both amazed and appalled.

Hal "The thing to remember is that each time
of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas
when you're dead it's hard to find the
light switch."
--Woody Allen

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:07:02 -0800 (PST)
From: Jeff Newberry 
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
To: Poetry News and Reviews 
Message-ID: <20041201150702.81433.qmail at web52609.mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
beautiful phrase in the English language?

Jeff

=====
Jeff Newberry

"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:21:02 -0500
From: "Halvard Johnson" 
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


{ Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
{ beautiful phrase in the English language?
{ 
{ Jeff

Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."

Hal Today's Special
G(e)nome
http://www.xpressed.org/fall03/genome.pdf
Halvard Johnson 
halvard at earthlink.net
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/




------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:33:01 -0500
From: "Marcus Bales" 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <41AD9DDD.28030.99A908 at localhost>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

I think it was Franklin P Adams, or Wilson Mizner, or one of that 
crowd.
M


On 1 Dec 2004 at 7:07, Jeff Newberry wrote:

> Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
> beautiful phrase in the English language?
> 
> Jeff
> 
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
> 
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
> http://mail.yahoo.com 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 





------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:33:29 -0600
From: mIEKAL aND 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <59E64442-43AE-11D9-9150-0003935A5BDA at mwt.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

[My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]


Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm

The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is almost 
over.

Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example - 
organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.

More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
have been sent in by email and letter.

German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you 
just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".

"Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a 
railway junction.

And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used to 
take toothbrush and shampoo.

Germany's most beautiful word?
Lebenslust - zest for life
Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
Teufelsbraten - rascal
Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
Glueck - happiness
Liebe - love
Mitgefuehl - compassion
Pusteblume - dandelion
Sehnsucht - longing
Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
Source: Deutscher Sprachrat

The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in 
Mauritius as first prize.

The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors, 
musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's 
most eloquent football manager.

The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, with 
renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few 
years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.

These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.

So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved 
"Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?

Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to make 
its decision by October.



------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:35:30 -0500
From: "Marcus Bales" 
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <41AD9E72.2730.9BEE9C at localhost>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

> { Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
> { beautiful phrase in the English language?
> { Jeff
> 
On 1 Dec 2004 at 10:21, Halvard Johnson wrote:
> Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
> phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."

the murmur of innumerable mucous membranes






------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:42:47 -0500
From: "Halvard Johnson" 
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
always.

Hal

{ [My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]
{ 
{ 
{ Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
{ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm
{ 
{ The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is almost 
{ over.
{ 
{ Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example - 
{ organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.
{ 
{ More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
{ have been sent in by email and letter.
{ 
{ German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you 
{ just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".
{ 
{ "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a 
{ railway junction.
{ 
{ And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used to 
{ take toothbrush and shampoo.
{ 
{ Germany's most beautiful word?
{ Lebenslust - zest for life
{ Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
{ Teufelsbraten - rascal
{ Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
{ Glueck - happiness
{ Liebe - love
{ Mitgefuehl - compassion
{ Pusteblume - dandelion
{ Sehnsucht - longing
{ Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
{ Source: Deutscher Sprachrat
{ 
{ The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in 
{ Mauritius as first prize.
{ 
{ The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors, 
{ musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's 
{ most eloquent football manager.
{ 
{ The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, with 
{ renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few 
{ years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.
{ 
{ These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.
{ 
{ So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved 
{ "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?
{ 
{ Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to make 
{ its decision by October.
{ 
{ _______________________________________________
{ New-Poetry mailing list
{ New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
{ http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
{ 



------------------------------

Message: 9
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:43:52 -0500
From: "Halvard Johnson" 
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &"

Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


{ On 1 Dec 2004 at 10:21, Halvard Johnson wrote:
{ > Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
{ > phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."
{ 
{ the murmur of innumerable mucous membranes

Nice flow.

Hal



------------------------------

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New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


End of New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6, Issue 2
****************************************

		
---------------------------------
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec  1 16:03:30 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 16:03:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <013001c4d7e7$6e7009b0$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEJEJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


I think S. J. Perelman translated Ari Stophanes. Just prove me
wrong. Go ahead.

Anyway, my favorite German word is "Waldeinsamkeit" -- the feeling
of being alone in the woods. 

Hal
   
{    Isn't cloudcuckooland from someone or other's translation of Aristophanes?
{    
{    Tad
{    
{    
{    ----- Original Message ----- 
{    From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
{    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
{    <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
{    Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 10:42 AM
{    Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
{    
{    
{    >
{    > Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
{    > for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
{    > always.
{    >
{    > Hal
{    >
{    > {    [My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]
{    > {
{    > {
{    > {    Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
{    > {    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm
{    > {
{    > {    The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is 
{    > almost
{    > {    over.
{    > {
{    > {    Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example -
{    > {    organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.
{    > {
{    > {    More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous,
{    > {    have been sent in by email and letter.
{    > {
{    > {    German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you
{    > {    just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".
{    > {
{    > {    "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a
{    > {    railway junction.
{    > {
{    > {    And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used 
{    > to
{    > {    take toothbrush and shampoo.
{    > {
{    > {    Germany's most beautiful word?
{    > {    Lebenslust - zest for life
{    > {    Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
{    > {    Teufelsbraten - rascal
{    > {    Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
{    > {    Glueck - happiness
{    > {    Liebe - love
{    > {    Mitgefuehl - compassion
{    > {    Pusteblume - dandelion
{    > {    Sehnsucht - longing
{    > {    Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
{    > {    Source: Deutscher Sprachrat
{    > {
{    > {    The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in
{    > {    Mauritius as first prize.
{    > {
{    > {    The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors,
{    > {    musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's
{    > {    most eloquent football manager.
{    > {
{    > {    The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, 
{    > with
{    > {    renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few
{    > {    years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.
{    > {
{    > {    These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.
{    > {
{    > {    So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved
{    > {    "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?
{    > {
{    > {    Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to 
{    > make
{    > {    its decision by October.
{    > {
{    > {    _______________________________________________
{    > {    New-Poetry mailing list
{    > {    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
{    > {    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
{    > {
{    >
{    > _______________________________________________
{    > New-Poetry mailing list
{    > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
{    > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
{    >
{    > 
{    
{    
{    _______________________________________________
{    New-Poetry mailing list
{    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
{    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From tad at opus40.org  Wed Dec  1 16:30:11 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 16:30:11 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEJEJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <002301c4d7ec$f248d690$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>

that was Ari Stop Hanes - a telegram from Jackie advising her husband on 
what underwear to buy.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 4:03 PM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word


>
> I think S. J. Perelman translated Ari Stophanes. Just prove me
> wrong. Go ahead.
>
> Anyway, my favorite German word is "Waldeinsamkeit" -- the feeling
> of being alone in the woods.
>
> Hal
>
> {    Isn't cloudcuckooland from someone or other's translation of 
> Aristophanes?
> {
> {    Tad
> {
> {
> {    ----- Original Message ----- 
> {    From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
> {    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
> {    <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> {    Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 10:42 AM
> {    Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
> {
> {
> {    >
> {    > Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
> {    > for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
> {    > always.
> {    >
> {    > Hal
> {    >
> {    > {    [My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]
> {    > {
> {    > {
> {    > {    Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
> {    > {    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm
> {    > {
> {    > {    The search for the most beautiful word in the German language 
> is
> {    > almost
> {    > {    over.
> {    > {
> {    > {    Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning 
> example -
> {    > {    organised by the German language council - have been flooding 
> in.
> {    > {
> {    > {    More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the 
> ridiculous,
> {    > {    have been sent in by email and letter.
> {    > {
> {    > {    German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling 
> melody you
> {    > {    just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally 
> "earworm".
> {    > {
> {    > {    "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other 
> words, a
> {    > {    railway junction.
> {    > {
> {    > {    And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag 
> used
> {    > to
> {    > {    take toothbrush and shampoo.
> {    > {
> {    > {    Germany's most beautiful word?
> {    > {    Lebenslust - zest for life
> {    > {    Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
> {    > {    Teufelsbraten - rascal
> {    > {    Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
> {    > {    Glueck - happiness
> {    > {    Liebe - love
> {    > {    Mitgefuehl - compassion
> {    > {    Pusteblume - dandelion
> {    > {    Sehnsucht - longing
> {    > {    Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
> {    > {    Source: Deutscher Sprachrat
> {    > {
> {    > {    The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week 
> holiday in
> {    > {    Mauritius as first prize.
> {    > {
> {    > {    The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors,
> {    > {    musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as 
> Germany's
> {    > {    most eloquent football manager.
> {    > {
> {    > {    The competition comes at an interesting time for German 
> scholars,
> {    > with
> {    > {    renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced 
> a few
> {    > {    years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.
> {    > {
> {    > {    These are widely detested and ignored by the leading 
> newspapers.
> {    > {
> {    > {    So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more 
> involved
> {    > {    "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?
> {    > {
> {    > {    Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected 
> to
> {    > make
> {    > {    its decision by October.
> {    > {
> {    > {    _______________________________________________
> {    > {    New-Poetry mailing list
> {    > {    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> {    > {    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> {    > {
> {    >
> {    > _______________________________________________
> {    > New-Poetry mailing list
> {    > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> {    > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> {    >
> {    >
> {
> {
> {    _______________________________________________
> {    New-Poetry mailing list
> {    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> {    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From kpaul at mallasch.com  Wed Dec  1 19:59:58 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 19:59:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: MUG chat 12/4/4 8pmest - was Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser
In-Reply-To: <01bb01c4d7d2$a94ce770$4bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <41ADAD1C.1862.D536AA@localhost>
	<01bb01c4d7d2$a94ce770$4bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <20041201195609.N5931@kpaul.spinweb.net>

ok, boys, you and the rest of the new-poetry gang are cordially invited to 
the first official MUG chat night to slug it out or pick brains about 
words. ;)

instructions and linkage here:

http://www.mallasch.com/mug/diary/diary_entry.php?diary=694

the server you want to connect to is irc.slashnet.org (6667)

the channel name is #muground

this saturday, 12/4/4 at 8p.m. EST

thanks!

-kpaul
mallasch.com

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:

>>> I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
>>> 
>> On 1 Dec 2004 at 11:13, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> Well, Mole, can you tell me what's not insane about saying that I
>>> believe all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students
>>> after my telling you more than three or four times that lots of people
>>> have attended poetry workshops who are not traditionalists as
>>> poets -- or in other respects?
>>> (Note: I value you as a poster despite the fact that you sometimes
>>> post things that seem insane to me. I'm sure you know that, but Marcus
>>> may not.)
>> 
>> How did I get brought into this? Tad's scansion may be rough, but
>> I've never even intimated that he's insane.
>> 
>> Marcus
>
> I'm sure the Mole knows that I value him as a poster, but you may not know 
> that. (Because you have suggested I do little but insult others.)
>
> Bob G. 
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From Thom424 at aol.com  Wed Dec  1 21:25:36 2004
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 21:25:36 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sylvia Plath's Daughter Warns English Professors
Message-ID: <fc.7874ab7.2edfd720@aol.com>



      http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&e=15&
u=/nm/people_plath_dc





thom tammaro
moorhead, mn
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec  1 22:15:21 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:15:21 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <1f0.3013ec8d.2edfe2c9@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/1/2004 9:24:30 AM Central Standard Time, 
halvard at earthlink.net writes: 
> 
> {    Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
> {    beautiful phrase in the English language?
> {    
> {    Jeff
> 
> Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
> phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."
> 
> Hal   
I believe it was Swinburne who argued for "syphilis" as the most beautiful 
word in the language.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec  1 22:16:23 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:16:23 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <b9.4c1b4c76.2edfe307@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/1/2004 9:47:29 AM Central Standard Time, 
halvard at earthlink.net writes: 
> 
> Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
> for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
> always.
> 
> Hal
This derives from the medieval "land of cockaigne," I believe.
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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Wed Dec  1 22:56:03 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 03:56:03 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
References: <b9.4c1b4c76.2edfe307@cs.com>
Message-ID: <004301c4d822$d97c34a0$ec9c9951@Robin>

Cloudcuckooland

From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com

<<
This derives from the medieval "land of cockaigne," I believe.
>>

I think it's ultimately from Aristophanes' _The Birds_, a derogatory term
for the wilder flights of (originally) Athenian philosophy.

Or _The Birds_ crossed with _The Clouds_?

Cockaigne featured flying pies -- but meat pies rather than magpies.

            <g>

Robin

Just checked this -- quoth the OED2(3):

<<
CLOUD-CUCKOO-LAND

In translations of Aristophanes' word (see above).   A fanciful or ideal
realm or domain. Also in various allusive phrases.

   1824 H. F. Cary tr. Aristophanes' Birds ii. i. 76 What shall our city's
name be? ... Cuckoocloudland. Will that do?  1874 B. H. Kennedy tr. Ibid.,
Cloudcuckoo-borough.  1899 R. Whiteing No. 5 John St. xxxi. 319 All his
thinking processes fade off into the logic of Cloud Cuckoo Land.
>>






From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec  1 22:56:58 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:56:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <b9.4c1b4c76.2edfe307@cs.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEMEKCJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Actually, according to Brewer's, Tad was right to lay it
on Aristophanes.

Hal
    Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
    for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
    always.

    Hal

  This derives from the medieval "land of cockaigne," I believe. 
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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Wed Dec  1 23:02:13 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 04:02:13 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
References: <b9.4c1b4c76.2edfe307@cs.com>
	<004301c4d822$d97c34a0$ec9c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <004b01c4d823$b6080390$ec9c9951@Robin>

Sorry, should have imcluded this [but dunno whether the Greek character-set
will survive cyberspace] but the (see above) referred to:

[tr. Gr. Meuekojojjtc?a (f. meu?kg cloud + j?jjtn cuckoo), the name of the
realm in Aristophanes's Birds (l. 819) built by the birds to separate the
gods from mankind.]



R.




From bardo at optonline.net  Wed Dec  1 23:04:44 2004
From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:04:44 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
References: <1f0.3013ec8d.2edfe2c9@cs.com>
Message-ID: <00f701c4d824$0e81daf0$3a95c044@MULDER>

>From http://pictures.rhettoric.com/

Why cellar door?
In his essay English and Welsh, J.R.R. Tolkien spoke of certain combinations of sounds as revelations of beauty.

Cellar door is an example of just such a combination of sounds. Tolkein wrote "Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful." More info on Tolkein's relationship with language can be found here.

This website is an attempt to discover and savor beauty in unexpected and possibly ubiquitous circumstances. Try to look deeper.



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 10:15 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word


  In a message dated 12/1/2004 9:24:30 AM Central Standard Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes: 


    {    Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
    {    beautiful phrase in the English language?
    {    
    {    Jeff

    Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
    phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."

    Hal   

  I believe it was Swinburne who argued for "syphilis" as the most beautiful word in the language. 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
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From gmguddi at ilstu.edu  Wed Dec  1 23:11:46 2004
From: gmguddi at ilstu.edu (Gabriel Gudding)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 22:11:46 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word -- Waldeinsamkeit
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEJEJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
References: <013001c4d7e7$6e7009b0$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEJEJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.2.20041201221011.03178b60@mail.ilstu.edu>

At 03:03 PM 12/1/2004, Halvard Johnson wrote:

>Anyway, my favorite German word is "Waldeinsamkeit" -- the feeling
>of being alone in the woods.


This is an absolutely beautiful word, Hal.



From grahamd at ripon.edu  Wed Dec  1 23:16:11 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 22:16:11 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <1f0.3013ec8d.2edfe2c9@cs.com>
Message-ID: <BDD3F32B.D483%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/1/04 9:15 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:


I believe it was Swinburne who argued for "syphilis" as the most beautiful
word in the language.
_______________________________________________

Though surely "malaria" is right up there, too, along with "diarrhea."

A student of mine once wrote a spoof of Shakespeare, in which all the
characters were named after venereal diseases:  Lady Chlamydia, the Duke of
Gonorrhea, Count Syphilis, et al.

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu  Thu Dec  2 00:53:43 2004
From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne)
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:53:43 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fall/Winter 2004-2005 Issue of VPR
Message-ID: <SIMEON.10412012343.E@muahost.valpo.edu>

Announcement:

December 1 is the official release date for Vol. 6, No. 1 of 
Valparaiso Poetry Review.  The Fall/Winter 2004-2005 issue of 
Valparaiso Poetry Review is available at the following url:

http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/

*Fall/Winter 2004-2005 Issue Contents*

Featured Poet: Adrianne Kalfopoulou? 

Additional Poets: Amanda Auchter, Jackie Bartley, Mike Chaser, 
Patricia Fargnoli, H. Palmer Hall, Charles Israel, Miriam N. Kotzin, 
Gary Lechliter, Muriel Nelson, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Rochelle Ratner, 
Don Stinson, J.L. Torres, Anne Wilson, Kirk M. Wright 

Poets Reviewed: Sharon Dolin, Rita Dove, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Adrianne 
Kalfopoulou, Ilya Kaminsky, Elaine Sexton? 

Cover Art Commentary: Gregg Hertzlieb on Paul Sierra? 

As always, the new issue includes a list of recently received and 
recommended books of poetry or poetics, as well as guidelines for 
submissions.  All past issues of VPR and a complete archive of poems, 
essays, interviews, reviews, and commentary on art remain available 
for reading.

--------------------------------------------------

Edward Byrne
Department of English
322 Huegli Hall
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493

E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu
http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/

Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review
E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu
http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/
Office Phone: (219) 464-5278
Fax: (219) 464-5511

--------------------------------------------------




From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Thu Dec  2 09:32:53 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 06:32:53 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sad News
Message-ID: <20041202143253.247.qmail@web52610.mail.yahoo.com>

Friends,

I lost a good friend and mentor this week.  Dr. Laurie
O'Brien, poet and essayist, died from complications
from the cancer she'd been fighting since 1995.  I
served as her graduate assistant when I was in school.
 As my closest mentor in graduate school and my thesis
director, she and I often butted heads and argued
fiercely about poetry and writing and my attitude and
just about anything else that you can imagine.  But
she was also a caring person who genuinely wanted to
see her students succeed--and a talented poet and
writer.  She regularly taught a memoir and writing
workshop over the summers in Guatemala.  I will miss
her, as I'm sure many will.

An AP wire story about her is here:
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/10316865.htm

I've included in this mail a poem of hers below.  You
can link to it as well.  It's from Poetry Daily's
archive.



(http://www.poems.com/malefobr.htm)

Malefici

The terror of place is always with the people. They
make a habit
of throwing bread into fountains and springs, of
piling up
stones in cairns at the crossroads when they travel.
They call 
to the strange angels, Pachielus, Geruhel, Tubihel,
Rumihel.
At the margins of belief and practice, they cast
charms against
whatever it is they fear. All life is prayer. Incubi
and sucubi
surround them, demons who come in the bodies of men.
The demons seduce them, and the people follow.

The first order of demons are Fiery, who dwell in the
upper air
and will never sink to the lower regions until the Day
of Judgment.
These have no dealings on earth with men.

The Aerial live in the air above and descend in bodies
formed from the denser air. With the permission of God
they disturb the air and raise tempests and thunders,
and they all
conspire together for the ruin of the human race.

The Terrestrial were cast from Heaven to earth for
their sins.
Some dwell in the woods and forests and lay snares for
hunters.
Some dwell in the fields and lead nightfarers astray.
Others
dwell in hidden places and caverns, while the rest 
delight to live in secret with men.

Those of Water live in the rivers and lakes, are full
of wrath, turbulent, unquiet, and fraudulent. They
raise up
storms at sea, sink ships in the deep, and destroy
life in the waters.
When such demons appear, they are more often women,
for they live in humid places and lead a softer manner
of life.

The Subterranean inhabit the caves and caverns of the
mountains.
They chiefly molest those who dig pits or mines and
who look
for treasure in the earth. They cause earthquakes,
winds, and fires
and it is they who shake the foundations of houses.

Lastly the Lucifugous, who abhor and detest the light
and never appear by day. They are inscrutable, all
dark within
and shaken by icy passions. With the permission of
God, 
they often kill by some breath or touch.

Watch for those who turn stones into cheese, who cause
oxen to fly, who make asses play on harps. Be ever
vigilant.
All things become every day worse and worse, for the
end is drawing near.

Laurie O'Brien 
Apalachee Quarterly 46
The Palm Issue
Winter 1997

Copyright ? 1997 by Apalachee Press.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.



=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. 
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Thu Dec  2 11:27:19 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 10:27:19 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <s1aeee1b.077@mail.highland.edu>

susurrus


From halvard at earthlink.net  Thu Dec  2 11:30:10 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:30:10 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <s1aeee1b.077@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAELCJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


Then can "succubus" be far behind, not to mention
"so's your ass" in the phrasal division?

Hal

{    Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
{    
{    
{    susurrus
{    _______________________________________________
{    New-Poetry mailing list
{    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
{    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From lattaj at umich.edu  Thu Dec  2 11:38:36 2004
From: lattaj at umich.edu (John Latta)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:38:36 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <s1aeee1b.077@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1aeee1b.077@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.58.0412021137460.12894@mspacman.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>


syringe




From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Thu Dec  2 11:44:02 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 10:44:02 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <s1aef20d.002@mail.highland.edu>

Actually, Hal, my word was partly meant in response to Jeff Newbury's
poignant post...

Halvard said:

>Then can "succubus" be far behind, not to mention
"so's your ass" in the phrasal division?




From clitophon at yahoo.com  Thu Dec  2 11:48:49 2004
From: clitophon at yahoo.com (Paul Murphy)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 08:48:49 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word -- Waldeinsamkeit
In-Reply-To: <6.0.3.0.2.20041201221011.03178b60@mail.ilstu.edu>
Message-ID: <20041202164849.64250.qmail@web40424.mail.yahoo.com>

another beautiful German word is 'innerlichkeit' -
inwardness
a specifically German trait apparantly
ewigkeit - eternity, is also beautiful
I'm fascinated by Weltraum, literally world room
meaning space in English.
Paul Murphy
--- Gabriel Gudding <gmguddi at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> At 03:03 PM 12/1/2004, Halvard Johnson wrote:
> 
> >Anyway, my favorite German word is "Waldeinsamkeit"
> -- the feeling
> >of being alone in the woods.
> 
> 
> This is an absolutely beautiful word, Hal.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Thu Dec  2 11:51:53 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 10:51:53 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <s1aef3d4.013@mail.highland.edu>

Syringe is indeed a beautiful word, John. Here is an epigram that uses
it, dedicated to one of the most ambitious, hidden, and singularly
strange American poets:


Stephen Ellis

Stephen Ellis is a true heir of Jack Clarke,
himself a true heir of Charles Olson. Reading
his poems, one often gets a profound sense
of dangerous and hermetic abandon, as if
the poem were a syringe, and one's arm
were extended into the dark, on a dark table.







From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Thu Dec  2 04:50:52 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:50:52 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <BDD3F32B.D483%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <BDD4419C.799E%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>

On 12/1/04 10:16 PM, "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

> on 12/1/04 9:15 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:
> 
>> 
>> I believe it was Swinburne who argued for "syphilis" as the most beautiful
>> word in the language.
> _______________________________________________
> 
> Though surely "malaria" is right up there, too, along with "diarrhea."
> 
> A student of mine once wrote a spoof of Shakespeare, in which all the
> characters were named after venereal diseases:  Lady Chlamydia, the Duke of
> Gonorrhea, Count Syphilis, et al.
> 
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 

 And don?t forget Hamlet?s good friend Fellatio.


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From jsafdie at comcast.net  Thu Dec  2 12:08:13 2004
From: jsafdie at comcast.net (Joe Safdie)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 09:08:13 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
References: <s1aeee1b.077@mail.highland.edu>
	<Pine.SOL.4.58.0412021137460.12894@mspacman.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <00f301c4d891$85a3f970$56001118@D6T95L21>

garbage

(not a reaction to John's suggestion, but the word itself -- starting far 
back in the mysterious inner regions of the throat, bringing the lips 
together for the second syllable, and ending with the tongue lightly 
touching the back of the upper palate -- any nomination for this prize, I 
think, would have to engage the vocal apparatus at least this vigorously)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Latta" <lattaj at umich.edu>

 syringe



From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Thu Dec  2 13:43:31 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:43:31 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <8804248.1102013015148.JavaMail.root@misspiggy.psp.pas.earthlink.net>

enema can't be far behind.

- Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: John Latta <lattaj at umich.edu>
Sent: Dec 2, 2004 9:38 AM
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &
	Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word


syringe


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Salt River Review:  http://www.poetserv.org
RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html


From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Thu Dec  2 13:58:23 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 10:58:23 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <8804248.1102013015148.JavaMail.root@misspiggy.psp.pas.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <20041202185823.86381.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>

"enema can't be far *behind*"

Hehehhehehe huh huh huh huh hehehhe....

Ugh...

I am such a 14 year old sometimes.

Jeff


--- James Cervantes <jvcervantes at earthlink.net> wrote:

> enema can't be far behind.
> 


=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"

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From jsafdie at comcast.net  Thu Dec  2 14:31:47 2004
From: jsafdie at comcast.net (Joe Safdie)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:31:47 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ergo, The Most Beautiful Poem Would Be . . .
References: <s1aef3d4.013@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <006001c4d8a5$902f9f20$56001118@D6T95L21>

Syphillis

"Mother, pass the syringe"
he whispered, clearing,
as best he could,
his mucous membrane
while the cellar door
banged against the garbage pail.




From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Thu Dec  2 14:38:27 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 12:38:27 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ergo, The Most Beautiful Poem Would Be . . .
Message-ID: <3970364.1102016307482.JavaMail.root@gonzo.psp.pas.earthlink.net>

Great, but you failed to see the eit.

- Jim, elliptically

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Safdie <jsafdie at comcast.net>
Sent: Dec 2, 2004 12:31 PM
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &
	Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ergo, The Most Beautiful Poem Would Be . . .

Syphillis

"Mother, pass the syringe"
he whispered, clearing,
as best he could,
his mucous membrane
while the cellar door
banged against the garbage pail.


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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Salt River Review:  http://www.poetserv.org
RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec  2 14:45:29 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 20:45:29 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6,
	Issue 2-most beautiful word post-back fr mst
References: <20041201210416.52596.qmail@web26008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <003001c4d8a7$7ae39610$8a7c3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

distorting mirror 
un_shameful
the brave
of the
truth
they say, look, this is you: Ken Currie
any posture - easy to find (yourself) links and pics
they say,
destroy
anything 
youth_beauty_life_energy_work_rest
                                                        (we anyhow do not need to sleep, programmed we are)
undo & destroy - there are so many anyhow
they say
they
say

rapacious the flight when hungry
monolingual the context
food _ life _ supremacy _ 
the supremacy of the 
of the
of

you do not have it?
you don't deserve it

I have I T
g u i l t y     y o u      a r e 
(echoooooooooooo)
(Echooooooo)
(....ooo)
(.)

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: gbemi tijani-mst 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 10:04 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6,Issue 2-most beautiful word post-back fr mst


  ...Buoyed by your maintaining the fervency of poetic thinking and reflections into past versification by poets & artists too..Admittedly one word doesn't make a phrase let alone an epigram-or even a Japanese haiku..Even then because hardly can any writer or poet or students of writing generally ignore beautiful entities,answers,solutions,feedback,people ,places and related mental states...i reecho Irving Stone ,the wellknown autobiographer of Sigmund Freud & Charles Darwin saying in PASSIONS OF THE MIND -a psychoanalytic biographical truthful finess  of Freud 's career at Viena , Austria-that YES is  the most beautiful word in any language....Isn't this literarily correct -if not philosophically or metaphorically beautiful depending on the individual desideratum?
  gbemi tijani mst

  new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu wrote:
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    Today's Topics:

    1. Re: Kooser (The Old Mole)
    2. RE: Top Ten Most Beautiful Words (Halvard Johnson)
    3. Most Beautiful Word (Jeff Newberry)
    4. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Halvard Johnson)
    5. Re: Most Beautiful Word (Marcus Bales)
    6. Re: Most Beautiful Word (mIEKAL aND)
    7. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Marcus Bales)
    8. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Halvard Johnson)
    9. RE: Most Beautiful Word (Halvard Johnson)


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

    Message: 1
    Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 08:56:19 -0500
    From: "The Old Mole" 
    Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

    Message-ID: <007a01c4d7ad$8a662300$6701a8c0 at MoleHQ>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

    I've worked up to insane! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa....
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Bob Grumman 
    To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views 
    Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 7:55 PM
    Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser


    Almost two weeks ago, the Mole wrote:

    "Obviously, there's something wrong with me, if even Grumman, who believes that all Workshop students everywhere are traditional students, and all Iowa Plainlay poems are traditional poems, doesn't see a! twist of irony in this. Also, in a different sense, the concept ot Kooser as the ultimate middle America Traditionalist...oh, well." 

    I see I never replied to this post--probably because it's insane. I, of course, do not believe all workshop poets are
    traditionalists. I've been a workshop poet myself. I define a certain kind of poem as an Iowa Plaintext Poem (or some such term). All such poems are traditionalist by definition. Not all poems by Iowa poets are Iowa Plaintext Poems, nor all poems by workshop poets, nor all poems by people associated with Iowa University or Iowa State (whichever pioneered in the teaching of what I now call Iowa Plaintext Poems, if I call them that).

    Kooser's poetry seems extremely conventional to me. I'll have to read it again to see if it's sometimes or mostly what I'd call Iowa Plaintext Poetry. I probably won't because I don't care.

    --Bob G.
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Bob Grumman 
    To: NewPoetry: Contemporary ! Poetry News &Views 
    Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:20 AM
    Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Kooser



    >>From the Kooser article. Does anyone else find this as funny as I do?
    >
    >
    >His teaching career resumed at the University of Nebraska in the 1970s, when he taught creative writing to nontraditional students

    What's funny (to me, at any rate) is the term, "nontraditional students." I visualize people in clown-suits. Or people being students in some way other than listening to lectures, reading and taking notes. Can't say I can think offhand of a better term to use, though. I'd probably say, "older students than the ones just out of high."

    --Bob


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    ------------------------------

    Message: 2
    Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:54:35 -0500
    From: "Halvard Johnson" 
    Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Top Ten Most ! Beautiful Words
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

    Message-ID: 
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


    { As Americans, we are a bit uninventive about such a name. We simply call it 
    { a "bachelorette" party. I think this is partly because it is a fairly new 
    { tradition here. "Hen Night" is a much more fun term.
    { 
    { Bentley

    Maybe it's me, but I've never heard "bachelorette party" before, and yet
    I've heard "hen party" all my life, which is already so long you'd be
    both amazed and appalled.

    Hal "The thing to remember is that each time
    of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas
    when you're dead it's hard to find the
    light switch."
    --Woody Allen

    Halvard Johnson
    ===============
    email: halvard at earthlink.net
    website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
    blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



    ------------------------------

    Message: 3
    Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:07:02 -0800 (PST)
    From: Jeff Newberry 
    Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
    To: Poetry News and Reviews 
    Message-ID: <20041201150702.81433.qmail at web52609.mail.yahoo.com>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

    Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
    beautiful phrase in the English language?

    Jeff

    =====
    Jeff Newberry

    "Sometimes it's not so easy,
    especially when your only friend
    talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
    and you do just the same as him."
    --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"

    __________________________________________________
    Do You Yahoo!?
    Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
    http://mail.yahoo.com 


    ------------------------------

    Message: 4
    Date: Wed, 1 De! c 2004 10:21:02 -0500
    From: "Halvard Johnson" 
    Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

    Message-ID: 
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


    { Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
    { beautiful phrase in the English language?
    { 
    { Jeff

    Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
    phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."

    Hal Today's Special
    G(e)nome
    http://www.xpressed.org/fall03/genome.pdf
    Halvard Johnson 
    halvard at earthlink.net
    http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/




    ------------------------------

    Message: 5
    Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:33:01 -0500
    From: "Marcus Bales" 
    Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

    Message-ID: <41AD9DDD.28030.99A908 at localhost>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

    I think it was Franklin P Adams, or Wilson Mizner, or one of that 
    crowd.
    M


    On 1 Dec 2004 at 7:07, Jeff Newberry wrote:

    > Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
    > beautiful phrase in the English language?
    > 
    > Jeff
    > 
    > =====
    > Jeff Newberry
    > 
    > "Sometimes it's not so easy,
    > especially when your only friend
    > talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
    > and you do just the same as him."
    > --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
    > 
    > __________________________________________________
    > Do You Yahoo!?
    > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
    > http://mail.yahoo.com 
    > _______________________________________________
    > New-Poetry mailing list
    > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu! 
    > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
    > 





    ------------------------------

    Message: 6
    Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:33:29 -0600
    From: mIEKAL aND 
    Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

    Message-ID: <59E64442-43AE-11D9-9150-0003935A5BDA at mwt.net>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

    [My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]


    Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm

    The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is almost 
    over.

    Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example - 
    organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.

    More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
    have been sent in by email and letter.

    German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you 
    just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".

    "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a 
    railway junction.

    And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used to 
    take toothbrush and shampoo.

    Germany's most beautiful word?
    Lebenslust - zest for life
    Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
    Teufelsbraten - rascal
    Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
    Glueck - happiness
    Liebe - love
    Mitgefuehl - compassion
    Pusteblume - dandelion
    Sehnsucht - longing
    Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
    Source: Deutscher Sprachrat

    The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in 
    Mauritius as first prize.

    The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors, 
    musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's 
    most eloquent football manager.

    The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, with 
    renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few 
    years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.

    These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.

    So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved 
    "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?

    Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to make 
    its decision by October.



    ------------------------------

    Message: 7
    Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:35:30 -0500
    From: "Marcus Bales" 
    Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

    Message-ID: <41AD9E72.2730.9BEE9C at localhost>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

    > { Who was it that said "cellar door" is the most
    > { beautiful ! phrase in the English language?
    > { Jeff
    > 
    On 1 Dec 2004 at 10:21, Halvard Johnson wrote:
    > Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
    > phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."

    the murmur of innumerable mucous membranes






    ------------------------------

    Message: 8
    Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:42:47 -0500
    From: "Halvard Johnson" 
    Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

    Message-ID: 
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


    Cloudcuckooland is (I've always thought) S. J. Perelman-lingo
    for Hollywood. Could be wrong, though. As always. Well, almost
    always.

    Hal

    { [My guess is Wolkenkuckucksheim is referring to the USA...]
    { 
    { 
    { Hunting Germany's linguistic gems
    { http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943507.stm
    { 
    { The search for the most beautiful word in the German language is almost 
    { over.
    { 
    { Entries for a competition to unearth the most stunning example - 
    { organised by the German language council - have been flooding in.
    { 
    { More than 20,000 words, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
    { have been sent in by email and letter.
    { 
    { German, for example, has a word to describe that niggling melody you 
    { just cannot get out of your head - "Ohrwurm", literally "earworm".
    { 
    { "Eisenbahnknoten" is a "knot of rail-lines" or, in other words, a 
    { railway junction.
    { 
    { And "Kulturbeutel" - literally culture bag - is the toilet bag used to 
    { take toothbrush and shampoo.
    { 
    { Germany's most beautiful word?
    { Lebenslust - zest for life
    { Erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
    { Teufelsbraten - rascal
    { Wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
    { Glueck - happiness! 
    { Liebe - love
    { Mitgefuehl - compassion
    { Pusteblume - dandelion
    { Sehnsucht - longing
    { Vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not
    { Source: Deutscher Sprachrat
    { 
    { The Deutscher Sprachrat institution is offering a two-week holiday in 
    { Mauritius as first prize.
    { 
    { The entries are being judged by a panel that includes authors, 
    { musicians and film-makers, and Volker Finke - described as Germany's 
    { most eloquent football manager.
    { 
    { The competition comes at an interesting time for German scholars, with 
    { renewed controversy about changes to spelling rules introduced a few 
    { years ago, says the BBC's Ray Furlong.
    { 
    { These are widely detested and ignored by the leading newspapers.
    { 
    { So will it be a simple word like "Liebe" - love, or the more involved 
    { "Geheimratsecken," which means receding hairline?
    { 
    { Sunday is the deadline for submissions, with the jury expected to make 
    { its decision by October.
    { 
    { _______________________________________________
    { New-Poetry mailing list
    { New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
    { http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
    { 



    ------------------------------

    Message: 9
    Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:43:52 -0500
    From: "Halvard Johnson" 
    Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
    To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &"

    Message-ID: 
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


    { On 1 Dec 2004 at 10:21, Halvard Johnson wrote:
    { > Whoever it was ought to be spanked. The prize for
    { > phrases clearly goes to "mucous membrane."
    { 
    { the murmur of innumerable mucous membranes

    Nice flow.

    Hal



    ------------------------------

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    End of New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6, Issue 2
    ****************************************



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From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Thu Dec  2 14:55:19 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:55:19 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words
Message-ID: <s1af1eea.003@mail.highland.edu>

"The susurrus of syphillis"

"The susurrus of syphillis
necessitates a syringe
in the ass every six days,"
said Saussure, from the 
proscenium, pointing to
the overhead (via camera 
obscura) of Swinburne's 
spleen. "Not a pretty sight," 
we read, in the yellowed 
note, a stray comment scribbled 
in the margin by a student, 
"and a sudden and seemingly 
irrational segue by our strange 
Professor into the second half 
of his speech: The presence 
of anagrams and paragrams, in 
ancient Saturnalian verse."


From shkodrov at yahoo.com  Thu Dec  2 15:41:54 2004
From: shkodrov at yahoo.com (Rossitza Shkodrova)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 12:41:54 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words
In-Reply-To: <s1af1eea.003@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <20041202204154.83123.qmail@web54610.mail.yahoo.com>

I definitely like "gonorrhea" better than
"syphillis"...

Thanks for the "susurrus," Kent. I'll susurrate often
from now on! I had some "murmur" and "whispering"
rolling in my mouth for awhile, but now I have
"cucuruz" (ku-ku-ruz) - corn - on the top of my
tongue. Too bad I'm not sure about the origins of this
word. May be russian?

Here is a collection of some beautiful (and
not-so-beautiful) words for your entertainment.

http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words10.html

Speaking of beautiful words - "ululations" makes it
for me.



--- Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

> "The susurrus of syphillis"
> 
> "The susurrus of syphillis
> necessitates a syringe
> in the ass every six days,"
> said Saussure, from the 
> proscenium, pointing to
> the overhead (via camera 
> obscura) of Swinburne's 
> spleen. "Not a pretty sight," 
> we read, in the yellowed 
> note, a stray comment scribbled 
> in the margin by a student, 
> "and a sudden and seemingly 
> irrational segue by our strange 
> Professor into the second half 
> of his speech: The presence 
> of anagrams and paragrams, in 
> ancient Saturnalian verse."
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Thu Dec  2 16:06:39 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 15:06:39 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of Beautiful words
Message-ID: <s1af2fa3.006@mail.highland.edu>

Thank you, Rossitza Shkodrova.

I hope it won't seem too inappropriate to say that you have, hands
down, *the most beautiful* name on this listserve!

Kent (who has the ugliest name) 


From kpaul at mallasch.com  Thu Dec  2 17:07:04 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 17:07:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <20041202185823.86381.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20041202185823.86381.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20041202170646.L90633@kpaul.spinweb.net>

heh. you're not the only one. ;)

i heard the drum roll in the background on that one...

-kpaul

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Jeff Newberry wrote:

> "enema can't be far *behind*"
>
> Hehehhehehe huh huh huh huh hehehhe....
>
> Ugh...
>
> I am such a 14 year old sometimes.
>
> Jeff
>
>
> --- James Cervantes <jvcervantes at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> enema can't be far behind.
>>
>
>
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
>
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From GrahamD at ripon.edu  Thu Dec  2 17:10:48 2004
From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 16:10:48 -0600 
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A4BD@mail.ripon.edu>

Song

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
		--Seamus Heaney




============================================
David Graham
Department of English, Ripon College
grahamd at ripon.edu
     Home Page:  
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
     My Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html

Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu
============================================




From GrahamD at ripon.edu  Thu Dec  2 17:26:02 2004
From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 16:26:02 -0600 
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A4BE@mail.ripon.edu>

But the real true and actual most beautiful word is:  hogwash.


Hogwash 

The tongue that mothered such a metaphor 
Only the purest purist could despair of. 

Nobody ever called swill sweet but isn't 
Hogwash a daisy in a field of daisies? 

What beside sports and flowers could you find 
To praise better than the American language? 

Bruised by American foreign policy 
What shall I soothe me, what defend me with 

But a handful of clean unmistakable words-- 
Daisies, daisies, in a field of daisies?                         


--Robert Francis 


============================================
David Graham
Department of English, Ripon College
grahamd at ripon.edu
     Home Page:  
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
     My Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html

Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu
============================================



From peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk  Thu Dec  2 19:11:21 2004
From: peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk (Peter Cudmore)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 00:11:21 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <BDD4419C.799E%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>
Message-ID: <ECOWS05MUAM2rLJT2JI00044634@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>

students do that kind of thing


  _____  

From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Lake
Sent: 02 December 2004 09:51
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word


On 12/1/04 10:16 PM, "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:



on 12/1/04 9:15 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:




I believe it was Swinburne who argued for "syphilis" as the most beautiful
word in the language. 


_______________________________________________

Though surely "malaria" is right up there, too, along with "diarrhea."

A student of mine once wrote a spoof of Shakespeare, in which all the
characters were named after venereal diseases:  Lady Chlamydia, the Duke of
Gonorrhea, Count Syphilis, et al.

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================



  _____  

_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry




And don't forget Hamlet's good friend Fellatio.



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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Thu Dec  2 19:35:36 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 19:35:36 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <d.389b99b5.2ee10ed8@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/2/2004 6:12:32 PM Central Standard Time, 
peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk writes: 
> 
> A student of mine once wrote a spoof of Shakespeare, in which all the 
> characters were named after venereal diseases:  Lady Chlamydia, the Duke of 
> Gonorrhea, Count Syphilis, et al.

Good to know that some students still know Monty Python.
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From debra at debradicembre.com  Thu Dec  2 19:38:23 2004
From: debra at debradicembre.com (Debra Dicembre)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 11:38:23 +1100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ergo, The Most Beautiful Poem Would Be . . .
References: <s1aef3d4.013@mail.highland.edu>
	<006001c4d8a5$902f9f20$56001118@D6T95L21>
Message-ID: <001701c4d8d0$6750c400$0301010a@debraxerl89a65>

Brilliant!

dd
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Safdie" <jsafdie at comcast.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 6:31 AM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ergo, The Most Beautiful Poem Would Be . . .


> Syphillis
>
> "Mother, pass the syringe"
> he whispered, clearing,
> as best he could,
> his mucous membrane
> while the cellar door
> banged against the garbage pail.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From memexikon at mwt.net  Thu Dec  2 22:10:38 2004
From: memexikon at mwt.net (mIEKAL aND)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 21:10:38 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
In-Reply-To: <00f701c4d824$0e81daf0$3a95c044@MULDER>
Message-ID: <E88F3735-44D8-11D9-9BF4-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>

[Gloss[-e]m[-a]t[. i]cus,]

wherby cer?taine chapiters

I Am a frayde of a daunger so ioynynge all Anormalles and coniugate at 
to smyle:  He wyll begyn to a meane verbe: but in this parte the 
indycatyue mode onely sent neth these properties spoken in my thirde 
sence ientame, as I Depose or sweare wytnessse do The table of Verbes 
Emprinte a thyng in my mynde:  We can nat emprinte this boke afore 
christmasse:  Folowe one thynge after foloweth begynnynge of bookes or 
the charges of onely his symple  falselye contrarye I wyll neuer 
forsweare hym vpon a booke: Iamays chyde me to go their wayes:  we 
signyfye a great stoupyng forwarde I ex? cused  me a good nose to be a 
poore mans homme.

I Haue the upper hande of any thynge per hande of our enemyes:  I Laye 
abrode bookes to be vewed If I maye I wyll  shewed ie compose prime 
ryme well but it looke wysely apon I beate all daye haue pronostiqua 
Regyster in secunde zodiacque. His thorowe facyon pyght:  beare a great 
selfe as yonge Stryke ones othe.  Many sermen? Translate a  tonge 
shalbe no mastrye vnclaspe my letter or write as fast as villayn 
exhortynge rehersed.

Uther goynge whan a lone she is but a beest ne demande que toy. So that 
our tonge accordynge as I haue touched  vpon the accydentes partycular 
of a preposycion and his negacion as lunyte.

The signyfyca?cion of the answere by nouther answere escaped in the 
inserted[leaf] rection taken out of the iourneles.  A libell vsed to 
marre no man, to the intent to write intreating of floures.  A librarie 
bulrush, also a Papyrus sometime purple of which gryllis simillima,  
keepeth apparell in shambles, a  flesh is teaching by mouth and by 
images of waxe, with branches to declare the genealogie of A maid that 
neuer had childe. Sinking paper wherein monuments sputation: a 
communication betweene diuerse persons for one daie, intitling A 
gatherer of the contents of euerie booke and special place To learne by 
harte, to cunne without.




From cstroffo at earthlink.net  Thu Dec  2 23:37:03 2004
From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (Chris Stroffolino )
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 20:37:03 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
Message-ID: <200412030417.iB34H1L7312020@pimout2-ext.prodigy.net>


this thread has got me singing
"hey, if you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world..."

but, anyway, i think WHARF is pretty damn beautiful
(though not WHORF as in the hypothesis)

C


----------
>From: mIEKAL aND <memexikon at mwt.net>
>To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
>Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2004, 7:10 PM
>

> [Gloss[-e]m[-a]t[. i]cus,]
>
> wherby cer?taine chapiters
>
> I Am a frayde of a daunger so ioynynge all Anormalles and coniugate at
> to smyle:  He wyll begyn to a meane verbe: but in this parte the
> indycatyue mode onely sent neth these properties spoken in my thirde
> sence ientame, as I Depose or sweare wytnessse do The table of Verbes
> Emprinte a thyng in my mynde:  We can nat emprinte this boke afore
> christmasse:  Folowe one thynge after foloweth begynnynge of bookes or
> the charges of onely his symple  falselye contrarye I wyll neuer
> forsweare hym vpon a booke: Iamays chyde me to go their wayes:  we
> signyfye a great stoupyng forwarde I ex? cused  me a good nose to be a
> poore mans homme.
>
> I Haue the upper hande of any thynge per hande of our enemyes:  I Laye
> abrode bookes to be vewed If I maye I wyll  shewed ie compose prime
> ryme well but it looke wysely apon I beate all daye haue pronostiqua
> Regyster in secunde zodiacque. His thorowe facyon pyght:  beare a great
> selfe as yonge Stryke ones othe.  Many sermen? Translate a  tonge
> shalbe no mastrye vnclaspe my letter or write as fast as villayn
> exhortynge rehersed.
>
> Uther goynge whan a lone she is but a beest ne demande que toy. So that
> our tonge accordynge as I haue touched  vpon the accydentes partycular
> of a preposycion and his negacion as lunyte.
>
> The signyfyca?cion of the answere by nouther answere escaped in the
> inserted[leaf] rection taken out of the iourneles.  A libell vsed to
> marre no man, to the intent to write intreating of floures.  A librarie
> bulrush, also a Papyrus sometime purple of which gryllis simillima,
> keepeth apparell in shambles, a  flesh is teaching by mouth and by
> images of waxe, with branches to declare the genealogie of A maid that
> neuer had childe. Sinking paper wherein monuments sputation: a
> communication betweene diuerse persons for one daie, intitling A
> gatherer of the contents of euerie booke and special place To learne by
> harte, to cunne without.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Fri Dec  3 03:09:36 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:09:36 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
References: <200412030417.iB34H1L7312020@pimout2-ext.prodigy.net>
Message-ID: <009b01c4d90f$6e504e30$7aaa3452@yourpk9x5fuc06>

A most playful gang, indeed,

I also liked Weltanschaung - Maelstrom - and any German word I understood in
philosophy
French is all right in poetry
English is a warm language (my favorite)
Italian - lately I have problems with it, I am (better, have been) mixing
social with political with common, and it sort of slows down
Portuguese (I sometimes get one word) seems to me very interesting
and unluckily I think that Spanish is on my ladder a little higher than
Italian
I thought I liked Danish and Swedish, but when I heard people speak them I
thought they mixed so many sounds that the purity of a language got lost
I only studied Latin, but I would have loved to have some time to study
Greek,
and when in Slovakia on the third day of meetings in Slovakian I started
laughing, as if their language tickled me
an omnivorous reader & listener
who could spend several lives studying languages

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Stroffolino " <cstroffo at earthlink.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 5:37 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word


>
> this thread has got me singing
> "hey, if you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world..."
>
> but, anyway, i think WHARF is pretty damn beautiful
> (though not WHORF as in the hypothesis)
>
> C
>
>
> ----------
> >From: mIEKAL aND <memexikon at mwt.net>
> >To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Most Beautiful Word
> >Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2004, 7:10 PM
> >
>
> > [Gloss[-e]m[-a]t[. i]cus,]
> >
> > wherby cer?taine chapiters
> >
> > I Am a frayde of a daunger so ioynynge all Anormalles and coniugate at
> > to smyle:  He wyll begyn to a meane verbe: but in this parte the
> > indycatyue mode onely sent neth these properties spoken in my thirde
> > sence ientame, as I Depose or sweare wytnessse do The table of Verbes
> > Emprinte a thyng in my mynde:  We can nat emprinte this boke afore
> > christmasse:  Folowe one thynge after foloweth begynnynge of bookes or
> > the charges of onely his symple  falselye contrarye I wyll neuer
> > forsweare hym vpon a booke: Iamays chyde me to go their wayes:  we
> > signyfye a great stoupyng forwarde I ex? cused  me a good nose to be a
> > poore mans homme.
> >
> > I Haue the upper hande of any thynge per hande of our enemyes:  I Laye
> > abrode bookes to be vewed If I maye I wyll  shewed ie compose prime
> > ryme well but it looke wysely apon I beate all daye haue pronostiqua
> > Regyster in secunde zodiacque. His thorowe facyon pyght:  beare a great
> > selfe as yonge Stryke ones othe.  Many sermen? Translate a  tonge
> > shalbe no mastrye vnclaspe my letter or write as fast as villayn
> > exhortynge rehersed.
> >
> > Uther goynge whan a lone she is but a beest ne demande que toy. So that
> > our tonge accordynge as I haue touched  vpon the accydentes partycular
> > of a preposycion and his negacion as lunyte.
> >
> > The signyfyca?cion of the answere by nouther answere escaped in the
> > inserted[leaf] rection taken out of the iourneles.  A libell vsed to
> > marre no man, to the intent to write intreating of floures.  A librarie
> > bulrush, also a Papyrus sometime purple of which gryllis simillima,
> > keepeth apparell in shambles, a  flesh is teaching by mouth and by
> > images of waxe, with branches to declare the genealogie of A maid that
> > neuer had childe. Sinking paper wherein monuments sputation: a
> > communication betweene diuerse persons for one daie, intitling A
> > gatherer of the contents of euerie booke and special place To learne by
> > harte, to cunne without.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From halvard at earthlink.net  Fri Dec  3 07:53:49 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 07:53:49 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words
In-Reply-To: <s1af1eea.003@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEGEMPJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


Mini-critique: a excessively superabundant sibilance 
saturates this piece.

Hal
  
{    "The susurrus of syphillis"
{    
{    "The susurrus of syphillis
{    necessitates a syringe
{    in the ass every six days,"
{    said Saussure, from the 
{    proscenium, pointing to
{    the overhead (via camera 
{    obscura) of Swinburne's 
{    spleen. "Not a pretty sight," 
{    we read, in the yellowed 
{    note, a stray comment scribbled 
{    in the margin by a student, 
{    "and a sudden and seemingly 
{    irrational segue by our strange 
{    Professor into the second half 
{    of his speech: The presence 
{    of anagrams and paragrams, in 
{    ancient Saturnalian verse."
{    _______________________________________________
{    New-Poetry mailing list
{    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
{    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Fri Dec  3 07:57:10 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 05:57:10 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEGEMPJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <41B062A4.C4C3E1A9@earthlink.net>

Aye!  Sequesters one sans supercilious saxaphone!

- Jim

Halvard Johnson wrote:
> 
> Mini-critique: a excessively superabundant sibilance
> saturates this piece.
> 
> Hal
> 
> {    "The susurrus of syphillis"
> {
> {    "The susurrus of syphillis
> {    necessitates a syringe
> {    in the ass every six days,"
> {    said Saussure, from the
> {    proscenium, pointing to
> {    the overhead (via camera
> {    obscura) of Swinburne's
> {    spleen. "Not a pretty sight,"
> {    we read, in the yellowed
> {    note, a stray comment scribbled
> {    in the margin by a student,
> {    "and a sudden and seemingly
> {    irrational segue by our strange
> {    Professor into the second half
> {    of his speech: The presence
> {    of anagrams and paragrams, in
> {    ancient Saturnalian verse."
> {    _______________________________________________
> {    New-Poetry mailing list
> {    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> {    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Fri Dec  3 08:12:28 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:12:28 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEGEMPJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <00a201c4d939$bf09f2c0$e2ee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Semi-Scientific eSSay:

Seen Some SabulouS Second-Scenery on the SaccharineouS StatuS of the
Southerly Set poSt by a Stormy Stratified if not Surreal perSonality,
without StratoSpherically Streaming beyond Sullen SortS, thuS Sticking to
Surrounding Sands, I Stealthily and Steamingly State:

ShuuuShhhhhShuuuuShShS

yourS,
StegoSaur


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 1:53 PM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words


>
> Mini-critique: a excessively superabundant sibilance
> saturates this piece.
>
> Hal
>
> {    "The susurrus of syphillis"
> {
> {    "The susurrus of syphillis
> {    necessitates a syringe
> {    in the ass every six days,"
> {    said Saussure, from the
> {    proscenium, pointing to
> {    the overhead (via camera
> {    obscura) of Swinburne's
> {    spleen. "Not a pretty sight,"
> {    we read, in the yellowed
> {    note, a stray comment scribbled
> {    in the margin by a student,
> {    "and a sudden and seemingly
> {    irrational segue by our strange
> {    Professor into the second half
> {    of his speech: The presence
> {    of anagrams and paragrams, in
> {    ancient Saturnalian verse."
> {    _______________________________________________
> {    New-Poetry mailing list
> {    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> {    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Fri Dec  3 10:10:56 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 09:10:56 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Picks 2004
Message-ID: <BDD5DE20.D4F9%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Bob Holman has made his poetry picks for 2004 at About.com:

http://poetry.about.com/od/poetrybooks/a/poetrypicks2004.htm

How about you?  

Time for my annual plea:  what were the poetry books that most impressed you
in 2004?  (Not necessarily published this year.)

As always, extra credit if you do more than just name author & title.  Best
of all would be a sample poem. . . .

I'll mention three that have been in heavy rotation for me.

 Betsy Sholl's *Late Psalm* (U Wisconsin 2004).

 Frank X. Gaspar's *Night of a Thousand Blossoms* (Alice James 2004).

 Eric Nelson.  *Terrestrials*.  (Texas Review Press 2004).
--------------------

Shore Walk With Monk

Whoever lived here is gone, but a slick
staircase remains in the broken shell,
damaged just enough to suggest secret
recesses spiraled inside where something
slid down to poke out its head,

and when a threat appeared, scurried
or oozed back along those pearly halls.
*Someone* stood catatonic when shaken down
by cops, but when he felt safe on the bandstand,
he'd step out and dance, flap his elbows

like nubby wings, then back to the keyboard
to pick up his place, foot kicking
the piano's invisible flywheel.
Those were the years everyone changed shape,
painters squinted, poked their heads outside the frame.

Why have frames at all --or canvas, or paint?
And why not play the least expected note
so the music's a double exposure,
what's there and what isn't superimposed,
a musical house all fretwork and jut,

as if any minute the whole structure
might topple. But a house, once you've entered,
nothing four-square will do. You want those
crooked doors, those circular steps ending
in pure misterioso, you need

those rooms suspended over a bay
where sunlight keeps changing tempo and key--
or so I was thinking when my tape started
to chirp like a hip calliope,
and I took it out to see if I could rewind,

finger holding one reel, pencil turning
the other, like one of his visitors
fidgeting while Monk sits wordless for hours
or grinds his teeth. Funny, how he gets me out
of my own head's maze, its slippery hall of mirrors,

when he could go so far inside his own,
nothing moved but his eyes. Or he'd spend days
in constant motion, pacing and spinning
till the turbulence inside finally found
a room with a bed and laid itself down.

Weeks it could take to stumble back out--
which might explain all the doors and tilted
balconies in his musical house,
Magritte windows with their starry skies
painted on glass, while a perilous void

expanded inside, I'm off the beach,
beside my car by now, unraveling
a Mobius strip of Monk, Monk billowing
over dune grass and rocks, ringing the car's
antenna, Monk in hundreds of tiny

accordion pleats I couldn't undo
no matter how I try, all spiraling out
of their plastic shell, catching the light, pouring
a kind of broken music the maker's
done with, just slipped out of and left behind.

--Betsy Sholl
-------------------------------------------

Bright Wings

Then I was walking in the garden looking for the intermediaries
between me and the clear light. Clouds of gauzy gnats flew up
and drifted in the buttery air. I had left the green hose running
much too long, and the earth was quenched and sagging under
the sweet peas. And something had been chewing holes in
the ear-soft leaves of the morning glories. Then I saw for
the first time that the neighbor was growing corn. The yellow
shocks were leaning just above the cinder-block fence, and they
looked so delicate and scruffy, like city corn, like alien corn,
and suddenly there was so much to be done, so much to put
in order-not the ordinary business of living and dying, but
the ordinary business that comes bundled with them. Sunlight
behaved perfectly in every corner. The shadows breathed in their
one direction and told stories. The cat crouched in the flower bed
aching to kill something. What is a man to do in such a moment?
When he knows he?s being fooled by Heraclitean fire and all
those old and hopeful ideas about the moral jewel in beauty?
I mean in *this* day and age? I mean now when no one can even get
those equations to hold up anymore? And the ants had formed a black
ribbon that led to a dead snail. And the Pipers and Cessnas
and Beechcraft were circling for the airport with so much color
and precision. And the dogs two houses down heard the mail-
carrier?s foot and erupted. But this is not the answer I?m
looking for. *And I have been lazy*. Tangerines and lemons and
mandarin oranges have swollen and dropped from their impatient
branches. They lie among the fern and the vine, bruised and mushy.
They are being swarmed. They are being devoured.

--Frank X. Gaspar
------------------------------------------------------

TRUTH

She meets me at the door and sniffs my clothes,
gets face to face and peers into my eyes,
dogs me to the kitchen demanding to know
where I've been, who with, if I've been trying
marijuana, don't lie to her, she's been
to the parents' meeting at the high-school
and knows the smell, what to look for, she's seen
a film that shows what smoking pot can lead to.
I pull out kaiser rolls and deli meats,
the mayo, lettuce, onion, and tomato
and build a sandwich the size of a hat
while she keeps pressing me and smelling me
until I say yes, I've been smoking dope.
She hugs me hard, says *Oh, don't tell me that*.

--Eric Nelson


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Fri Dec  3 10:15:12 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:15:12 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words
Message-ID: <14236184.1102086912864.JavaMail.root@scooter.psp.pas.earthlink.net>

Sssufferin' sssucotash!

- Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at tin.it>
Sent: Dec 3, 2004 6:12 AM
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &
	Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words

Semi-Scientific eSSay:

Seen Some SabulouS Second-Scenery on the SaccharineouS StatuS of the
Southerly Set poSt by a Stormy Stratified if not Surreal perSonality,
without StratoSpherically Streaming beyond Sullen SortS, thuS Sticking to
Surrounding Sands, I Stealthily and Steamingly State:

ShuuuShhhhhShuuuuShShS

yourS,
StegoSaur


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 1:53 PM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words


>
> Mini-critique: a excessively superabundant sibilance
> saturates this piece.
>
> Hal
>
> {    "The susurrus of syphillis"
> {
> {    "The susurrus of syphillis
> {    necessitates a syringe
> {    in the ass every six days,"
> {    said Saussure, from the
> {    proscenium, pointing to
> {    the overhead (via camera
> {    obscura) of Swinburne's
> {    spleen. "Not a pretty sight,"
> {    we read, in the yellowed
> {    note, a stray comment scribbled
> {    in the margin by a student,
> {    "and a sudden and seemingly
> {    irrational segue by our strange
> {    Professor into the second half
> {    of his speech: The presence
> {    of anagrams and paragrams, in
> {    ancient Saturnalian verse."
> {    _______________________________________________
> {    New-Poetry mailing list
> {    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> {    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes:  http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html
Salt River Review:  http://www.poetserv.org
RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html


From grahamd at ripon.edu  Fri Dec  3 10:42:28 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 09:42:28 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Mona Van Duyn, 1921-2004
In-Reply-To: <a06010200bdd63642b390@[192.168.1.100]>
Message-ID: <BDD5E584.D50B%grahamd@ripon.edu>



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


Mona Van Duyn, former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer winner, dies at 83

BETSY TAYLOR
Associated Press

UNIVERSITY CITY, Mo. - Mona Van Duyn, the nation's first female poet
laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner, died Thursday morning at her
home from bone cancer, her husband said. She was 83.

A writer of poetry since she was a 5-year-old, Van Duyn published
nine volumes of poetry and won a Pulitzer for "Near Changes" in 1991.
The following year she became the sixth poet and the first woman
named U.S. poet laureate, an eight-month position appointed by the
Librarian of Congress since 1986.

"I know the Library of Congress has been embarrassed for not having a
woman," Van Duyn said at the time. "I think if I could convince them
I was really a man, they would say, 'Don't come.'"

After Van Duyn won the Pulitzer, Cynthia Zarin wrote in The New
Republic: "Since 1959 Mona Van Duyn has been writing poetry notable
for its formal accomplishment and for its thematic ambition. The
searching intelligence of the persona we have learned to know in her
poems, combined with the humor, technical ease, and the blend of the
abstract and the quotidian that the poet has made her own have
resulted in that rare good thing: a strong, clear voice, original
without eccentricity."

Van Duyn's literary talents were quickly apparent to Jarvis Thurston,
who married her months after they met in a writing class in 1943.

"When I asked to see some of her poems, I loved them immediately,"
Thurston said Thursday, recalling how his wife joked with him about
it. "She said, `You didn't offer to marry me until you'd seen my
poems.'"

Van Duyn won a National Book Award for her book of poems "To See, To
Take" in 1971. The year before, she was awarded the Bollingen Prize
from Yale University, one of many honors for her poetry.

Her other works include "Firefall" (1994), "Merciful Disguises"
(1973) and "Bedtime Stories" (1972). Her first book of poetry,
"Valentines to the Wide World," was published in 1959.

Van Duyn was born in Waterloo, Iowa. She studied at the University of
Northern Iowa and received a master's degree from the University of
Iowa in 1943.

Van Duyn was a member of the faculty at Washington University in St.
Louis for decades, developing a reputation for strong instruction of
young writers. Her husband is a former chairman of the English
department. Together they founded Perspective, a quarterly literary
magazine published from 1947 to 1975 that published the work of
emerging poets and fiction writers.

Thurston, 90, said his wife stopped writing about eight years ago. He
said she had a nervous breakdown in 1949 and struggled with
psychiatric problems throughout her life, though he said she would go
years at a time in good mental health. He said medication she was on
made it difficult for her to continue with her work.

Her friend, the well-known writer William Gass who retired from
Washington University, said, "She was, like her poetry, interested in
ordinary life, but in the extraordinary aspects of it."

In her poem "Endings," she writes of frustration when a mistimed VCR
recording cuts off the end of a late night movie.

Van Duyn takes it beyond the everyday to mean something more, to talk
of the solace stories provide from every day life:

"For what is story if not relief from the pain/ of the inconclusive,
from dread of the meaningless?/ Minds in their silent blast-offs
search through space--/ how often I've followed yours!--for a
resting-place. And I'll follow, past each universe in its spangled/
ballgown who waits for the slow-dance of life to start,/ past
vacancies of darkness who vainglory/ is endless as death's, to find
the end of the story."

Van Duyn is survived by her husband, who said memorial arrangements
were pending.



From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Fri Dec  3 13:30:20 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 10:30:20 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Words, Words, Words
Message-ID: <20041203183020.58821.qmail@web52603.mail.yahoo.com>

In graduate school, we used to make up words and write
them on the board in the writing center.  Every My
good friend Nadonnia and I made up a couple that I
still remember:

jank (jayn-kh) v. 1. to steal or take in a forceful
manner, 2. to accost someone, 3. to eat quickly and
offensively

i.e. "Somebody janked me and janked my wallet.  I went
down to the Burger King and janked 15 Whoppers with
extra cheese." 

squance (skwahnse) n. interjection 1. an expression
used when defeating an opponent in chess

i.e. "Sqaunce! I win!"

I think that the words actually came from things that
we heard writing center students ("tutees" we called
them) say.  I remember a student saying "Yeah, I
needed my paper read, but somebody ganked it."  I had
no idea that "gank" meant steal.  So, in the paper
appointment book, I reported him as a no-show, writing
in the margin, "Student's paper was janked."  I didn't
notice the typo until much later and thus "jank" was
born.  I'm not sure how it acquired the "eating"
connotation.

So...that's my dumb story for the day.  Anybody got a
stupid graduate school story to top it?

Jeff

=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


From kpaul at mallasch.com  Fri Dec  3 13:37:52 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:37:52 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Words, Words, Words
In-Reply-To: <20041203183020.58821.qmail@web52603.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20041203183020.58821.qmail@web52603.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20041203133659.A82872@kpaul.spinweb.net>

It wasn't a grad thing, but I had a linguistics class where one of our 
extra credit assignments for the year was to come up with a word (make one 
up) and get people to use it by the end of the school year - the thing was 
to see if we could get other people to use a made-up word...

-kpaul

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Jeff Newberry wrote:

> In graduate school, we used to make up words and write
> them on the board in the writing center.  Every My
> good friend Nadonnia and I made up a couple that I
> still remember:
>
> jank (jayn-kh) v. 1. to steal or take in a forceful
> manner, 2. to accost someone, 3. to eat quickly and
> offensively
>
> i.e. "Somebody janked me and janked my wallet.  I went
> down to the Burger King and janked 15 Whoppers with
> extra cheese."
>
> squance (skwahnse) n. interjection 1. an expression
> used when defeating an opponent in chess
>
> i.e. "Sqaunce! I win!"
>
> I think that the words actually came from things that
> we heard writing center students ("tutees" we called
> them) say.  I remember a student saying "Yeah, I
> needed my paper read, but somebody ganked it."  I had
> no idea that "gank" meant steal.  So, in the paper
> appointment book, I reported him as a no-show, writing
> in the margin, "Student's paper was janked."  I didn't
> notice the typo until much later and thus "jank" was
> born.  I'm not sure how it acquired the "eating"
> connotation.
>
> So...that's my dumb story for the day.  Anybody got a
> stupid graduate school story to top it?
>
> Jeff
>
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
>
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
> http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From memexikon at mwt.net  Fri Dec  3 13:49:00 2004
From: memexikon at mwt.net (mIEKAL aND)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 12:49:00 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Words, Words, Words
In-Reply-To: <20041203183020.58821.qmail@web52603.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <FEB8E6AD-455B-11D9-9BF4-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>

Jeff and anyone else.  We are always looking for new words for the
Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms.

http://www.neologisms.us


Would love to include yrs Jeff.


mIEKAL


On Friday, December 3, 2004, at 12:30 PM, Jeff Newberry wrote:

> In graduate school, we used to make up words and write
> them on the board in the writing center.  Every My
> good friend Nadonnia and I made up a couple that I
> still remember:
>
> jank (jayn-kh) v. 1. to steal or take in a forceful
> manner, 2. to accost someone, 3. to eat quickly and
> offensively
>
> i.e. "Somebody janked me and janked my wallet.  I went
> down to the Burger King and janked 15 Whoppers with
> extra cheese."
>
> squance (skwahnse) n. interjection 1. an expression
> used when defeating an opponent in chess
>
> i.e. "Sqaunce! I win!"



From halvard at earthlink.net  Fri Dec  3 15:36:17 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:36:17 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Words, Words, Words
In-Reply-To: <FEB8E6AD-455B-11D9-9BF4-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEOBJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


{    Jeff and anyone else.  We are always looking for new words for the
{    Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms.
{    
{    http://www.neologisms.us
{    
{    
{    Would love to include yrs Jeff.
{    
{    
{    mIEKAL

I'd like to suggest "internalational," mIEKAL. What it means
is "having to do with sexual affairs among interns."

Hal                Serving the tri-state area.

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



From memexikon at mwt.net  Fri Dec  3 15:55:46 2004
From: memexikon at mwt.net (mIEKAL aND)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:55:46 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Words, Words, Words
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEOBJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <B4986822-456D-11D9-9BF4-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>

When i teach writing improvisation to folks one of the first exercises 
I do is to have each person create 10 neologisms, define them & then 
pass to another person to use them in a sentence.  I'm always amazed 
how people's innerworkings & obsessions are revealed thru the 
definitions they create.  Which is to say Hal, I've got you pegged.

mIEKAL

(I'LL Be glad to put it in the dictionary, don't believe it is even tho 
I coined the word 20 years ago.)


On Friday, December 3, 2004, at 02:36 PM, Halvard Johnson wrote:

>
>
> I'd like to suggest "internalational," mIEKAL. What it means
> is "having to do with sexual affairs among interns."
>
> Hal                Serving the tri-state area.
>
> Halvard Johnson



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec  3 17:28:22 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 16:28:22 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] little poem made of beautiful words
Message-ID: <s1b09432.025@mail.highland.edu>

Um, nameSake, like, um, I was being Super Self-sonsCiouS  of Such?

kent johnSon

:~ )

*

Hal said,

>Mini-critique: a excessively superabundant sibilance 
saturates this piece.

Hal
  
{    "The susurrus of syphillis"
{    
{    "The susurrus of syphillis
{    necessitates a syringe
{    in the ass every six days,"
{    said Saussure, from the 
{    proscenium, pointing to
{    the overhead (via camera 
{    obscura) of Swinburne's 
{    spleen. "Not a pretty sight," 
{    we read, in the yellowed 
{    note, a stray comment scribbled 
{    in the margin by a student, 
{    "and a sudden and seemingly 
{    irrational segue by our strange 
{    Professor into the second half 
{    of his speech: The presence 
{    of anagrams and paragrams, in 
{    ancient Saturnalian verse."



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec  3 17:40:15 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 16:40:15 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes
Message-ID: <s1b0970f.031@mail.highland.edu>

By the way, even though James Cervantes sucked up serviliously to
Johnson by slinging a sarcastic stab at my self-consciously Saturnalian
sibilance, I have to say, sans any sycophantic shit, that his poem in
the new Spoon River Quarterly, edited by Gabriel Gudding, is probably
the best of issue (in a fabulous issue). 

My impression from the poem is that James lives on an island off the
coast of Ireland or Scotland, raises sheep, and has sex with both nubile
and haggish cave-dwelling muses.

Kent 


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec  3 17:59:54 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 16:59:54 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by Others (Megaklys)
Message-ID: <s1b09ba9.046@mail.highland.edu>


*The Seven Muses of the Boat-making District*  [1]


If I ever see a ghost, I hope it is Brotachos of Alkmena [2].
Because I wouldn't be afraid. I would look at him
Floating there in his lily-shaped bubble, and then I would 
Fall asleep and pick up exactly where I'd stopped in 
My dream, just as if I'd never left it.

If I ever go to the Cyclades, I hope it is Samos, in the last century.
Because Ibykos3 lives there. And I would track him down 
To offer him a bottle of liqueur from the future,
So to drink with him and gaze at his incredibly strange face, 
Which is remarkably like Brotachos'. And I would look at this face
And think, all at once, about the whole Constellation of Dioskouroi.
[4]

And if I ever go to heaven, I wish there to be more 
Hummingbirds there than there are here. 
And I hope there is a tiny golden kind.
Because when this kind beats its impossible wings so fast,
The sound of Brotachos' voice comes out, making every poet-angel
Want so much to be so good to every other one.

And if I could ever do something all over again in the City of Athens,

It would be to go to Brotachus' apartment in the Boat-making
District. 
Because it is like a boat, and Korax and Markos [5] and the one whose 
Name on the list is number thirty are also there. And we will read 
Poetry to the music of Demostratis, sure in the knowledge that
Storms and other dangerous weathers will not harm us.

And if I should ever give someone flowers again,
I hope to give them to Brotachos of Alkmena.
Because once when I brought him flowers, he put them
In a vase in the middle of his seven bronze muses,
And he closed his eyes and bent towards them, as if in prayer,
For a long time, and I saw two tears fall into the flowers.

Therefore, if I ever give him flowers again, I hope their 
Aroma to be like a drug, unbounded by time.
Because we will sit together on his goatskin-covered 
Couch, and look at a long scroll of Antimenidas' etchings. 
And Brotachos will move his hand over all the parallel worlds curled 
Up in there, making me want to fall asleep, and pick up exactly 
Where I'd stopped in my dream, just as if I'd never left it.

And because I hope that when I wake, my head will be on
His shoulder, and his sleeping head will be resting 
Lightly upon mine. And the scroll will still be open.


--Megaklys. The provenance and dates of the author of this
extraordinary poem are unknown, though the reference to Ibykos "in the
last century" would date it ca. fourth century. Intact papyrus
discovered in Alexandria in the Montazah Palace find of 1998. No other
works by him are known to exist.

1. Of course, the classical number is nine.

2. Nothing is known of this figure.

3. Great court poet of the tyrant Polykrates, from sixth/fifth century,
B.C.

4. The constellation of good fortune for sailors, suggesting that
Megaklys may have been a fisherman or mariner of some kind.

5. Neither of these two figures is known, nor are Demostratis or
Antimenidas.



From shkodrov at yahoo.com  Fri Dec  3 19:23:28 2004
From: shkodrov at yahoo.com (Rossitza Shkodrova)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 16:23:28 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Words, Words, Words
In-Reply-To: <B4986822-456D-11D9-9BF4-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>
Message-ID: <20041204002328.46655.qmail@web54608.mail.yahoo.com>

My word for the day:

self-rightSCious (adj) ? the need to prove self right;

  self-conscious + self-righteous; 
  ironclad (in a slightly negative way);

Go ahead! Psychoanalyze me. 

Rosie

--- mIEKAL aND <memexikon at mwt.net> wrote:

> When i teach writing improvisation to folks one of
> the first exercises 
> I do is to have each person create 10 neologisms,
> define them & then 
> pass to another person to use them in a sentence. 
> I'm always amazed 
> how people's innerworkings & obsessions are revealed
> thru the 
> definitions they create.  Which is to say Hal, I've
> got you pegged.
> 
> mIEKAL
> 
> (I'LL Be glad to put it in the dictionary, don't
> believe it is even tho 
> I coined the word 20 years ago.)
> 
> 
> On Friday, December 3, 2004, at 02:36 PM, Halvard
> Johnson wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > I'd like to suggest "internalational," mIEKAL.
> What it means
> > is "having to do with sexual affairs among
> interns."
> >
> > Hal                Serving the tri-state area.
> >
> > Halvard Johnson
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 



From antrobin at clipper.net  Fri Dec  3 20:42:32 2004
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:42:32 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes
In-Reply-To: <s1b0970f.031@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <022801c4d9a2$8c921610$3b351c40@Emily>

Kent,

I know you hate me and all these days, but aren't my poems in that issue
at least readable?

Tony
p.s. How come I don't have a copy?

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Kent Johnson
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 2:40 PM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes

By the way, even though James Cervantes sucked up serviliously to
Johnson by slinging a sarcastic stab at my self-consciously Saturnalian
sibilance, I have to say, sans any sycophantic shit, that his poem in
the new Spoon River Quarterly, edited by Gabriel Gudding, is probably
the best of issue (in a fabulous issue). 

My impression from the poem is that James lives on an island off the
coast of Ireland or Scotland, raises sheep, and has sex with both nubile
and haggish cave-dwelling muses.

Kent 
_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From halvard at earthlink.net  Fri Dec  3 23:20:46 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 23:20:46 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others:  3 by Edward Dorn
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEPBJGAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


In the Morning

In a forgotten town
grit flies up in circles of morning dirt
and cans lie here and there on the brown earth,
a dog slips between the houses.
The sun rose large and yellow, not warm
until the taste of warmth at noon for which old men
wait, talking low tones by the brown walls
their talk thickening in that brief transport of heat.

We are pained by fetters of wind around our ankles,
yet there are no screams in this mountain town, the knife
goes deeply but cleanly each malcontent is a surgeon.
In this silent rising holocaust of down people
the garbage scrapes along in the drafts of ice
and mingles in collections on the ground, this is

their binding tie, a contribution parallel to all odds,
all eventualities--
what they have left at the end of the day
oh bereft are they
caught between walls of earth plotting

a short nervous trip to the table of another's gossip.
Somewhere near in the drifting air in
the capitol building toiled in by masses
there is a click click and a woman sitting yawns

but never in the same way stares forward
as the man in our dry town
whose wheelbarrow of wood to warn him senselessly
spills, whose wrists twist yielding to the rock
yielding to the mock buzzing of a sound economy

in the wind struggling, clad in ancient army clothes
so far from the wars.


Time Blonde

She was a figurine moving
among the hills of seattle
experimentally clothed
she drove an experimental car
to the stores.

What was life then?

It was wandering between 
the planted trees of a climate
of light red rain, it was
just the going to and fro
in a light cold climate
hoping to meet, but nothing said,
to bed, if she had the time.

By which I mean didn't we
wait much of the time staring out
at the various parts of the city
and during those nights
of waiting
the little red light
in the water of the bays
did they not say no use?


In My Youth I Was a Tireless Dancer

But now I pass
graveyards in a car.
The dead lie,
unsuperstitiously,
with their feet toward me--
please forgive me for
saying the tombstones would not
fancy their faces turned from the highway.

Oh perish the thought
I was thinking in that moment
Newman Illinois
the Saturday night dance--
what a life! Would I like it again?
No. Once I returned late summer
from California thin from journeying
and the girls were not the same.
You'll say that's natural
they had been dancing all the time.

--Edward Dorn

fr. *Hands Up*
[New York: Totem Press / Corinth Books, 1964]


Hal         

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Sat Dec  4 07:57:02 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 05:57:02 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes
References: <s1b0970f.031@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41B1B41E.C1360F2@earthlink.net>

Kent, I just got scarried away and stabbed the seaboard and meant no
sarcasm - twas a good effort!

Thanks for the huge compliment.  I found many poems to admire in SRQ,
including yours and Tony Robinson's and Ann's etc.  Actually, I live in
Aridzona, though I did live in Scotland for a year long long ago.  The
poem is partly made out of whole cloth and partly out of glimpses I had
of previous incarnations.  I'm not a nut, just trying to be a
practicising Buddhist.

- Jim

Kent Johnson wrote:
> 
> By the way, even though James Cervantes sucked up serviliously to
> Johnson by slinging a sarcastic stab at my self-consciously Saturnalian
> sibilance, I have to say, sans any sycophantic shit, that his poem in
> the new Spoon River Quarterly, edited by Gabriel Gudding, is probably
> the best of issue (in a fabulous issue).
> 
> My impression from the poem is that James lives on an island off the
> coast of Ireland or Scotland, raises sheep, and has sex with both nubile
> and haggish cave-dwelling muses.
> 
> Kent
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Sat Dec  4 08:00:43 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 06:00:43 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes
References: <s1b0970f.031@mail.highland.edu> <41B1B41E.C1360F2@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <41B1B4FA.C75B8630@earthlink.net>



James Cervantes wrote:
> 
> Kent, I just got scarried away and stabbed the seaboard and meant no
> sarcasm - twas a good effort!
> 
> Thanks for the huge compliment.  I found many poems to admire in SRQ,
> including yours and Tony Robinson's and Ann's etc.  Actually, I live in
> Aridzona, though I did live in Scotland for a year long long ago.  The
> poem is partly made out of whole cloth and partly out of glimpses I had
> of previous incarnations.  I'm not a nut, just trying to be a
> practicising Buddhist.
> 
> - Jim

And also practicing typing.

- Jim


From hruggier at localnet.com  Sat Dec  4 12:04:21 2004
From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 12:04:21 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes
References: <s1b0970f.031@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <007d01c4da23$4e200b90$2bdcf63f@Helen>

whimper  whimper
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 5:40 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes


> By the way, even though James Cervantes sucked up serviliously to
> Johnson by slinging a sarcastic stab at my self-consciously Saturnalian
> sibilance, I have to say, sans any sycophantic shit, that his poem in
> the new Spoon River Quarterly, edited by Gabriel Gudding, is probably
> the best of issue (in a fabulous issue). 
> 
> My impression from the poem is that James lives on an island off the
> coast of Ireland or Scotland, raises sheep, and has sex with both nubile
> and haggish cave-dwelling muses.
> 
> Kent 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
>



From clitophon at yahoo.com  Sat Dec  4 12:52:55 2004
From: clitophon at yahoo.com (Paul Murphy)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 09:52:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Parker
In-Reply-To: <007d01c4da23$4e200b90$2bdcf63f@Helen>
Message-ID: <20041204175255.28163.qmail@web40423.mail.yahoo.com>

Hi, has anyone read the poetry of Stewart Parker,
mainly a dramatist from NI?
best wishes,
Paul Murphy
www.theengine.net


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! 
http://my.yahoo.com 
 



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Sat Dec  4 12:53:14 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:53:14 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson
Message-ID: <s1b1a537.010@mail.highland.edu>

Tony,

The reason I didn't mention you in the email about James Cervantes's
quite astounding piece is that you have more poems in the issue than
anyone else, and this rather annoys me. It also annoys me that you are a
much better poet than I am. So shut up.

Kent


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Sat Dec  4 13:00:51 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 12:00:51 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Poker #5
Message-ID: <s1b1a701.012@mail.highland.edu>

Just arrived yesterday: This really is one of the best poetry magazine
issues I've seen in some time. The Riding essay (on letters as poems),
the Blaser interview, and the discovered Spicer poems all quite amazing.
Kent

The Poker # 5

poems by Rachel Loden, Chris McCreary,
John Ashbery ("Patience is nothing to write home about"),
Kevin Davies, Kaia Sand, Marcella Durand,
Drew Gardner, Michael Carr, and Fanny Howe;
an interview with Robin Blaser ("[Spicer] sent George Stanley and Stan
Persky and, who was the third?, up there with protest signs: 'Fuck
Duncan,'
'Fuck Jess,' 'Fuck Chi-Chi.' Well, Duncan called the police. I came out
but
forgot to take off my dragon costume which rather upset the policemen.
I
got in there and we talked."
conducted by John Sakkis;
several previously unpublished poems by Jack Spicer ("The other day I
saw
the corpse of Emily Dickinson floating up the Charles River");
a long out-of-print essay by Laura Riding ("Trollope is one of the
noble
exceptions: always at pains not to forget or to let his readers forget
that
he is an ordinary person unnaturally provoked by circumstances (the
need of
money) into authorship." introduced by Logan Esdale;
Tim Peterson reviewing books by Allison Cobb and Brenda Iijima,
and responses to Steve Evans's "Field Notes" in The Poker 4
by Nathaniel Tarn ("He had an extremely fresh approach to a problem I
have
been writing about for many years")
and Kent Johnson ("In the case of our 'cutting-edge' poetry, it's
clear
that the plumage adapts at great speed...").


www.durationpress.com/thepoker




From antrobin at clipper.net  Sat Dec  4 14:57:31 2004
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 11:57:31 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson
In-Reply-To: <s1b1a537.010@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <024501c4da3b$843c3380$3b351c40@Emily>

Tony,

Yeah yeah yeah. So I HEAR I've got some poems in there, but I still
haven't seen the issue yet.  

Tony

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Kent Johnson
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 9:53 AM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson

Tony,

The reason I didn't mention you in the email about James Cervantes's
quite astounding piece is that you have more poems in the issue than
anyone else, and this rather annoys me. It also annoys me that you are a
much better poet than I am. So shut up.

Kent
_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec  4 15:39:01 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 21:39:01 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] beautiful
Message-ID: <002101c4da41$49c28230$ca8d3052@yourpk9x5fuc06>

I hope you will all convene with me that this is :
beautiful ! :
http://anitarust.blogspot.com/


Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec  4 16:12:16 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 16:12:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] beautiful
In-Reply-To: <002101c4da41$49c28230$ca8d3052@yourpk9x5fuc06>
References: <002101c4da41$49c28230$ca8d3052@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <20041204161209.E99562@kpaul.spinweb.net>

concur.

-kpaul
mallasch.com

On Sat, 4 Dec 2004, Anny Ballardini wrote:

> I hope you will all convene with me that this is :
> beautiful ! :
> http://anitarust.blogspot.com/
>
>
> Anny Ballardini
> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
> Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
>
>


From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec  4 19:37:57 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 19:37:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <E8CC7CA1-4655-11D9-9BC2-000393C29586@mac.com>

Just posted this at my blog, and thought I'd ask here as well:

Serious Questions


  For the Ashbery fans out there (I know not many read this blog, but 
there's a few of you):
	? 	 Have you ever met another Ashbery fan and spent several excited 
minutes quoting his poems in unison? Have you ever seen anyone else do 
this?
	? 	 Have you ever been reading a book by Ashbery and had some poem 
just stop you until you'd shared it with someone else? Which poem?
	? 	 Have you ever wept or laughed so much while reading Ashbery that a 
stranger asked you what you were reading?
	? 	 Have you ever missed a meal or lost sleep because of a book by 
Ashbery? Which one?
	? 	 Have you ever been so affected by an Ashbery poem that you wanted 
to learn it by heart before you did anything else? Did you learn it?
	? 	 Can you recite any Ashbery poem in its entirety?
	? 	 Can you recite the opening lines from your favorite poem by 
Ashbery?
	? 	 Can you recite five consecutive lines from any Ashbery poem? One 
line?
	? 	 Have you ever woken up at three in the morning compelled to reread 
some particular Ashbery poem? Which one?
	? 	 When you meet another Ashbery fan do you talk about particular 
poems? Which ones? At what level of detail?
	? 	 Without looking them up, can you name five poems (title poems 
don't count) from your favorite book by Ashbery?
	? 	 If you answered "no" to as many as half of the above questions, 
why are you a fan of Ashbery?

  I really want to know.



Best,

Michael




From lattaj at umich.edu  Sat Dec  4 20:04:12 2004
From: lattaj at umich.edu (John Latta)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 20:04:12 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson
In-Reply-To: <024501c4da3b$843c3380$3b351c40@Emily>
References: <024501c4da3b$843c3380$3b351c40@Emily>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.58.0412041958020.17458@rygar.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>

Tony, I'm with you. Hain't seed _my_ copy either. Beginning to look like
Kent's a FOGG, that's a friend of Gabe Gudding. It's that kind of
sychophantic nepotistic boot-licking that's ruining the post-avant scene.
I'm thinking of turning to prose. Either that, or turning pro.

Pray without ceasing,
John


On Sat, 4 Dec 2004, Anthony Robinson wrote:

> Tony,
>
> Yeah yeah yeah. So I HEAR I've got some poems in there, but I still
> haven't seen the issue yet.
>
> Tony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Kent Johnson
> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 9:53 AM
> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson
>
> Tony,
>
> The reason I didn't mention you in the email about James Cervantes's
> quite astounding piece is that you have more poems in the issue than
> anyone else, and this rather annoys me. It also annoys me that you are a
> much better poet than I am. So shut up.
>
> Kent
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>
>


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sun Dec  5 04:53:42 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:53:42 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Arni Ibsen
Message-ID: <009c01c4dab0$4ebc5080$932bb750@yourpk9x5fuc06>

I just put the translation of The Key in Italian on my Blog,

And I dedicated a page under Arni Ibsen's contribution to the Poets' Corner:

 http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=12

to the translations I did of some of his work:

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=871



Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sun Dec  5 04:56:10 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:56:10 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Arni Ibsen
References: <009c01c4dab0$4ebc5080$932bb750@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <00be01c4dab0$a6b53810$932bb750@yourpk9x5fuc06>


Ach sorry, this mail was meant for another list, what you didn't know already is that I translated The Key, a short prose piece with a good emotional value, thank you for your patience, 

From: Anny Ballardini 
  Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 10:53 AM


  I just put the translation of The Key in Italian on my Blog,

  And I dedicated a page under Arni Ibsen's contribution to the Poets' Corner:

   http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=12

  to the translations I did of some of his work:

  http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=871



  Anny Ballardini
  http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
  http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
  The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
  Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
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From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Sun Dec  5 07:08:29 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 05:08:29 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson
References: <024501c4da3b$843c3380$3b351c40@Emily>
	<Pine.SOL.4.58.0412041958020.17458@rygar.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <41B2FA3D.45D1E247@earthlink.net>

Could just be the vagaries of the USPS rather than FOGG.  I see you in
the TOC between Jennifer Knox and Rachel Loden.

- Jim

John Latta wrote:
> 
> Tony, I'm with you. Hain't seed _my_ copy either. Beginning to look like
> Kent's a FOGG, that's a friend of Gabe Gudding. It's that kind of
> sychophantic nepotistic boot-licking that's ruining the post-avant scene.
> I'm thinking of turning to prose. Either that, or turning pro.
> 
> Pray without ceasing,
> John
> 
> On Sat, 4 Dec 2004, Anthony Robinson wrote:
> 
> > Tony,
> >
> > Yeah yeah yeah. So I HEAR I've got some poems in there, but I still
> > haven't seen the issue yet.
> >
> > Tony
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Kent Johnson
> > Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 9:53 AM
> > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson
> >
> > Tony,
> >
> > The reason I didn't mention you in the email about James Cervantes's
> > quite astounding piece is that you have more poems in the issue than
> > anyone else, and this rather annoys me. It also annoys me that you are a
> > much better poet than I am. So shut up.
> >
> > Kent
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sun Dec  5 11:36:02 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 10:36:02 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
In-Reply-To: <E8CC7CA1-4655-11D9-9BC2-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <BDD89512.D602%grahamd@ripon.edu>

I'm not a fan of Ashbery, though I'm not an enemy, either. He just leaves me
cold, most of the time, the main exception being some of his shorter,
funnier pieces.  I'm certainly wrong about my private theory that no one has
ever actually completed reading one of his booklength poems, but I do
cherish the thought.

I have friends who love Ashbery, and I've tried occasionally to engage them
in discussion about what they see in his work.

Mostly we talk on different levels, it seems.  What I see as his flaws (oh,
prolixity, vagueness, and cloying whimsy, for starters) they tend to see as
virtues.  Or we get into tail-chasing debates about how, since, all language
is vague, the term is meaningless, etc.

It should be said that I'd much rather read Ashbery than a critical article
about him--not something that's true of all poets, for whatever that's
worth.  And in interviews Ashbery has never committed the sin of taking
himself too seriously, far as I am aware.


on 12/4/04 6:37 PM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:

> Just posted this at my blog, and thought I'd ask here as well:
> 
> Serious Questions
> 
> 
> For the Ashbery fans out there (I know not many read this blog, but
> there's a few of you):
> ?   Have you ever met another Ashbery fan and spent several excited
> minutes quoting his poems in unison? Have you ever seen anyone else do
> this?
> ?   Have you ever been reading a book by Ashbery and had some poem
> just stop you until you'd shared it with someone else? Which poem?
> ?   Have you ever wept or laughed so much while reading Ashbery that a
> stranger asked you what you were reading?
> ?   Have you ever missed a meal or lost sleep because of a book by
> Ashbery? Which one?
> ?   Have you ever been so affected by an Ashbery poem that you wanted
> to learn it by heart before you did anything else? Did you learn it?
> ?   Can you recite any Ashbery poem in its entirety?
> ?   Can you recite the opening lines from your favorite poem by
> Ashbery?
> ?   Can you recite five consecutive lines from any Ashbery poem? One
> line?
> ?   Have you ever woken up at three in the morning compelled to reread
> some particular Ashbery poem? Which one?
> ?   When you meet another Ashbery fan do you talk about particular
> poems? Which ones? At what level of detail?
> ?   Without looking them up, can you name five poems (title poems
> don't count) from your favorite book by Ashbery?
> ?   If you answered "no" to as many as half of the above questions,
> why are you a fan of Ashbery?
> 
> I really want to know.
> 
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Michael


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sun Dec  5 12:21:04 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:21:04 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Cult of Kees
Message-ID: <BDD89FA0.D608%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Don't recall anyone yet mentioning Dana Gioia's essay currently featured on
Poetry Daily, "The Cult of Weldon Kees."

http://www.poems.com/essagkee.htm

Very interesting for its survey of the odd story of Kees's reputation.

Gioia being Gioia, it also features some literary/political arguments that
will perhaps not be universally embraced.

Here's a teaser:

----------------
There is no need to continue the dreary catalogue of neglect. The facts
speak for themselves. The disparity between the legion of imaginative
writers who admire Kees's work and paucity of academic interest demonstrates
that there is something now oddly out of joint between the worlds of poets
and literary critics. One wonders how much real dialogue about modern poetry
now goes on between writers and scholars ? even those teaching in the same
university departments. The administrative division between English and
Creative Writing departments found in most large universities has become
symbolic of a deeper schism in sensibility, taste, attitudes, and parlance
in literary culture. Poets and theorists not only share no common sense of
purpose, but they also increasingly lack a common language in which to
discuss their differences.

Do academic poetry critics read much verse independently of their formal
programs of research? Are scholars now so preoccupied with literary theory
that they have insufficient time left for literature itself? Is the endless
rhetoric about opening the canon to new authors merely ideological
posturing? Have literary specialization and professionalism become the masks
for parochialism and lack of curiosity? And, finally, if today's
theory-obsessed scholars actually read Kees, would they even recognize the
exceptional quality to which legions of poets have testified? These are not
questions that one can answer adequately here, but one cannot refrain from
asking them, however crudely.

Fr. "The Cult of Weldon Kees."  from *Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of
Print Culture*.

by Dana Gioia

-------------------




====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From martinstannard at ntlworld.com  Sun Dec  5 13:16:55 2004
From: martinstannard at ntlworld.com (Martin Stannard)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 18:16:55 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <000c01c4daf6$9bb97890$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>

So are all those questions you pose some kind of basis upon which to judge something? Ashbery sometimes (a lot of the time) is very tiresome, but he is one of the handful of living poets who absolutely is able to make clear to me why I can be bothered to be alive. I don't rely on him for that, otherwise I guess I'd be dead, but it's what I look for in art. If you have no idea what that means, then you are the kind of person who wants to be able to quote poems, explain the inexplicable, and reduce the experience of art to something like a scientific experiment. Whatev. 

Regards
Martin Stannard

Home Page: www.martinstannard.co.uk

Blog (here will be found musings, poems by various great poets,
book & occasional music reviews & sundry stuff. It's a blog-thing
but also a zine thing ....): http://exultationsanddifficulties.blogspot.com/

"Footnotes can be fun."
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sun Dec  5 13:24:13 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 13:24:13 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Cult of Kees
Message-ID: <74.48449595.2ee4ac4d@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/5/2004 11:20:34 AM Central Standard Time, 
grahamd at ripon.edu writes: 
> 
> Don't recall anyone yet mentioning Dana Gioia's essay currently featured on
> Poetry Daily, "The Cult of Weldon Kees."
> 
> http://www.poems.com/essagkee.htm
> 
> Very interesting for its survey of the odd story of Kees's reputation.
> 
> Gioia being Gioia, it also features some literary/political arguments that
> will perhaps not be universally embraced.

Justice, Knoll, and Reidel--the key figures in keeping Kees's flame 
alive--were all academics, but his reputation mainly flourished among poets.  I first 
came across his work in 1969 in a Modern Library anthology edited, if memory 
serves, by Conrad Aiken.  Kees was also in the first ed. of the Norton Anthology 
of Modern Poetry, edited by Richard Ellmann.
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From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Sun Dec  5 13:45:02 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 12:45:02 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes-Robinson-Gudding
Message-ID: <s1b302e4.054@mail.highland.edu>

John,

I was indeed a sychophantic nepotistic boot-licking FOGG. It's how I
got published in the Spoon River Quarterly. I was once a sychophantic
nepotistic boot-licking FOAR (Friend Of Anthony Robinson). That's how I
got published in The Canary. Of course, now that I have made
satisfactory use of each, I have no need for these particular acronyms.
Editors of poetry journals are to be tasted, chewed, swallowed, and
excreted, with no sense of sentiment, whatsoever. Life is too short,
there are vitae to be expanded, and five poems that don't rhyme by John
Ashbery to be memorized.

By the way, I just this morning was with Gabe Gudding at the Vipassana
Center outside Pecatonica, IL, where he had been on retreat with my son,
Brooks (my son was there for eleven days; Gabe, one of the experienced
meditators at the center, for the last two of the retreat. Thank you for
publishing my poem in the Spoon River Quarterly, lover boy, I said.
What, said, Gudding, you mean it's OUT?

Kent

*
John Latta said,

Tony, I'm with you. Hain't seed _my_ copy either. Beginning to look
like
Kent's a FOGG, that's a friend of Gabe Gudding. It's that kind of
sychophantic nepotistic boot-licking that's ruining the post-avant
scene.
I'm thinking of turning to prose. Either that, or turning pro.




From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec  5 13:48:15 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 13:48:15 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
In-Reply-To: <BDD89512.D602%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <BDD89512.D602%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <38EF60DC-46EE-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 5, 2004, at 11:36 AM, David Graham wrote:

> I'm not a fan of Ashbery, though I'm not an enemy, either. He just 
> leaves me
> cold, most of the time, the main exception being some of his shorter,
> funnier pieces.  I'm certainly wrong about my private theory that no 
> one has
> ever actually completed reading one of his booklength poems, but I do
> cherish the thought.
>
> I have friends who love Ashbery, and I've tried occasionally to engage 
> them
> in discussion about what they see in his work.
>
> Mostly we talk on different levels, it seems.  What I see as his flaws 
> (oh,
> prolixity, vagueness, and cloying whimsy, for starters) they tend to 
> see as
> virtues.  Or we get into tail-chasing debates about how, since, all 
> language
> is vague, the term is meaningless, etc.
>
> It should be said that I'd much rather read Ashbery than a critical 
> article
> about him--not something that's true of all poets, for whatever that's
> worth.  And in interviews Ashbery has never committed the sin of taking
> himself too seriously, far as I am aware.
>
>
> on 12/4/04 6:37 PM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:
>
>> Just posted this at my blog, and thought I'd ask here as well:
>>
>> Serious Questions
>>
>>
>> For the Ashbery fans out there (I know not many read this blog, but
>> there's a few of you):
>> ?   Have you ever met another Ashbery fan and spent several excited
>> minutes quoting his poems in unison? Have you ever seen anyone else do
>> this?
>> ?   Have you ever been reading a book by Ashbery and had some poem
>> just stop you until you'd shared it with someone else? Which poem?
>> ?   Have you ever wept or laughed so much while reading Ashbery that a
>> stranger asked you what you were reading?
>> ?   Have you ever missed a meal or lost sleep because of a book by
>> Ashbery? Which one?
>> ?   Have you ever been so affected by an Ashbery poem that you wanted
>> to learn it by heart before you did anything else? Did you learn it?
>> ?   Can you recite any Ashbery poem in its entirety?
>> ?   Can you recite the opening lines from your favorite poem by
>> Ashbery?
>> ?   Can you recite five consecutive lines from any Ashbery poem? One
>> line?
>> ?   Have you ever woken up at three in the morning compelled to reread
>> some particular Ashbery poem? Which one?
>> ?   When you meet another Ashbery fan do you talk about particular
>> poems? Which ones? At what level of detail?
>> ?   Without looking them up, can you name five poems (title poems
>> don't count) from your favorite book by Ashbery?
>> ?   If you answered "no" to as many as half of the above questions,
>> why are you a fan of Ashbery?
>>
>> I really want to know.
>>
>>

>



Thanks, David


That's pretty much my reaction to Ashbery as well -- though I'm not 
looking for confirmation of my biases. In fact, I'm looking for a way 
back in to a poet who clearly matters to a lot of people.

I'm looking now because I'm working on a short essay on line-breaks in 
metrical vs non-metrical poetry which started from a remark in a NYRB 
review of James Tate's last book, and Tate is lmost never mentioned in 
the blogosphere without bringing up Ashbery, who recently said Tate is 
the poet he turns to to be reminded of the possibilities of poetry. 
It's been nearly 30 years since my brief infatuation with Ashbery's 
poems. As much as anything, I'm trying to remember why I was 
infatuated.

Best,

Michael



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Sun Dec  5 14:03:51 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 13:03:51 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Michael's Ashbery
Message-ID: <s1b30747.055@mail.highland.edu>

Mike,

Old saws keep getting recycled! There is, of course, a surfeit of
considerations on Ashbery, many of which speak to the general the
complaints underlying your questions, and more. One that comes mind at
the moment: There was a roundtable on Ashbery's poetry in Sulfur
magazine quite a number of years ago, provoked by a dismissive review
Sven Birkerts had written on him in the previous issue of same magazine.
His argument was driven by general notions similar to what yours seem to
be, i.e., Ashbery  is pretty much poppycock. My memory is that Eliot
Weinberger, Jed Rasula, Michael Palmer, Charles Bernstein, were among
the respondents. A couple others. They more or less left Birkerts in a
wet heap, I think. Let me see if I can track down the issue number for
you and I'll post it. 


From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec  5 14:08:14 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 14:08:14 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
In-Reply-To: <000c01c4daf6$9bb97890$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>
References: <000c01c4daf6$9bb97890$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>
Message-ID: <036C3286-46F1-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 5, 2004, at 1:16 PM, Martin Stannard wrote:

> So are all those questions you pose some kind of basis upon which to 
> judge something? Ashbery sometimes (a lot of the time) is very 
> tiresome, but he is one of the handful of living poets who 
> absolutely?is able to?make clear?to me why I can be bothered to be 
> alive. I don't rely on him for that, otherwise I guess I'd be dead, 
> but it's what I look for in art. If you have no idea what that means, 
> then you are the kind of person who wants to be able to quote poems, 
> explain the inexplicable, and reduce the experience of art to 
> something like a scientific experiment. Whatev.?
> ?
> Regards
> Martin Stannard

Well, Martin, I'm sorry that being bothered to be alive is a problem 
for you. I hope you're not truly serious, and are just taking an 
opportunity to mock a Philistine.

As for me, one of the sources of joy in my life is indeed remembering 
and reciting poems that I love, and sharing them with others. But the 
rest of your list shows you understand me no better than I understand 
you.

Yours,

Michael Snider



From barry.spacks at verizon.net  Sun Dec  5 14:16:50 2004
From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:16:50 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] HumanWeeds
In-Reply-To: <200412051700.iB5H04Al022716@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041205111432.00bc4560@incoming.verizon.net>

At 12:00 PM 12/5/2004 -0500, Anni wrote:

>I hope you will all convene with me that this is :
>beautiful ! :
>http://anitarust.blogspot.com/
magnificent imagery, Anni -- tell us something
about the photographer?

B.
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From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec  5 14:27:04 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 14:27:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Michael's Ashbery
In-Reply-To: <s1b30747.055@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1b30747.055@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <A4D470F2-46F3-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 5, 2004, at 2:03 PM, Kent Johnson wrote:

> Mike,
>
> Old saws keep getting recycled! There is, of course, a surfeit of
> considerations on Ashbery, many of which speak to the general the
> complaints underlying your questions, and more. One that comes mind at
> the moment: There was a roundtable on Ashbery's poetry in Sulfur
> magazine quite a number of years ago, provoked by a dismissive review
> Sven Birkerts had written on him in the previous issue of same 
> magazine.
> His argument was driven by general notions similar to what yours seem 
> to
> be, i.e., Ashbery  is pretty much poppycock. My memory is that Eliot
> Weinberger, Jed Rasula, Michael Palmer, Charles Bernstein, were among
> the respondents. A couple others. They more or less left Birkerts in a
> wet heap, I think. Let me see if I can track down the issue number for
> you and I'll post it.

Thanks, Kent. I'd like to see that.

Actually, I don't think Ashbery is "pretty much poppycock."  I'm 
perfectly willing to accept that there are great and good things which 
I don't understand or for which I simply have no taste.  My questions 
start from the things I experience and do when a poem takes me by the 
throat, and I wonder if those who love Ashbery also have those 
experiences and, if not, just how does that love make itself known? So 
far, no one here or in email from the blog has really addressed that.

And just to clarify something buried pretty deep in those questions, 
it' s often the thought and not the story or  emotion of a poem which 
has kept me awake: more than once and with several different people 
I've sat up all night wrangling with "The Idea of Order at Key West."

Best,

Michael



From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sun Dec  5 16:16:49 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 15:16:49 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Cult of Kees
In-Reply-To: <74.48449595.2ee4ac4d@cs.com>
Message-ID: <BDD8D6E1.D63E%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/5/04 12:24 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:



Justice, Knoll, and Reidel--the key figures in keeping Kees's flame
alive--were all academics, but his reputation mainly flourished among poets.
I first came across his work in 1969 in a Modern Library anthology edited,
if memory serves, by Conrad Aiken.  Kees was also in the first ed. of the
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, edited by Richard Ellmann.
=========

Yes--and all the above & more is covered in Gioia's survey of Kees's
reputation.  The Norton is cited by Gioia as just about the only time Kees
has appeared in an anthology not edited by poets.

Really interesting stuff, I think--I "knew" everything he mentions in his
article, but hadn't connected the dots in quite this way before.

I first found Kees in the first *Naked Poetry* anthology, ed. Mezey & Berg,
myself.  That's a book that holds up very well after all these years, in my
view, even given its very limited focus.  First time I dove deeply into
Rexroth, Roethke's late poems, and much else.



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From jsafdie at comcast.net  Sun Dec  5 17:33:00 2004
From: jsafdie at comcast.net (Joe Safdie)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 14:33:00 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Cult of Kees (Poems by Others)
References: <BDD8D6E1.D63E%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <019501c4db1a$60713100$56001118@D6T95L21>

Re: Cult of KeesI've always loved Kees, and was "influenced" by him, as they say, heavily -- especially when I first started writing poems in the mid-70s. Here are two of my favorites:

CRIME CLUB

No butler, no second maid, no blood upon the stair.
No eccentric aunt, no gardener, no family friend
Smiling among the bric-a-brac and murder.
Only a suburban house with the front door open
And a dog barking at a squirrel, and the cars
Passing. The corpse quite dead. The wife in Florida.

Consider the clues: the potato masher in a vase,
The torn photograph of a Wesleyan basketball team,
Scattered with check stubs in the hall;
The unsent fan letter to Shirley Temple,
The Hoover button on the lapel of the deceased,
The note: "To be killed this way is quite all right with me."

Small wonder that the case remains unsolved,
Or that the sleuth, Le Roux, is now incurably insane,
And sits alone in a white room in a white gown,
Screaming that the world is mad, that clues
Lead nowhere, or to walls so high their tops cannot be seen;
Screaming all day of war, screaming that nothing can be solved.

ROUND

"Wondrous life!' cried Marvell at Appleton House.
Renan admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly."
But here dried ferns keep falling to the floor,
And something inside my head
Flaps like a worn-out blind. Royal Cortissoz is dead,
A blow to the Herald-Tribune. A closet mouse
Rattles the wrapper on the breakfast food. Renan
Admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly."

Flaps like a worn-out blind. Cezanne
Would break out in the quiet streets of Aix
And shout, "Le monde, c'est terrible!" Royal
Cortissoz is dead. And something inside my head
Flaps like a worn-out blind. The soil
In which the ferns are dying needs more Vigoro.
There is no twillight on the moon, no mist or rain,
No hail or snow, no life. Here in this house

Dried ferns keep falling to the fllor, a mouse
Rattles the wrapper on the breakfast food. Cezanne
Would break out in the quiet streets and scream. Renan
Admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly." And something inside my head
Flaps like a worn-out blind. Royal Cortissoz is dead.
There is no twilight on the moon, no hail or snow.
One notes fresh desecration of the portico.
"Wondrous life!" cried Marvell at Appleton House.

* * *

Obviously not the happiest guy around. But just as obviously, I think, there's something solid and imperishable about his poems, however obsessive. That last poem, especially, is just wonderful to me, and it's hardly necessary to know who all those names "really were," just as it's not necessary to know who the names are in *The Cantos* to appreciate them (something I realize I should have said to Ron Silliman when he and I were "debating" the use of names in poems last month).

So thanks, David, for mentioning him, even through such a dubious pathway as Dana Gioia. I'd encourage those of you who don't know Kees' work to check the afore-mentioned anthologies or see if Donald Justice's *Collected Poems of Weldon Kees* might still be in print through the University of Nebraska Press.

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From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec  5 17:46:04 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:46:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Cult of Kees
In-Reply-To: <BDD8D6E1.D63E%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <BDD8D6E1.D63E%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <71C57A92-470F-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 5, 2004, at 4:16 PM, David Graham wrote:
>
>
>  I first found Kees in the first *Naked Poetry* anthology, ed. Mezey & 
> Berg, myself. ?That's a book that holds up very well after all these 
> years, in my view, even given its very limited focus. ?First time I 
> dove deeply into Rexroth, Roethke's late poems, and much else. ?
>

I loved that anthology, David. Well done! Unfortunately, my first wife 
either loved it more or was cleverer about it, since it disappeared 
with her some 13 years ago, long enough that I'd forgotten you were one 
of the editors  or I'd have said something before.

I encountered Robert Mezey a few years ago as one of the guest 
moderators at Eratosphere, and was surprised to find him writing mostly 
metrical verse. From the discussions there I snagged several of  his 
and Dick Barnes's traslations of Borges.  Heres one of his own, from 
his Collected (1999)

Evening Wind


One foot on the floor, one knee in bed,
Bent forward on both hands as if to leap
Into a heaven of silken cloud, or keep
An old appointment--tryst, one almost said--
Some promise, some entanglement that led
In broad daylight to privacy and sleep,
To dreams of love, the rapture of the deep,
Oh, everything, that must be left unsaid--

Why then does she suddenly look aside
At a white window full of empty space
And curtains swaying inward? Does she sense
In darkening air the vast indifference
That enters in and will not be denied,
To breathe unseen upon her nakedness?

                  after an etching by Edward Hopper



From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sun Dec  5 18:03:35 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 17:03:35 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Cult of Kees
In-Reply-To: <71C57A92-470F-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <BDD8EFE7.D650%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/5/04 4:46 PM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:

>> I first found Kees in the first *Naked Poetry* anthology, ed. Mezey &
>> Berg, myself. ?That's a book that holds up very well after all these
>> years, in my view, even given its very limited focus. ?First time I
>> dove deeply into Rexroth, Roethke's late poems, and much else. ?
>> 
> 
> I loved that anthology, David. Well done! Unfortunately, my first wife
> either loved it more or was cleverer about it, since it disappeared
> with her some 13 years ago, long enough that I'd forgotten you were one
> of the editors  or I'd have said something before.

Whoops!  Very sloppy syntax on my part.  No, I wasn't an editor of *Naked
Poetry*, just a reader.

I am the editor of many anthologies published in Heaven, however.
====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From martinstannard at ntlworld.com  Sun Dec  5 19:06:03 2004
From: martinstannard at ntlworld.com (Martin Stannard)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 00:06:03 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <000601c4db27$61828e10$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>

Dear Michael,

No, I wasn't bothered about a Philistine. I was bothered, although I guess I shouldn't have been, by a list of things which seem to be requisites, or some kind of yardsticks, for being "a fan" of any poet, never mind it's John Ashbery. I just don't get it. What's the problem? I am one of those people who can't remember many lines of poetry at all, but that doesn't lessen my love of the poems I love. And I've never woken up at 3 in the morning to reread any poem by anybody. And when I sit around with my friends, many of whom are poets, we never seem to quote poems at one another. Does not quoting poems in unison count? Or does all this mean we don't "love" the poems we love? Without going through all your questions again, I think I answer No to all of them. What does that prove? That I don't "love" Ashbery? Well, I don't "love" Ashbery but his poems have changed my life and continue to affect it. The majority of contemporary poets don't begin to do that. All I'm really saying is that while I respect your love of learning poems, reciting poems, or whatever, I don't see how your list of questions has any real validity beyond your desire to raise, for the umpteenth time, "the Ashbery question". And that is such an old hat I wish the wind would come and blow it away for good. 

I could, I suppose, direct you to a couple of places on the web where you can find reviews I've written of some Ashbery stuff. Actually, I should do this, because it might give you the detail you want. But, forgive me, it's midnight here in the UK and I have to be awake in 5 hours to go to work and don't have time to seek out the addresses. Perhaps tomorrow, if you are interested.

Best wishes
Martin Stannard

Home Page: www.martinstannard.co.uk

Blog (here will be found musings, poems by various great poets,
book & occasional music reviews & sundry stuff. It's a blog-thing
but also a zine thing ....): http://exultationsanddifficulties.blogspot.com/

"Footnotes can be fun."
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From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec  5 20:32:02 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 20:32:02 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
In-Reply-To: <000601c4db27$61828e10$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>
References: <000601c4db27$61828e10$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>
Message-ID: <A17F26AA-4726-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>

Martin,

I would appreciate that, if it's not too much trouble. I'm not 
interested in judging Ashbery's poems or the people who value them -- 
I'm looking for a way in, and I'm sorry if the way I went about it 
offended you.

Best,

Michael

On Dec 5, 2004, at 7:06 PM, Martin Stannard wrote:

> Dear Michael,
> ?
> No, I wasn't bothered about a Philistine. I was bothered, although I 
> guess I shouldn't have been, by a list of things which seem to be 
> requisites, or some kind of yardsticks, for being "a fan" of any poet, 
> never mind it's John Ashbery. I just don't get it. What's the problem? 
> I am one of those people who can't remember many lines of poetry at 
> all, but that doesn't lessen my love of the poems I love. And I've 
> never woken up at 3 in the morning to reread any poem by anybody. And 
> when I sit around with my friends, many of whom are poets, we never 
> seem to quote poems at one another. Does not quoting poems in unison 
> count? Or does all this mean we don't "love" the poems we love? 
> Without going through all your questions again, I think I answer No to 
> all of them. What does that prove? That I don't "love" Ashbery? Well, 
> I don't "love" Ashbery but his poems have changed my life and continue 
> to affect it. The majority of contemporary poets don't begin to do 
> that. All I'm really saying is that while I respect your love of 
> learning poems, reciting poems, or whatever, I don't see how your list 
> of questions has any?real validity?beyond your desire to raise, for 
> the umpteenth time, "the Ashbery question". And that is such an old 
> hat I wish the wind would come and blow it away for good.
>  ?
> I could, I suppose, direct you to a couple of places on the web where 
> you can find reviews I've written of some Ashbery stuff. Actually, I 
> should do this, because it might give you the detail you want. But, 
> forgive me, it's midnight here in the UK and I have to be awake in 5 
> hours to go to work and don't have time to seek out the addresses. 
> Perhaps tomorrow, if you are interested.
> ?
> Best wishes
> Martin Stannard
> ?
> Home Page: www.martinstannard.co.uk
> ?
> Blog (here will be found musings, poems by various great poets,
> book & occasional music reviews & sundry stuff. It's a blog-thing
> but also a zine thing ....): 
> http://exultationsanddifficulties.blogspot.com/
> ?
> "Footnotes can be fun."
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry




From elemenope at icubed.com  Sun Dec  5 10:34:27 2004
From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 23:34:27 +0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Prairie Doggrellalia
Message-ID: <a05100302bdd8d49dc8ee@[204.215.201.8]>

I always knew they were discussing current events as they stood out 
non chalant  bestride the earth as the tumble weed bounded by.

R i c h a r d  D i l l o n.


Scientist: Prairie dogs appear to have their own language
By TANIA SOUSSAN
Albuquerque Journal

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Prairie dogs, those little pups popping in 
and out of holes on vacant lots and rural rangeland, are talking up a 
storm.

They have different "words" for tall human in yellow shirt, short 
human in green shirt, coyote, deer, red-tailed hawk and many other 
creatures.

They can even coin new terms for things they've never seen before, 
independently coming up with the same calls or words, according to 
Con Slobodchikoff, a Northern Arizona University biology professor 
and prairie dog linguist.

Prairie dogs of the Gunnison's species, which Slobodchikoff has 
studied, speak different dialects in Grants and Taos, N.M.; 
Flagstaff, Ariz.; and Monarch Pass, Colo., but they would likely 
understand one another, the professor says.

"So far, I think we are showing the most sophisticated communication 
system that anyone has shown in animals," Slobodchikoff said.

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/12/04/news/wyoming/835f726da39128a787256f5f006be02d.txt
-- 
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From ron.silliman at verizon.net  Mon Dec  6 07:38:50 2004
From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 07:38:50 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog (& Reading)
Message-ID: <001901c4db90$8ac20080$6501a8c0@Dell>

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

************************************
Reading today (Dec 6)                                  *
at 6:30 PM                                                    *
Philadelphia Public Library                          *
1901 Vine Street                                           *
Ron Silliman & Margo Chew Barringer      *
*Free*                                                          *
************************************

RECENT TOPICS:

The Poker 5:
New poems by Jack Spicer
in a journal that is an "how to"
lesson in editing

What Gertrude Stein, Sandra Gilbert &
"Puff the Magic Dragon"
have in common -
The Berkeley Poetry Walk

Our inner typewriter(s)

Typing the poem as a mechanism for understanding

Pinsky's William Carlos Williams - 
What's wrong with this picture?

Muriel Rukeyser & the Objectivists?

The blogroll reaches 400

An image from another time

The hidden poems in the work of
Elyse Friedman

Thomas Jefferson as polymath -
step inside Monticello

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec  6 07:55:25 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 13:55:25 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Freedom's Fortress: The Library of Congress, 1939-1953
Message-ID: <007c01c4db92$db4d7050$9ea83252@yourpk9x5fuc06>

> Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:31:34 -0500
 > From: "Laura Gottesman" <lgot at loc.gov>

The Library of Congress is pleased to announce the release of a new
American Memory collection: "Freedom's Fortress: The Library of
Congress, 1939-1953," available at:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/freedoms_fortress/

"Freedom's Fortress: The Library of Congress, 1939-1953"  tells the
story of the Library of Congress during a particularly important period
in its development. From 1939 to 1953 the Library underwent a myriad of
changes that established the institution as one of America's foremost
citadels of intellectual freedom. Archibald MacLeish and Luther Harris
Evans, Librarians of Congress during this time, adopted new
administrative procedures that improved the Library's ability to
acquire collections and made it a more vital resource both for Congress
and the public during and after the war.

Comprising 209 items drawn from the Library Archives and other
Manuscript Division collections, the online presentation includes
correspondence, photographs, documents, and other materials which offer
a glimpse into the administration of the Library of Congress, the
building of the Library's collections, the Library's outreach
program, and the role of the Library's staff.

American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating
to the history and culture of the United States.  The site offers more
than 8 million digital items from more than 120 historical collections.

Inquiries are welcome via the web form available at:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-memory.html

Laura Gottesman
Digital Reference Specialist
The Library of Congress




Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec  6 08:15:27 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 14:15:27 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] sic! ...?
Message-ID: <009901c4db95$a7632840$9ea83252@yourpk9x5fuc06>

>From today's PoemHunter

Youth And Age 

MUCH did I rage when young, 
Being by the world oppressed, 
But now with flattering tongue 
It speeds the parting guest. 

William Butler Yeats 

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Mon Dec  6 10:58:18 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:58:18 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Naked editors
Message-ID: <s1b42d4e.048@mail.highland.edu>

 >Whoops!  Very sloppy syntax on my part.  No, I wasn't an editor of
*Naked Poetry*, just a reader."

David Graham, come on, now. It's well known you were one of the
original editors of that august anthology. The estimated ten copies
salvaged from the aborted first run with you, Berg, and Mezey in the
nude on the cover are collector items, and worth quite a bit of dough.
Did you think they had all just vanished? An MLA panel is on the way...

And the Kees poem about the bluish cats going around in a whir when no
one is home (I can't remember the exact image, but it's quite lovely) is
a great poem.

Kent



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec  4 15:14:18 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 15:14:18 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Servantes
References: <s1b0970f.031@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <007a01c4da4a$72ec7270$55b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>



> By the way, even though James Cervantes sucked up serviliously to
> Johnson by slinging a sarcastic stab at my self-consciously Saturnalian
> sibilance, I have to say, sans any sycophantic shit, that his poem in
> the new Spoon River Quarterly, edited by Gabriel Gudding, is probably
> the best of issue (in a fabulous issue). 

Don't take it too hard, Jim--could be a good poem, anyway.

--Bob G.



From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec  6 14:03:03 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 20:03:03 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Thomas Paine and the Age of Revolutions
Message-ID: <003901c4dbc6$3679dc60$7ed83052@yourpk9x5fuc06>


> From: "Marieke Schilling" <m.schilling at rodopi.nl>
 > Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 16:37:29 +0100


Editions Rodopi BV is pleased to announce the following new publication(s)
in American Studies:

Bernard  Vincent:
The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine and the Age of Revolutions.

Amsterdam/New York, NY 2005. VIII, 178 pp.
(Amsterdam Monographs in American Studies 12)
ISBN: 90-420-1614-0 ? 38,-/US-$ 51.-

This collection of essays by Bernard Vincent covers most aspects of Thomas
Paine's life, thought, and works. It highlights Paine's contribution to the
American and French Revolutions, as well as the active role he played in the
intellectual debates of the Age of Enlightenment, in particular through his
heated arguments with Edmund Burke or the Abb? Raynal. More than two
centuries later, those debates?on the 'universal' nature of human rights or
the 'exceptionalism' of the American experience?seem today to be more
relevant than ever.
Not only have Common Sense, Rights of Man and The Age of Reason become
classics of Anglo-American literature, but, from the moment they appeared,
they ushered in a new type of writer, a new way of writing?and a new class
of readers. How Paine stormed the "Bastille of Words," and in so doing
served both the "republic" of letters and the cause of democracy, is the
real subject of this book.


----------
For more information please refer to our website at
http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=AMAS+12 or send an email to
info at rodopi.nl or subscriptions at rodopi.nl (for subscriptions only).
----------

Free Electronic newsletter and online titles:
www.rodopi.nl

Rodopi
Tijnmuiden 7
1046 AK Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel. ++ 31 (0)20 611 48 21
Fax. ++ 31 (0)20 447 29 79

North America:
Rodopi
One Rockefeller Plaza, Suite 1420
New York, NY 10020
USA
Tel. 212-265-6360
Fax. 212-265-6402
Call toll-free: 1-800-225-3998 (USA only)




Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec  6 14:11:29 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 20:11:29 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] HumanWeeds
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20041205111432.00bc4560@incoming.verizon.net>
Message-ID: <005a01c4dbc7$6434c010$7ed83052@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Hi Barry,

I practically don't know anything about the lady (Paula... Anita?). I am diligently clicking back on her previous posts and trying to read here and there, as soon as I get to something interesting I will let you know.

I got to the site thanks to Henry Gould's link on his Blog: http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/
Take care, anny

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  From: Barry Spacks 
  Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 8:16 PM


  At 12:00 PM 12/5/2004 -0500, Anni wrote:


    I hope you will all convene with me that this is :
    beautiful ! :
    http://anitarust.blogspot.com/

  magnificent imagery, Anni -- tell us something
  about the photographer?

  B. 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
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From martinstannard at ntlworld.com  Mon Dec  6 17:13:35 2004
From: martinstannard at ntlworld.com (Martin Stannard)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 22:13:35 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <000a01c4dbe0$d5abcd60$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>

Dear Michael,

 

I wasn?t offended. Please don?t think that. Anyway, now I come to search for me writing about Ashbery on the web, I realise there?s not much. I lose track. There is one review on my Home Page, at http://www.martinstannard.co.uk/reviews.htm -- it?s the middle one of the 3 reviews sat there. It was originally published in a magazine here in the UK in 1996, so I?m not sure I?d quite worked out how to say what I was trying to say. A more recent effort, from earlier this year, is a paragraph in a review of an anthology of the New York poets, which can be found at Stride, http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/ . This site isn?t the most sophisticated when it comes to navigation, but if you scroll down and look for ?New York, New York? you will no doubt find it. Anything else I?ve written must be in paper-print somewhere, and I am better at losing things than archiving them properly, I?m afraid.

 

Best regards,

Martin

 

 

Martin Stannard Home Page: www.martinstannard.co.uk

Blog (here will be found musings, poems by various great poets,
book & occasional music reviews & sundry stuff. It's a blog-thing
but also a zine thing ....): http://exultationsanddifficulties.blogspot.com/

"Footnotes can be fun."
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Dec  6 19:29:15 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 19:29:15 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
References: <E8CC7CA1-4655-11D9-9BC2-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <019b01c4dbf3$c8d40310$25b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

I'm no fan of Ashbery, Michael, but if I made any of my favorite poets the 
subject of your questions, I'd answer no to all of them except the ones that 
reduce to "can you quote a line or more from a favorite poem by the given 
poet."  I do, also, sometimes have an urge to return to some favorite poem 
by another, though not at 3 AM. I find it interesting that you didn't ask if 
the fan had ever read a poem by Ashbery that made him immediately write one 
or more poems inspired by it.

For me, a loved poem will become a part of me in some significant way, but 
rarely as a mere surface memorization of its words.  And I will want to 
share it with others as a critic,  And I will want to return to it now an 
again.

--Bob G. 




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Mon Dec  6 20:02:10 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:02:10 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Poetry Picks 2004
In-Reply-To: <BDD5DE20.D4F9%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <BDDA5D32.D6D9%grahamd@ripon.edu>

OK, then, it's time for my annual *re-sending* of my unheard plea for poetry
books you've enjoyed in the past year.

Really, don't make me beg, OK?

In the meantime, here's what Edward Hirsch has to recommend, followed by my
re-post:


washingtonpost.com 

Recommended Poetry Books for 2004



Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page BW16


For poetry lovers, five suggestions for gifts that sing:

Collected Poems, 1954-2004, by Irving Feldman (Shocken, $28.50) Here is a
half-century of work by an undervalued master, a Jewish American poet who is
part stand-up comic and part psalmist.

Someone Else's Name, by Joseph Harrison (Zoo; paperback, $14.95). The poems
in this first book are so witty and formally adept, so technically
accomplished, that they almost seem to come from another era.

Breath, by Philip Levine (Knopf, $23). One of our necessary poets catches a
rhythm in his own breath in these radiantly human and memorializing poems.

Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002, by Sharon Olds (Knopf; paperback,
$16.95). Sharon Olds is a fiery artist, and she strikes great sparks with
this selection from seven previous books.

Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, by Jean Valentine (Wesleyan
Univ., $29.95). There is a sense of religious mystery at the heart of Jean
Valentine's lifework, elliptical poems that take ordinary things and show
how they are extraordinary.

-- Edward Hirsch 


? 2004 The Washington Post Company


----------
From: David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu>
Reply-To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 09:10:56 -0600
To: "new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Picks 2004

Bob Holman has made his poetry picks for 2004 at About.com:

http://poetry.about.com/od/poetrybooks/a/poetrypicks2004.htm

How about you?  

Time for my annual plea:  what were the poetry books that most impressed you
in 2004?  (Not necessarily published this year.)

As always, extra credit if you do more than just name author & title.  Best
of all would be a sample poem. . . .

I'll mention three that have been in heavy rotation for me.

Betsy Sholl's *Late Psalm* (U Wisconsin 2004).

Frank X. Gaspar's *Night of a Thousand Blossoms* (Alice James 2004).

Eric Nelson.  *Terrestrials*.  (Texas Review Press 2004).
--------------------


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Dec  6 20:09:22 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 20:09:22 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Without A Hero
Message-ID: <42.5de9b480.2ee65cc2@aol.com>

   
Poet Without A Hero
Akhmatova's Late Work
by Majorie Perloff      

 http://www.bookforum.com/perloff.html
     
  The life of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889?1965) might itself 
be the subject of a long narrative poem.
 
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From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Mon Dec  6 20:21:53 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 17:21:53 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Poetry Picks 2004
In-Reply-To: <BDDA5D32.D6D9%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <20041207012153.57085.qmail@web52610.mail.yahoo.com>

David,

I finally got around to reading B.H. Fairchild's
*Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest*
this past summer.  It was one of the best books of
poems that I read this year.  I really enjoyed the way
Fairchild's narratives have this kind of chanting
quality to them.

I also enjoyed David Mason's *Arrivals*.  The central
poem, a long narrative entitled "The Collector's
Tale," is worth the price of the book.

Mark Jarman's new collection, *To the Green Man*
(Sarabande), I enjoyed, as well.

Scott Cairn's *Philokalia* is still lying on my
nightstand right now.  I'm enjoying it, though I feel
that a number of his poems are flat--or they leave me
that way.  In his subject matter, I really like what
Cairns is doing.  So many writers are simply
dismissive of Christianity, particuarly orthodoxy, so
it's interesting to see a poet embrace both the way
Cairns does.  

Do I get an A?

Jeff


--- David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

> OK, then, it's time for my annual *re-sending* of my
> unheard plea for poetry
> books you've enjoyed in the past year.
> 
> Really, don't make me beg, OK?
> 
> In the meantime, here's what Edward Hirsch has to
> recommend, followed by my
> re-post:
> 
> 
> washingtonpost.com 
> 
> Recommended Poetry Books for 2004
> 
> 
> 
> Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page BW16
> 
> 
> For poetry lovers, five suggestions for gifts that
> sing:
> 
> Collected Poems, 1954-2004, by Irving Feldman
> (Shocken, $28.50) Here is a
> half-century of work by an undervalued master, a
> Jewish American poet who is
> part stand-up comic and part psalmist.
> 
> Someone Else's Name, by Joseph Harrison (Zoo;
> paperback, $14.95). The poems
> in this first book are so witty and formally adept,
> so technically
> accomplished, that they almost seem to come from
> another era.
> 
> Breath, by Philip Levine (Knopf, $23). One of our
> necessary poets catches a
> rhythm in his own breath in these radiantly human
> and memorializing poems.
> 
> Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002, by Sharon
> Olds (Knopf; paperback,
> $16.95). Sharon Olds is a fiery artist, and she
> strikes great sparks with
> this selection from seven previous books.
> 
> Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, by
> Jean Valentine (Wesleyan
> Univ., $29.95). There is a sense of religious
> mystery at the heart of Jean
> Valentine's lifework, elliptical poems that take
> ordinary things and show
> how they are extraordinary.
> 
> -- Edward Hirsch 
> 
> 
> ? 2004 The Washington Post Company
> 
> 
> ----------
> From: David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu>
> Reply-To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;
> Views"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 09:10:56 -0600
> To: "new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Picks 2004
> 
> Bob Holman has made his poetry picks for 2004 at
> About.com:
> 
>
http://poetry.about.com/od/poetrybooks/a/poetrypicks2004.htm
> 
> How about you?  
> 
> Time for my annual plea:  what were the poetry books
> that most impressed you
> in 2004?  (Not necessarily published this year.)
> 
> As always, extra credit if you do more than just
> name author & title.  Best
> of all would be a sample poem. . . .
> 
> I'll mention three that have been in heavy rotation
> for me.
> 
> Betsy Sholl's *Late Psalm* (U Wisconsin 2004).
> 
> Frank X. Gaspar's *Night of a Thousand Blossoms*
> (Alice James 2004).
> 
> Eric Nelson.  *Terrestrials*.  (Texas Review Press
> 2004).
> --------------------
> 
> 
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
> 
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com 


From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec  6 21:32:32 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 21:32:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
In-Reply-To: <019b01c4dbf3$c8d40310$25b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <E8CC7CA1-4655-11D9-9BC2-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<019b01c4dbf3$c8d40310$25b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <3F8FDD32-47F8-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 6, 2004, at 7:29 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:

> I find it interesting that you didn't ask if the fan had ever read a 
> poem by Ashbery that made him immediately write one or more poems 
> inspired by it.
>

A very good point, Bob. Thanks.



From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec  6 21:32:47 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 21:32:47 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
In-Reply-To: <000a01c4dbe0$d5abcd60$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>
References: <000a01c4dbe0$d5abcd60$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>
Message-ID: <485C591F-47F8-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>

Thank you Martin. I found both easily and I've clipped them so that 
this weekend I can give them some real time.

Best,

Michael


On Dec 6, 2004, at 5:13 PM, Martin Stannard wrote:

> Dear Michael,
>
> ?
>
> I wasn?t offended. Please don?t think that. Anyway, now I come to 
> search for me writing about Ashbery on the web, I realise there?s not 
> much. I lose track. There is one review on my Home Page, at 
> http://www.martinstannard.co.uk/reviews.htm -- it?s the middle one of 
> the 3 reviews sat there. It was originally published in a magazine 
> here in the UK?in 1996, so I?m not sure I?d quite worked out how to 
> say what I was trying to say. A more recent effort, from earlier this 
> year, is a paragraph in a review of an anthology of the New York 
> poets, which can be found at Stride, http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/ 
> . This site isn?t the most sophisticated when it comes to navigation, 
> but if you scroll down and look for ?New York, New York? you will no 
> doubt find it. Anything else I?ve written must be in paper-print 
> somewhere, and I am better at losing things than archiving them 
> properly, I?m afraid.
>
> ?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Martin
>
> ?
>
> ?
> Martin Stannard Home Page: www.martinstannard.co.uk
> ?
> Blog (here will be found musings, poems by various great poets,
> book & occasional music reviews & sundry stuff. It's a blog-thing
> but also a zine thing ....): 
> http://exultationsanddifficulties.blogspot.com/
> ?
> "Footnotes can be fun."
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry




From clitophon at yahoo.com  Tue Dec  7 11:53:30 2004
From: clitophon at yahoo.com (Paul Murphy)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 08:53:30 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Invitation
In-Reply-To: <000801c4c9b6$92f4bcc0$6601a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <20041207165331.409.qmail@web40405.mail.yahoo.com>

Hi, all,
Merry Xmas!
> Find enclosed an invite to an Xmas auction in case
> you
> happen to be on the other island (Isle of Man?) at
> this time.
> I know you've been quiet but then there is so much
> to
> do, isn't there.  
> Anyway, the reviewing is piling up, the turkey is
> struggling and pecking at my leg, little children
> are
> being their generally offensive selves (God I hate
> them, should have been Scrooge...)
> best wishes,
> Paul Murphy



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo 
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From hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk  Tue Dec  7 14:53:41 2004
From: hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk (gbemi tijani-mst)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 19:53:41 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending
	intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
Message-ID: <20041207195341.3320.qmail@web26007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>


About me  &  YOU & IMMANUEL
BY gbemi tijani mst

notes to the editor - i really loathe cooking where  a  medical prof friend who also love poetry & wished i could author a -100 books-mostly of chap book genre-not the atlas type of manuscript he doggedly worked on 24/7 ...i  ve been planning to send the petit friend who could chat untiringly enchantingly but could not write speedily askance she's a candidate for MBD-MINIMUM BRAIN DAMAGE-sorry  i mean  agraphia-inability to write...Do any of your contributors know what  the condition of not being able to reply swiftly called especially when the lili has such an immense interest in the language arts...What sort of poetry or style of lov e p   oetry bcan catalyse such a real pal as therapy for her young cerebrals-the brocas & the wernicles...i 'm sureyou know 

how to keep linear versification alive...i hope this entertains if not innocously agitate the hearts of ambrosial poets in love -or wooing other poets as friend of compatible talent...Gbemi tijani mst,convener,PLANET FORUM ANTHOLOGY 

 

Praise God 4 everything
especially for the Grace of Gsm  that enables mutual or solo hiding  or possibly running away from  the mind of Christ-in spite of our busy-ness or schedules ?however tight ?skirted or micro-tendered..The Lord is good to us all!and has availed everything that pertain to life & Godliness-iluding our quest to become a linguist or a world project consultant


I ll stop writing now ?1.30am until I actually see uy  or agree graciously to meet /dine together at ?Maybe Ronis Place or somewhere else booked by u for us all ..i HOPE WE  CAN MEET THIS WEEK ?NOT JUST CALL NOR FLASH ..this is still right-eous but noot fully productive .Again not spiritually rich  I ont think we can get the best from each other that way except for your being so busy since almost 40 days /night nons top one cant even say Hi to u in yr awaolow o   cubicle ?apology to the great politician-.Wither your sisterly cadour,ardour,affinity,feminity,psychobiology-u being a gracefully grown up xtian sister!

 Are u just that ?not growing multidimensionally-Ps 71 v21  
You don?t want to be a proverb 31v.10-31 woman? Too expedient for u ? Too complacent  or shall I say too cute for u to be a monolinguist  or bilingual ?vernacular/English  alone!!Too burdensome for u to ask how a new  -not so new from  the time past brother(100% single) is doing  for a mor e effective living than just comfortable living-which is just yr realm of thinking
apology for your God ?purpose-life-You still are the most creative of beings ?beeeing a woman who?s to complete the XYZ of housing,guarding,feeding passively ,nurturing passively too b/c much of the caring isn?t done by your wisdom or limited peadiartric size foofoo calories-he/she needs more marvelous miconutriments thru your chorionic villi & less ataxic fibre food 
u may need more of that to swot/pass yr linquistic quiz .your future son needs  tender ,psychologically adjusted schedules to grow well not a stressful unrelaxed  biology of your sspecial
 physiology..Even those xtians who treasure/practise chastity takes time to stand/stare
Taake time to go out ?albeit to safe places & with trustful brethren ..But then they should ?ve been thoughtful that without time consciousness & they allowing for this ?out of their fettered tables ?its just impossible!This implies such sisters will still have time to fellow-shipping with others even if they ?re writing their Doctoral thesis or just preparing for D.Sc viva voce .Im not saying I ?m not divulging my observations of your camps     p rofile-I m conscious I?m wrapping with an ault babe thatreally challenged my brotherhood on the one hand & my libido creativity in the lexicon of   Sigmund Freud please!Not the meaning the New Testament forbid u & I to beware in the books of Paul to The Corinthians & Ephisians

Surely we cant all do without libido energy as love or love or again as God ? LOVE In fact the only anointing we ?d carry to heaven will be our love ?LOVELINESS,LOVING  in good works,faith inspired by love ,encounters charged with love,not just sexual love that be powered by passions or lust or personal attraction or infatuation .Thi s is usually very fleeting or fickle or fake or satanic ..Deep er  love that energises or engineers or shatters all barriers at reticence or prevent attrition .Love that ?s beautiful notn a fleeting physical complexion .No matter how pretty or handsome a gal or guy is either will be come sexually assuaged at time t
when there ?ll be no fresh appeal or mating cry except for reproductive pressures or formality of responsible spouseship!However if they ?re initially or perennially attracted not just by sexual driving-laughs-but by other interior attributes or profile ssuch as life outlook,richer values as altruism,Christ teachings that are so
 endearing/enduring though ccdemanding physically /spiritually they ?ll associate marvelously zestfullyseriously,salaciously,lingiiuistically
culturally & even travel overseas & still prefer their own genitalia not strange temples!Hi..do you like Don M?s

 I BELIEVE IN YOU
though the impeccable poet-singer also believes in nature/natural things not in uncertainties inherent in synthetic thing s we make .It alsao shows we ?re stillnot yet a perfect example of God  whereas ALL THINGS THAT ARE GOOD & PERFECT COME FROM HIM
For instance see handsets,aircrafts,motor cars  & their diverse modes,brands,varying co-efficient of performance & elegance & sequelae ?implicating in inequity,envy,hatred,satanic hilarity,CANE & ABEL resurgence ?even within modern churches /brethren

A lady poet  eloquently reminds us that true love is not physical beauty

                                                               But an inner splendour

                                                              That glows on the soul

                                                              Radiates through all impediments

                                                              Forsaking all boundaries


                                                              True love is not perfection

                                                               The perfection lies on 

                                                                The wedding of two hearts

                                                                  And two souls,to create a bond

                                                                   That smokes all imperfections

                                                                     And the passage of time 


                                                                       True love is not fire

                                                                       But the kind of warmth one feels

                                                                        From a golden fire?s glow

                                                                         An incomparable comfort

                                                                         In the face of despair

                                                                         An offering of hope

                                                                         When all ?s hopeless


 

Palpably a real woman likes being a girl,behaves like a lady knows that she?s specia l but she also believes in God ,strives to accomplish His plan for her life
.i ll like to sleep like you right now I?m sure Go d will restore every tranquil state I need for a good sleep
I like  you for provoking me to write this quite unlike YOU ! out of a maze of write-ups scheduled /unscheduled,commercial or creative,meditative or moral literary or linguistic,epistles,epigrams,essays,snippets,paula whites,liberty savards,Kenneth copelands,bob & getty   g as 
tim lahaye ,haggins,clavels,cartlands,charles smith,verwer,George etc Yes I trust Him always for that miracle of sleeping/ waking  -which some assume  ordinarily.

Gbemi/07/12/04/mst.pl.dfi.dfj.parry rd/snippets/book of friends/novella.

Coming soon ?the unbending intent

Ps  do u believe this ? I don?t think I can remember yr face perfectly around UI except you call me 
then I can identify yr  voice xracteristic bold & beautiful voicei JUST KNOW THAT U R RUDY I DON?T KNOW IF U R RESPLENDENT 
I ALSO KNOW THAT you ?re good I don?t know if you re  reall y g enerous with your  salvation love which should have embodied all affinity of purpose  -which isn?t penurious in itself
It should be linguistically fecund,fervent-such new encounters properly /wisely managed often enrich the totality of lanuages-though boundless interaction can also dimish or pollute the friends of Christ especially if it?s a case of Belial versus temple of God,unrighteousssness vs. righteousness,dark & light 
God Forbids
May He guide our hearts and divinely connect us with everything:ALL TO HIS GLORY..

Gbemi/mst7/12/04

Nb.You should realize this state of mind se isn?t impossible-as Keneth Copeland biblically counsels-we have to rest our mind on God and REALISE its not impossible,we have the Word Of God ?our thoughts ,the strength of the Holy Spirit & the mind of Christ.He also expects us to verbally  change what we ?re saying about the situation
we have to speak the word confidently,avoid staying on the defensive.We could stay with it however but not carnally ?our weapons are spiritual ,powerful from God.Get around others full of faith Share but don?t over rehearse the problemListen.Pullthe stronghold down .Resist it!Praise God.

 

As Duewell scripturally admonishes praise drives away frustration,depression,tension.It also flies off worries 

.Praise drives away darkness and turns on God?s Light

.Praise brings about  a change of mood.

 It opens up an artesian well of faith and joy 

.Praise is one of God ?s means of inner renewal

.Praise cleanses satanic suggestions such as doubts,critisms,irritations,procastination.Dr. Duewell actually recommends that we should plan and practise praise daily.

It gives a wholesome transfusion.It is a tonic.Praise is a  wholesome  stimulant

.May He give us the grace to to g lorify Him in His PRAISE. Amen.

Gbemi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




		
---------------------------------
Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win ?10k with Yahoo! Mail to make your dream a reality.
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From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Tue Dec  7 15:00:30 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 13:00:30 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
	unbending	intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
Message-ID: <30122208.1102449630476.JavaMail.root@bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net>

Spam?

-----Original Message-----
From: gbemi tijani-mst <hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Dec 7, 2004 12:53 PM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending	intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)


About me  &  YOU & IMMANUEL???BY gbemi tijani mst

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes:  http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html
Salt River Review:  http://www.poetserv.org
RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html



From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Tue Dec  7 08:04:49 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:04:49 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
	unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
In-Reply-To: <20041207195341.3320.qmail@web26007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <BDDB0691.7A54%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>

Kent Johnson, are you at your tricks again?


On 12/7/04 1:53 PM, "gbemi tijani-mst" <hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> About me  &  YOU & IMMANUEL
BY gbemi tijani mst
> 
> notes to the editor - i really loathe cooking where  a  medical prof friend
> who also love poetry & wished i could author a -100 books-mostly of chap book
> genre-not the atlas type of manuscript he doggedly worked on 24/7 ...i  ve
> been planning to send the petit friend who could chat untiringly enchantingly
> but could not write speedily askance she's a candidate for MBD-MINIMUM BRAIN
> DAMAGE-sorry  i mean  agraphia-inability to write...Do any of your
> contributors know what  the condition of not being able to reply swiftly
> called especially when the lili has such an immense interest in the language
> arts...What sort of poetry or style of lov e p   oetry bcan catalyse such a
> real pal as therapy for her young cerebrals-the brocas & the wernicles...i 'm
> sureyou know 
> 
> how to keep linear versification alive...i hope this entertains if not
> innocously agitate the hearts of ambrosial poets in love -or wooing other
> poets as friend of compatible talent...Gbemi tijani mst,convener,PLANET FORUM
> ANTHOLOGY 
> 
>  
> 
> Praise God 4 everything
especially for the Grace of Gsm  that enables mutual
> or solo hiding  or possibly running away from  the mind of Christ-in spite of
> our busy-ness or schedules ?however tight ?skirted or micro-tendered..The Lord
> is good to us all!and has availed everything that pertain to life &
> Godliness-iluding our quest to become a linguist or a world project
> consultant

> 
> I ll stop writing now ?1.30am until I actually see uy  or agree graciously to
> meet /dine together at ?Maybe Ronis Place or somewhere else booked by u for us
> all ..i HOPE WE  CAN MEET THIS WEEK ?NOT JUST CALL NOR FLASH ..this is still
> right-eous but noot fully productive .Again not spiritually rich  I ont think
> we can get the best from each other that way except for your being so busy
> since almost 40 days /night nons top one cant even say Hi to u in yr awaolow o
> cubicle ?apology to the great politician-.Wither your sisterly
> cadour,ardour,affinity,feminity,psychobiology-u being a gracefully grown up
> xtian sister!
> 
>  Are u just that ?not growing multidimensionally-Ps 71 v21  
You don?t want to
> be a proverb 31v.10-31 woman? Too expedient for u ? Too complacent  or shall I
> say too cute for u to be a monolinguist  or bilingual ?vernacular/English
> alone!!Too burdensome for u to ask how a new  -not so new from  the time past
> brother(100% single) is doing  for a mor e effective living than just
> comfortable living-which is just yr realm of thinking
apology for your God
> ?purpose-life-You still are the most creative of beings ?beeeing a woman who?s
> to complete t! he XYZ of housing,guarding,feeding passively ,nurturing
> passively too b/c much of the caring isn?t done by your wisdom or limited
> peadiartric size foofoo calories-he/she needs more marvelous miconutriments
> thru your chorionic villi & less ataxic fibre food 
u may need more of that to
> swot/pass yr linquistic quiz .your future son needs  tender ,psychologically
> adjusted schedules to grow well not a stressful unrelaxed  biology of your
> sspecial physiology..Even those xtians who treasure/practise chastity takes
> time to stand/stare
Taake time to go out ?albeit to safe places & with
> trustful brethren ..But then they should ?ve been thoughtful that without time
> consciousness & they allowing for this ?out of their fettered tables ?its just
> impossible!This implies such sisters will still have time to fellow-shipping
> with others even if they ?re writing their Doctoral thesis or just preparing
> fo! r D.Sc viva voce .Im not saying I ?m not divulging my observations of your
> camps     p rofile-I m conscious I?m wrapping with an ault babe thatreally
> challenged my brotherhood on the one hand & my libido creativity in the
> lexicon of   Sigmund Freud please!Not the meaning the New Testament forbid u &
> I to beware in the books of Paul to The Corinthians & Ephisians
> 
> Surely we cant all do without libido energy as love or love or again as God ?
> LOVE In fact the only anointing we ?d carry to heaven will be our love
> ?LOVELINESS,LOVING  in good works,faith inspired by love ,encounters charged
> with love,not just sexual love that be powered by passions or lust or personal
> attraction or infatuation .Thi s is usually very fleeting or fickle or fake or
> satanic ..Deep er  love that energises or engineers or shatters all barriers
> at reticence or prevent attrition .Love that ?s beautiful notn a fleeting
> physical complexion .No matter how pretty or handsome a gal or guy is either
> will be come sexually assuaged at time t
when there ?ll be no fresh appeal or
> mating cry except for reproductive pressures or formality of responsible
> spouseship!However if they ?re initially or perennially attracted not just by
> sexual driving-laughs-but by other interior attributes or profile ssuch as
> life outlook,richer values as altruism,Christ teachings that are so
> endearing/enduring though ccdemanding physically /spiritually they ?ll
> associate marvelously
> zestfullyseriously,salaciously,lingiiuistically
culturally & even travel
> overseas & still prefer their own genitalia not strange temples!Hi..do you
> like Don M?s
> 
>  I BELIEVE IN YOU
though the impeccable poet-singer also believes in
> nature/natural things not in uncertainties inherent in synthetic thing s we
> make .It alsao shows we ?re stillnot yet a perfect example of God  whereas ALL
> THINGS THAT ARE GOOD & PERFECT COME FROM HIM
For instance see
> handsets,aircrafts,motor cars  & their diverse modes,brands,varying
> co-efficient of performance & elegance & sequelae ?implicating in
> inequity,envy,hatred,satanic hilarity,CANE & ABEL resurgence ?even within
> modern churches /brethren
> 
> A lady poet  eloquently reminds us that true love is not physical beauty
> 
>                                                                But an inner
> splendour
> 
>                                                               That glows on
> the soul
> 
>                                                               Radiates through
> all impediments
> 
>                                                               Forsaking all
> boundaries

> 
>                                                               True love is not
> perfection
> 
>                                                                The perfection
> lies on 
> 
>                                                                 The wedding of
> two hearts
> 
>                                                                   And two
> souls,to create a bond
> 
>                                                                    That smokes
> all imperfections
> 
>                                                                      And the
> passage of time 

> 
>                                                                        True
> love is not fire
> 
>                                                                        But the
> kind of warmth one feels
> 
>                                                                         From a
> golden fire?s glow
> 
>                                                                          An
> incomparable comfort
> 
>                                                                          In
> the face of despair
> 
>                                                                          An
> offering of hope
> 
>                                                                          When
> all ?s hopeless

> 
>  
> 
> Palpably a real woman likes being a girl,behaves like a lady knows that she?s
> specia l but she also believes in God ,strives to accomplish His plan for her
> life
.i ll like to sleep like you right now I?m sure Go d will restore every
> tranquil state I need for a good sleep
I like  you for provoking me to write
> this quite unlike YOU ! out of a maze of write-ups scheduled
> /unscheduled,commercial or creative,meditative or moral literary or
> linguistic,epistles,epigrams,essays,snippets,paula whites,liberty
> savards,Kenneth copelands,bob & getty   g as 
tim lahaye
> ,haggins,clavels,cartlands,charles smith,verwer,George etc Yes I trust Him
> always for that miracle of sleeping/ waking  -which some assume ordinarily.
> 
> Gbemi/07/12/04/mst.pl.dfi.dfj.parry rd/snippets/book of friends/novella.
> 
> Coming soon ?the unbending intent
> 
> Ps  do u believe this ? I don?t think I can remember yr face perfectly around
> UI except you call me 
then I can identify yr  voice xracteristic bold &
> beautiful voicei JUST KNOW THAT U R RUDY I DON?T KNOW IF U R RESPLENDENT 
I
> ALSO KNOW THAT you ?re good I don?t know if you re  reall y g enerous with
> your  salvation love which should have embodied all affinity of purpose
> -which isn?t penurious in itself
It should be linguistically
> fecund,fervent-such new encounters properly /wisely managed often enrich the
> totality of lanuages-though boundless interaction can also dimish or pollute
> the friends of Christ especially if it?s a case of Belial versus temple of
> God,unrighteousssness vs. righteousness,dark & light 
God Forbids
May He guide
> our hearts and divinely connect us with everything:ALL TO HIS GLORY..
> 
> Gbemi/mst7/12/04
> 
> Nb.You should realize this state of mind se isn?t impossible-as Keneth
> Copeland biblically counsels-we have to rest our mind on God and REALISE its
> not impossible,we have the Word Of God ?our thoughts ,the strength of the Holy
> Spirit & the mind of Christ.He also expects us to verbally  change what we ?re
> saying about the situation
we have to speak the word confidently,avoid staying
> on the defensive.We could stay with it however but not carnally ?our weapons
> are spiritual ,powerful from God.Get around others full of faith Share but
> don?t over rehearse the problemListen.Pullthe stronghold down .Resist
> it!Praise God.
> 
>  
> 
> As Duewell scripturally admonishes praise drives away
> frustration,depression,tension.It also flies off worries
> 
> .Praise drives away darkness and turns on God?s Light
> 
> .Praise brings about  a change of mood.
> 
>  It opens up an artesian well of faith and joy
> 
> .Praise is one of God ?s means of inner renewal
> 
> .Praise cleanses satanic suggestions such as
> doubts,critisms,irritations,procastination.Dr. Duewell actually recommends
> that we should plan and practise praise daily.
> 
> It gives a wholesome transfusion.It is a tonic.Praise is a  wholesome
> stimulant
> 
> .May He give us the grace to to g lorify Him in His PRAISE. Amen.
> 
> Gbemi
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win ?10k with Yahoo! Mail
> <http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=29276/*http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/mail/bulldog/index
> .html>  to make your dream a reality.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec  7 15:19:56 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 21:19:56 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9anunbending
	intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
References: <BDDB0691.7A54%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>
Message-ID: <008501c4dc9a$1f02ad80$d1d73152@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Re: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)I think we all had the same idea. It anyhow takes a long time to put all this trash together, and besides that, the author(s) (I wouldn't deny the existence of more, even if in virtual virtuous entity) _in order to be so exhaustively abundant in details_ must have read a great deal of the original which unluckily reaches everybody's mail-boxes.

  From: Paul Lake 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 2:04 PM


  Kent Johnson, are you at your tricks again?


  On 12/7/04 1:53 PM, "gbemi tijani-mst" <hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:


    About me  &  YOU & IMMANUEL?BY gbemi tijani mst

    notes to the editor - i really loathe cooking where  a  medical prof friend who also love poetry & wished i could author a -100 books-mostly of chap book genre-not the atlas type of manuscript he doggedly worked on 24/7 ...i  ve been planning to send the petit friend who could chat untiringly enchantingly but could not write speedily askance she's a candidate for MBD-MINIMUM BRAIN DAMAGE-sorry  i mean  agraphia-inability to write...Do any of your contributors know what  the condition of not being able to reply swiftly called especially when the lili has such an immense interest in the language arts...What sort of poetry or style of lov e p   oetry bcan catalyse such a real pal as therapy for her young cerebrals-the brocas & the wernicles...i 'm sureyou know 

    how to keep linear versification alive...i hope this entertains if not innocously agitate the hearts of ambrosial poets in love -or wooing other poets as friend of compatible talent...Gbemi tijani mst,convener,PLANET FORUM ANTHOLOGY 



    Praise God 4 everything?especially for the Grace of Gsm  that enables mutual or solo hiding  or possibly running away from  the mind of Christ-in spite of our busy-ness or schedules ?however tight ?skirted or micro-tendered..The Lord is good to us all!and has availed everything that pertain to life & Godliness-iluding our quest to become a linguist or a world project consultant?

    I ll stop writing now ?1.30am until I actually see uy  or agree graciously to meet /dine together at ?Maybe Ronis Place or somewhere else booked by u for us all ..i HOPE WE  CAN MEET THIS WEEK ?NOT JUST CALL NOR FLASH ..this is still right-eous but noot fully productive .Again not spiritually rich  I ont think we can get the best from each other that way except for your being so busy since almost 40 days /night nons top one cant even say Hi to u in yr awaolow o   cubicle ?apology to the great politician-.Wither your sisterly cadour,ardour,affinity,feminity,psychobiology-u being a gracefully grown up xtian sister!

    Are u just that ?not growing multidimensionally-Ps 71 v21  ?You don?t want to be a proverb 31v.10-31 woman? Too expedient for u ? Too complacent  or shall I say too cute for u to be a monolinguist  or bilingual ?vernacular/English  alone!!Too burdensome for u to ask how a new  -not so new from  the time past brother(100% single) is doing  for a mor e effective living than just comfortable living-which is just yr realm of thinking?apology for your God ?purpose-life-You still are the most creative of beings ?beeeing a woman who?s to complete t! he XYZ of housing,guarding,feeding passively ,nurturing passively too b/c much of the caring isn?t done by your wisdom or limited peadiartric size foofoo calories-he/she needs more marvelous miconutriments thru your chorionic villi & less ataxic fibre food ?u may need more of that to swot/pass yr linquistic quiz .your future son needs  tender ,psychologically adjusted schedules to grow well not a stressful unrelaxed  biology of your sspecial physiology..Even those xtians who treasure/practise chastity takes time to stand/stare?Taake time to go out ?albeit to safe places & with trustful brethren ..But then they should ?ve been thoughtful that without time consciousness & they allowing for this ?out of their fettered tables ?its just impossible!This implies such sisters will still have time to fellow-shipping with others even if they ?re writing their Doctoral thesis or just preparing fo! r D.Sc viva voce .Im not saying I ?m not divulging my observations of your camps     p rofile-I m conscious I?m wrapping with an ault babe thatreally challenged my brotherhood on the one hand & my libido creativity in the lexicon of   Sigmund Freud please!Not the meaning the New Testament forbid u & I to beware in the books of Paul to The Corinthians & Ephisians

    Surely we cant all do without libido energy as love or love or again as God ? LOVE In fact the only anointing we ?d carry to heaven will be our love ?LOVELINESS,LOVING  in good works,faith inspired by love ,encounters charged with love,not just sexual love that be powered by passions or lust or personal attraction or infatuation .Thi s is usually very fleeting or fickle or fake or satanic ..Deep er  love that energises or engineers or shatters all barriers at reticence or prevent attrition .Love that ?s beautiful notn a fleeting physical complexion .No matter how pretty or handsome a gal or guy is either will be come sexually assuaged at time t?when there ?ll be no fresh appeal or mating cry except for reproductive pressures or formality of responsible spouseship!However if they ?re initially or perennially attracted not just by sexual driving-laughs-but by other interior attributes or profile ssuch as life outlook,richer values as altruism,Christ teachings that are so endearing/enduring though ccdemanding physically /spiritually they ?ll associate marvelously zestfullyseriously,salaciously,lingiiuistically?culturally & even travel overseas & still prefer their own genitalia not strange temples!Hi..do you like Don M?s

    I BELIEVE IN YOU?though the impeccable poet-singer also believes in nature/natural things not in uncertainties inherent in synthetic thing s we make .It alsao shows we ?re stillnot yet a perfect example of God  whereas ALL THINGS THAT ARE GOOD & PERFECT COME FROM HIM?For instance see handsets,aircrafts,motor cars  & their diverse modes,brands,varying co-efficient of performance & elegance & sequelae ?implicating in inequity,envy,hatred,satanic hilarity,CANE & ABEL resurgence ?even within modern churches /brethren

    A lady poet  eloquently reminds us that true love is not physical beauty

                                                                  But an inner splendour

                                                                 That glows on the soul

                                                                 Radiates through all impediments

                                                                 Forsaking all boundaries?

                                                                 True love is not perfection

                                                                  The perfection lies on 

                                                                   The wedding of two hearts

                                                                     And two souls,to create a bond

                                                                      That smokes all imperfections

                                                                        And the passage of time ?

                                                                          True love is not fire

                                                                          But the kind of warmth one feels

                                                                           From a golden fire?s glow

                                                                            An incomparable comfort

                                                                            In the face of despair

                                                                            An offering of hope

                                                                            When all ?s hopeless?



    Palpably a real woman likes being a girl,behaves like a lady knows that she?s specia l but she also believes in God ,strives to accomplish His plan for her life?.i ll like to sleep like you right now I?m sure Go d will restore every tranquil state I need for a good sleep?I like  you for provoking me to write this quite unlike YOU ! out of a maze of write-ups scheduled /unscheduled,commercial or creative,meditative or moral literary or linguistic,epistles,epigrams,essays,snippets,paula whites,liberty savards,Kenneth copelands,bob & getty   g as ?tim lahaye ,haggins,clavels,cartlands,charles smith,verwer,George etc Yes I trust Him always for that miracle of sleeping/ waking  -which some assume ordinarily.

    Gbemi/07/12/04/mst.pl.dfi.dfj.parry rd/snippets/book of friends/novella.

    Coming soon ?the unbending intent

    Ps  do u believe this ? I don?t think I can remember yr face perfectly around UI except you call me ?then I can identify yr  voice xracteristic bold & beautiful voicei JUST KNOW THAT U R RUDY I DON?T KNOW IF U R RESPLENDENT ?I ALSO KNOW THAT you ?re good I don?t know if you re  reall y g enerous with your  salvation love which should have embodied all affinity of purpose  -which isn?t penurious in itself?It should be linguistically fecund,fervent-such new encounters properly /wisely managed often enrich the totality of lanuages-though boundless interaction can also dimish or pollute the friends of Christ especially if it?s a case of Belial versus temple of God,unrighteousssness vs. righteousness,dark & light ?God Forbids?May He guide our hearts and divinely connect us with everything:ALL TO HIS GLORY..

    Gbemi/mst7/12/04

    Nb.You should realize this state of mind se isn?t impossible-as Keneth Copeland biblically counsels-we have to rest our mind on God and REALISE its not impossible,we have the Word Of God ?our thoughts ,the strength of the Holy Spirit & the mind of Christ.He also expects us to verbally  change what we ?re saying about the situation?we have to speak the word confidently,avoid staying on the defensive.We could stay with it however but not carnally ?our weapons are spiritual ,powerful from God.Get around others full of faith Share but don?t over rehearse the problemListen.Pullthe stronghold down .Resist it!Praise God.



    As Duewell scripturally admonishes praise drives away frustration,depression,tension.It also flies off worries 

    .Praise drives away darkness and turns on God?s Light

    .Praise brings about  a change of mood.

    It opens up an artesian well of faith and joy 

    .Praise is one of God ?s means of inner renewal

    .Praise cleanses satanic suggestions such as doubts,critisms,irritations,procastination.Dr. Duewell actually recommends that we should plan and practise praise daily.

    It gives a wholesome transfusion.It is a tonic.Praise is a  wholesome  stimulant

    .May He give us the grace to to g lorify Him in His PRAISE. Amen.

    Gbemi
















----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec  7 17:11:44 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 23:11:44 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Hesperides, hesperides
Message-ID: <00fb01c4dca9$bd2663d0$d1d73152@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Ahi ahi, here is my post to my best friend (as a sign of respect I will skip her name:

Dear ***,

I swear I didn't want to, but it is stronger than me, I'll be the second
Kent Johnson of the net, I will have to repent, I will have to go to mass
every single morning at dawn for an indefinite time, I will have to wash in
the springs of the Alps to clean away my stains, they will have to burn my
body in the lava of volcanoes to free the air from my stench, they will have
to fast for centuries to get rid of my diseased thoughts, they
will...

I just posted _Hesperides, hesperides_ on my blog

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Tue Dec  7 18:47:19 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 17:47:19 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Hesperides
Message-ID: <s1b5ecd0.000@mail.highland.edu>

Anny,

Since you mentioned me (though I'm not quite sure how to respond to the
context of the mention-- and to Paul L., no, I have no idea where that
weird piece came from, nor what it could mean), I will tell you that I
once wrote a quite good paper in grad school on Tennyson's youtful poem
"Hesperides," and showed, pretty convincingly, I think, that the poem--
famously regarded in the literature as an inexplicable prosodic
"failure" because of its "unreadable" meter, is actually an experiment
in classical quantitative meters transliterated into accentual
syllabics, with the cretic (amphimacer) as base foot (Hercules,
actually, goes after the Hesperides on the island of Crete, where the
amphimacer supposedly originated in ancient times).

It got two good readings from Victorian Poetry, with requests for some
revisions and expansions, but in the midst of dissertationiana I never
got back to it, so the piece was never published. It's somewhere in my
garage. The same thing happened to me with an essay for Contemporary
Poetry... Thus I ended up teaching Spanish and remedial composition
courses at a community college. For which I am not sorry...

And your poem is quite something.

Kent


From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec  7 20:26:35 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 20:26:35 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <1ad.2cb4ff2d.2ee7b24b@aol.com>

Ashbery has certainly got his fans from both sides
of the fence. In that NYTBR Poetry Issue, Bloom
said Ashbery was the major American poet since
the death of Stevens. And Ashbery's New York School
cred and his frequent turns toward abstract reverie 
make him a darling of those who find Stevens an uptight
control freak, with a nasty capitalist streak. Go figure.
If you value economy and 'multum in parvo' 
(even within longer poems) as I do, then Ashbery
is not your man, no matter his feather-boa flourishes 
punctuated by moments of keen discernment
and self-reflection.
Finnegan
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From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec  7 20:57:20 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 20:57:20 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] No one needs to know you got it on the cheap
Message-ID: <45.1d07ed1c.2ee7b980@aol.com>

http://www.bookcloseouts.com/default.asp?org=sub&parent=More%2E%2E%2E&N=1539&
Ne=349

Ashbery and others remaindered in time for holiday gift giving.
Two versions of Matthews' After All, no less, and that's only
on the frist page.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Dec  7 21:27:22 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 21:27:22 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] One last anagram
Message-ID: <15a.4564a0ee.2ee7c08a@cs.com>

How can we account for the recent good mood of David Graham?  Easy.  M.D. had 
Viagra.
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From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec  7 21:52:24 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 21:52:24 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] poems by others: Jarman's "To the Green Man"
Message-ID: <cd.1d14f494.2ee7c668@aol.com>

To the Green Man

Lord of the returning leaves, of sleepers
Waking in their tunnels among roots,
Of heart and bush and fire-headed stag,
Of all things branching, stirring the blood like sap,
Pray for us in your small  commemorations:
The facet of stained glass, the carved face
Lapped by decorations on the column side,
And the entry in the reference book that lists you
As forester, pub sign, keeper of golf courses.
King for a day, or week, then sacrificed,
Drunk on liquor made from honey, urged
To blossom at your leisure, and caressed-
The temptation is to think of you without envy.
In Fewston, Yorkshire, near the open moor,
You are set in a church window above the altar.
Wreathed and strangled, amber-glazed, you wear
A look of non-surprise, a victim's cunning,
Though your tongue hangs as dumb as any death.
Elsewhere, when you make your appearances,
Out of your mouth stems and oak leaves grow-
Like speech or silence? Your eyes are empty cups.
Pray, vestige-secret of the trees, for us,
Surprised and pleased to find you any place.

--Mark Jarman
_To the Green Man_, Sarabande Books, 2004
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Dec  7 21:55:57 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 21:55:57 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] poems by others: Jarman's "To the Green Man"
Message-ID: <27.67094c2b.2ee7c73d@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/7/2004 8:52:47 PM Central Standard Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes: 
> 
> 
> To the Green Man
> 
> Lord of the returning leaves, of sleepers
> Waking in their tunnels among roots,
> Of heart and bush and fire-headed stag,
> Of all things branching, stirring the blood like sap,
> Pray for us in your small  commemorations:
> The facet of stained glass, the carved face
> Lapped by decorations on the column side,
> And the entry in the reference book that lists you
> As forester, pub sign, keeper of golf courses.
> King for a day, or week, then sacrificed,
> Drunk on liquor made from honey, urged
> To blossom at your leisure, and caressed-
> The temptation is to think of you without envy.
> In Fewston, Yorkshire, near the open moor,
> You are set in a church window above the altar.
> Wreathed and strangled, amber-glazed, you wear
> A look of non-surprise, a victim's cunning,
> Though your tongue hangs as dumb as any death.
> Elsewhere, when you make your appearances,
> Out of your mouth stems and oak leaves grow-
> Like speech or silence? Your eyes are empty cups.
> Pray, vestige-secret of the trees, for us,
> Surprised and pleased to find you any place.
> 
> --Mark Jarman
> _To the Green Man_, Sarabande Books, 2004
> 
God, I hope Annie Finch doesn't see this!
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From cstroffo at earthlink.net  Wed Dec  8 02:17:20 2004
From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (Chris Stroffolino )
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 23:17:20 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <200412080657.iB86vE6N149206@pimout1-ext.prodigy.net>

Finnegan---

Would your valuing of economy also apply to
a lower judgment of, say, Wordsworth's Prelude
or Rilke's Duino Elegies, or Whitman and Ginsberg's
longlined rhapsodes, for instance--none of which
I'd value for their "economy," per se---
or is their a particular ashberian lack of economy
for you?

----------
From: JforJames at aol.com
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Date: Tue, Dec 7, 2004, 5:26 PM


If you value economy and 'multum in parvo'
(even within longer poems) as I do, then Ashbery
is not your man,
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Wed Dec  8 05:35:08 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 11:35:08 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Hesperides
References: <s1b5ecd0.000@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <00a201c4dd11$9761fb60$aed73152@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Oh Poorest Kent,

you are somewhere in your garage, so sorry to hear of your MisFortunes. But
then you hearten us again saying that you are happy teaching Spanish, which
means that you can come out of your garage sometimes or do the pupils join
you there?

I do not know how to thank you for going through the literary trouble of
reading my pOm, and in order to show all my appreciation I put your answer
on my Blog. This is the minimum I could do,

With highest regards, an anny who should never have a free day (holiday
in -I- today!)

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 12:47 AM


> Anny,
>
> Since you mentioned me (though I'm not quite sure how to respond to the
> context of the mention-- and to Paul L., no, I have no idea where that
> weird piece came from, nor what it could mean), I will tell you that I
> once wrote a quite good paper in grad school on Tennyson's youtful poem
> "Hesperides," and showed, pretty convincingly, I think, that the poem--
> famously regarded in the literature as an inexplicable prosodic
> "failure" because of its "unreadable" meter, is actually an experiment
> in classical quantitative meters transliterated into accentual
> syllabics, with the cretic (amphimacer) as base foot (Hercules,
> actually, goes after the Hesperides on the island of Crete, where the
> amphimacer supposedly originated in ancient times).
>
> It got two good readings from Victorian Poetry, with requests for some
> revisions and expansions, but in the midst of dissertationiana I never
> got back to it, so the piece was never published. It's somewhere in my
> garage. The same thing happened to me with an essay for Contemporary
> Poetry... Thus I ended up teaching Spanish and remedial composition
> courses at a community college. For which I am not sorry...
>
> And your poem is quite something.
>
> Kent
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Wed Dec  8 05:46:05 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 11:46:05 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] 350 Years of American Jewry, 1654-2004:
Message-ID: <00bd01c4dd13$1f62c3e0$aed73152@yourpk9x5fuc06>

>From: "Cornelia Wilhelm" <cornelia.Wilhelm at lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:25:30 +0100

350 Years of American Jewry, 1654-2004:
Transcending the European Experience?
International Scholarly Conference at the
Akademie f?r Politische Bildung, Tutzing,
in cooperation with Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich
and the University of Erfurt.

Registration: Akademie f?r Politische Bildung Tutzing, Buchensee 1, 82327 
Tutzing, Tel. 08158/256-0; Fax: 08158/256-14+15, 
<http://www.apb-tutzing.de/>http://www.apb-tutzing.de
Fee (accommodation and meals, 4 days): ? 110.-


The Conference:

The main theme of the conference will revolve around the question: Did 
America keep the promise it originally made to Jewish immigration from 
Europe, and if so - how was the American Jewish Experience different - 
where in particular was it able to transcend the limits of the European 
experience?
Trying to focus on this question, we hope to create a new trans-national 
perspective on Jewish history which is largely missing from American 
History as well as from Jewish Studies. Such an approach will also help us 
to move beyond the narrow boundaries of Ethnic History and integrate Jewish 
History into the larger narrative of Jewish-non-Jewish relations in various 
societies.

Organizers:
PD Dr. Cornelia Wilhelm (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen)
und Dr. Christian Wiese (Universit?t Erfurt/Trinity College Dublin),
Akademie f?r Politische Bildung, Tutzing.


Date: 23.-26. May, 2005
Place: Akademie f?r politische Bildung, Tutzing bei M?nchen (Co-organizer).





Monday, May 23, 2005



Welcome and Opening Remarks, 14h:





Prof. Dr. H. Oberreuter, Akademie f?r Politische Bildung, Tutzing

Cornelia Wilhelm (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen)
Christian Wiese (Universit?t Erfurt)



Keynote address

Finding a New Zion in America?
Religion, Ethnicity and Interfaith Relations in the
United States of America and Europe, 1654-2003
(Hasia Diner, New York University)

COFFEE BREAK


Afternoon Session, 16-18h:



Colonial Identities


Seeking Religious Tolerance as Agents of Colonial Enterprise:
The Sephardic Community in Colonial America
Judah M. Cohen (New York University, New York City)

Religion and National Independence:
Religion and Civic Identity - American Jews and the First Modern Nation
(Eli Faber, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City)

Chair: Winfried Schulze (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen)

DINNER


Evening Lecture, 20h:

The Emergence of an American Judaism I



 From One Judaism to Many: Embryonic Development of a


Modern Pluralistic Judaism in Nineteenth Century America

Dana Kaplan (University of Missouri, Kansas City, KA)










Tuesday, May 24, 2005



Morning Session, 9h-1230h:



The Emergence of an American Judaism II




Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: America Paves the Way for Jewish Women

(Karla Goldman, American-Jewish Women's Archives, Boston, MA)



An Old Battle and the Prospects of Peace :


Jewish-Christian Relationship in Nineteenth Century America

(Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC)

COFFEE BREAK

 From Aryan and Semite to Black and White:
Jewish Racial Identity in German and American Contexts
(Eric Goldstein, Emory University, Atlanta, GA)



German Jews and the Civic Culture of Nineteenth-Century America

Cathleen Conzen, University of Chicago

Chair: Prof. Dr. Michael A. Meyer (Hebrew Union College Cincinnati, OH)

LUNCH


Afternoon Session, 1330h-18h:



New Immigration and New Challenges


America's Promise as a Place of Jewish Scholarship and Learning? -
Transatlantic Positions, Debates and Hopes, 1850-1930
(Christian Wiese, Universit?t Erfurt)

The Synagogue-Center Experiment in America, 1890-1920:
Building Jewish Community in the Open Society
David Kaufman (Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, CA)

Exporting Socialism:
The Influence of American Jewish Radicals on Russian Jews?
(Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin Madison, WI)

COFFEE BREAK



American Zionism in the Promised Land

(Arthur Goren, Columbia University, NY)



Is there a 'new' Anti-semitism in the United States?

(Leonhard Dinnerstein, University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ)

Chair: Jacques Picard (Institut f?r J?dische Studien, Universit?t Basel, CH)



DINNER






Wednesday, May 25, 2004



Morning Session, 9h - 1230h:



 From Holocaust to Cold War




The World Jewish Congress and America's Response to Nazism

(Mark Raider, State University of New York, Albany, NY)



German Refugee Rabbis and the American Civil Rights Movement

(Cornelia Wilhelm, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen)

COFFEE BREAK



American - Jewish Culture?

(Stephen Whitfield, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA)



American Jews and the Middle East Crisis

(Michael Staub, Bowling Green University, Bowling Green, OH)

Chair: Anthony Kauders (Universit?t M?nchen)

LUNCH


Afternoon Session, 15h - 18h:

Taking on a New Role?



American Responses to the Holocaust

(Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ)

Resisters and Accommodators Revisited:
Reflections on the study of Orthodoxy in America
(Jeffrey Gurock, Yeshiva University, New York City)

COFFEE BREAK



Russian-Jewish Immigrants in Europe and the USA:


Enclaves or Trans-national Communities?

(Willi Jasper, Universit?t Potsdam)

Jewish History for the 21st Century: A New Master Narrative?
Michael Brenner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen)

Chair: Michael Brocke (S.-Steinheim-Institut, Universit?t Duisburg/D?sseldorf)


DINNER


Evening Lecture, 20h:



 From Periphery to Centre: American Jewry and Jewish History after the 
Holocaust

(Jonathan Sarna, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA)





Thursday, May 26, 2005




Conclusion and Outlook - Roundtable Discussion, 10h -12h:


American Jewry and American Politics: Less Can Be More.
(Henry Feingold, Baruch College, New York City)


Transcending the European Experience?
A Reappraisal of America's Promise after 350 Years
Moderation: Andreas Gotzmann (Universit?t Erfurt)

Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA)
Dan Diner (Simon-Dubnow-Institut and Universit?t Leipzig)
Berndt Ostendorf (Amerika-Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen)
Henry Feingold (Baruch College, New York City)

LUNCH
DEPARTURE

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From hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk  Wed Dec  8 08:03:09 2004
From: hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk (gbemi tijani-mst)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 13:03:09 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6, Issue 17
In-Reply-To: <200412072018.iB7KIuAn008143@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <20041208130309.29869.qmail@web26008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

dear editor,
please note my apology for those typographical errata -knowing they could,ipso facto ,confuse or change intended meanings a writer is conveying...Again the reality here in Africa-Nigeria inclusive - is that almost all of  the third generation writers /poets      browse from rental public cybercafes excluding those already well established and as such could afford to connect their  laptops to the internet Even a large excess of academics -including creative writing teachers are still yet to be fervent in the internet  despite sophistication of few others like WOLE SOYINKA-THE 1986 nOBEL lAUREAT. LL BE WARY OF WHITE HOT POST though this se a wet blanket for others...with all modesty-mst 

new-poetry-request at wiz.cath.vt.edu wrote:
Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..."


Today's Topics:

1. about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending intent's
request from a linguistic babe on campus) (gbemi tijani-mst)
2. Re: about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending
intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus) (James Cervantes)
3. Re: about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending
intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus) (Paul Lake)
4. Re: about me & you- a meditative monologue9anunbending
intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus) (Anny Ballardini)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 19:53:41 +0000 (GMT)
From: gbemi tijani-mst 
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <20041207195341.3320.qmail at web26007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


About me & YOU & IMMANUEL
BY gbemi tijani mst

notes to the editor - i really loathe cooking where a medical prof friend who also love poetry & wished i could author a -100 books-mostly of chap book genre-not the atlas type of manuscript he doggedly worked on 24/7 ...i ve been planning to send the petit friend who could chat untiringly enchantingly but could not write speedily askance she's a candidate for MBD-MINIMUM BRAIN DAMAGE-sorry i mean agraphia-inability to write...Do any of your contributors know what the condition of not being able to reply swiftly called especially when the lili has such an immense interest in the language arts...What sort of poetry or style of lov e p oetry bcan catalyse such a real pal as therapy for her young cerebrals-the brocas & the wernicles...i 'm sureyou know 

how to keep linear versification alive...i hope this entertains if not innocously agitate the hearts of ambrosial poets in love -or wooing other poets as friend of compatible talent...Gbemi tijani mst,convener,PLANET FORUM ANTHOLOGY 



Praise God 4 everything
especially for the Grace of Gsm that enables mutual or solo hiding or possibly running away from the mind of Christ-in spite of our busy-ness or schedules ?however tight ?skirted or micro-tendered..The Lord is good to us all!and has availed everything that pertain to life & Godliness-iluding our quest to become a linguist or a world project consultant


I ll stop writing now ?1.30am until I actually see uy or agree graciously to meet /dine together at ?Maybe Ronis Place or somewhere else booked by u for us all ..i HOPE WE CAN MEET THIS WEEK ?NOT JUST CALL NOR FLASH ..this is still right-eous but noot fully productive .Again not spiritually rich I ont think we can get the best from each other that way except for your being so busy since almost 40 days /night nons top one cant even say Hi to u in yr awaolow o cubicle ?apology to the great politician-.Wither your sisterly cadour,ardour,affinity,feminity,psychobiology-u being a gracefully grown up xtian sister!

Are u just that ?not growing multidimensionally-Ps 71 v21 
You don?t want to be a proverb 31v.10-31 woman? Too expedient for u ? Too complacent or shall I say too cute for u to be a monolinguist or bilingual ?vernacular/English alone!!Too burdensome for u to ask how a new -not so new from the time past brother(100% single) is doing for a mor e effective living than just comfortable living-which is just yr realm of thinking
apology for your God ?purpose-life-You still are the most creative of beings ?beeeing a woman who?s to complete the XYZ of housing,guarding,feeding passively ,nurturing passively too b/c much of the caring isn?t done by your wisdom or limited peadiartric size foofoo calories-he/she needs more marvelous miconutriments thru your chorionic villi & less ataxic fibre food 
u may need more of that to swot/pass yr linquistic quiz .your future son needs tender ,psychologically adjusted schedules to grow well not a stressful unrelaxed biology of your sspe!
cial
physiology..Even those xtians who treasure/practise chastity takes time to stand/stare
Taake time to go out ?albeit to safe places & with trustful brethren ..But then they should ?ve been thoughtful that without time consciousness & they allowing for this ?out of their fettered tables ?its just impossible!This implies such sisters will still have time to fellow-shipping with others even if they ?re writing their Doctoral thesis or just preparing for D.Sc viva voce .Im not saying I ?m not divulging my observations of your camps p rofile-I m conscious I?m wrapping with an ault babe thatreally challenged my brotherhood on the one hand & my libido creativity in the lexicon of Sigmund Freud please!Not the meaning the New Testament forbid u & I to beware in the books of Paul to The Corinthians & Ephisians

Surely we cant all do without libido energy as love or love or again as God ? LOVE In fact the only anointing we ?d carry to heaven will be our love ?LOVELINESS,LOVING in good works,faith inspired by love ,encounters charged with love,not just sexual love that be powered by passions or lust or personal attraction or infatuation .Thi s is usually very fleeting or fickle or fake or satanic ..Deep er love that energises or engineers or shatters all barriers at reticence or prevent attrition .Love that ?s beautiful notn a fleeting physical complexion .No matter how pretty or handsome a gal or guy is either will be come sexually assuaged at time t
when there ?ll be no fresh appeal or mating cry except for reproductive pressures or formality of responsible spouseship!However if they ?re initially or perennially attracted not just by sexual driving-laughs-but by other interior attributes or profile ssuch as life outlook,richer values as altruism,Christ teachings that are so
endearing/enduring though ccdemanding physically /spiritually they ?ll associate marvelously zestfullyseriously,salaciously,lingiiuistically
culturally & even travel overseas & still prefer their own genitalia not strange temples!Hi..do you like Don M?s

I BELIEVE IN YOU
though the impeccable poet-singer also believes in nature/natural things not in uncertainties inherent in synthetic thing s we make .It alsao shows we ?re stillnot yet a perfect example of God whereas ALL THINGS THAT ARE GOOD & PERFECT COME FROM HIM
For instance see handsets,aircrafts,motor cars & their diverse modes,brands,varying co-efficient of performance & elegance & sequelae ?implicating in inequity,envy,hatred,satanic hilarity,CANE & ABEL resurgence ?even within modern churches /brethren

A lady poet eloquently reminds us that true love is not physical beauty

But an inner splendour

That glows on the soul

Radiates through all impediments

Forsaking all boundaries


True love is not perfection

The perfection lies on 

The wedding of two hearts

And two souls,to create a bond

That smokes all imperfections

And the passage of time 


True love is not fire

But the kind of warmth one feels

>From a golden fire?s glow

An incomparable comfort

In the face of despair

An offering of hope

When all ?s hopeless




Palpably a real woman likes being a girl,behaves like a lady knows that she?s specia l but she also believes in God ,strives to accomplish His plan for her life
.i ll like to sleep like you right now I?m sure Go d will restore every tranquil state I need for a good sleep
I like you for provoking me to write this quite unlike YOU ! out of a maze of write-ups scheduled /unscheduled,commercial or creative,meditative or moral literary or linguistic,epistles,epigrams,essays,snippets,paula whites,liberty savards,Kenneth copelands,bob & getty g as 
tim lahaye ,haggins,clavels,cartlands,charles smith,verwer,George etc Yes I trust Him always for that miracle of sleeping/ waking -which some assume ordinarily.

Gbemi/07/12/04/mst.pl.dfi.dfj.parry rd/snippets/book of friends/novella.

Coming soon ?the unbending intent

Ps do u believe this ? I don?t think I can remember yr face perfectly around UI except you call me 
then I can identify yr voice xracteristic bold & beautiful voicei JUST KNOW THAT U R RUDY I DON?T KNOW IF U R RESPLENDENT 
I ALSO KNOW THAT you ?re good I don?t know if you re reall y g enerous with your salvation love which should have embodied all affinity of purpose -which isn?t penurious in itself
It should be linguistically fecund,fervent-such new encounters properly /wisely managed often enrich the totality of lanuages-though boundless interaction can also dimish or pollute the friends of Christ especially if it?s a case of Belial versus temple of God,unrighteousssness vs. righteousness,dark & light 
God Forbids
May He guide our hearts and divinely connect us with everything:ALL TO HIS GLORY..

Gbemi/mst7/12/04

Nb.You should realize this state of mind se isn?t impossible-as Keneth Copeland biblically counsels-we have to rest our mind on God and REALISE its not impossible,we have the Word Of God ?our thoughts ,the strength of the Holy Spirit & the mind of Christ.He also expects us to verbally change what we ?re saying about the situation
we have to speak the word confidently,avoid staying on the defensive.We could stay with it however but not carnally ?our weapons are spiritual ,powerful from God.Get around others full of faith Share but don?t over rehearse the problemListen.Pullthe stronghold down .Resist it!Praise God.



As Duewell scripturally admonishes praise drives away frustration,depression,tension.It also flies off worries 

.Praise drives away darkness and turns on God?s Light

.Praise brings about a change of mood.

It opens up an artesian well of faith and joy 

.Praise is one of God ?s means of inner renewal

.Praise cleanses satanic suggestions such as doubts,critisms,irritations,procastination.Dr. Duewell actually recommends that we should plan and practise praise daily.

It gives a wholesome transfusion.It is a tonic.Praise is a wholesome stimulant

.May He give us the grace to to g lorify Him in His PRAISE. Amen.

Gbemi



















---------------------------------
Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win ?10k with Yahoo! Mail to make your dream a reality.
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------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 13:00:30 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
From: James Cervantes 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID:
<30122208.1102449630476.JavaMail.root at bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Spam?

-----Original Message-----
From: gbemi tijani-mst 
Sent: Dec 7, 2004 12:53 PM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)


About me & YOU & IMMANUEL???BY gbemi tijani mst

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html
Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org
RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:04:49 -0600
From: Paul Lake 

Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Kent Johnson, are you at your tricks again?


On 12/7/04 1:53 PM, "gbemi tijani-mst" wrote:

> About me & YOU & IMMANUEL
BY gbemi tijani mst
> 
> notes to the editor - i really loathe cooking where a medical prof friend
> who also love poetry & wished i could author a -100 books-mostly of chap book
> genre-not the atlas type of manuscript he doggedly worked on 24/7 ...i ve
> been planning to send the petit friend who could chat untiringly enchantingly
> but could not write speedily askance she's a candidate for MBD-MINIMUM BRAIN
> DAMAGE-sorry i mean agraphia-inability to write...Do any of your
> contributors know what the condition of not being able to reply swiftly
> called especially when the lili has such an immense interest in the language
> arts...What sort of poetry or style of lov e p oetry bcan catalyse such a
> real pal as therapy for her young cerebrals-the brocas & the wernicles...i 'm
> sureyou know 
> 
> how to keep linear versification alive...i hope this entertains if not
> innocously agitate the hearts of ambrosial poets in love -or wooing other
> poets as friend of compatible talent...Gbemi tijani mst,convener,PLANET FORUM
> ANTHOLOGY 
> 
> 
> 
> Praise God 4 everything
especially for the Grace of Gsm that enables mutual
> or solo hiding or possibly running away from the mind of Christ-in spite of
> our busy-ness or schedules ?however tight ?skirted or micro-tendered..The Lord
> is good to us all!and has availed everything that pertain to life &
> Godliness-iluding our quest to become a linguist or a world project
> consultant

> 
> I ll stop writing now ?1.30am until I actually see uy or agree graciously to
> meet /dine together at ?Maybe Ronis Place or somewhere else booked by u for us
> all ..i HOPE WE CAN MEET THIS WEEK ?NOT JUST CALL NOR FLASH ..this is still
> right-eous but noot fully productive .Again not spiritually rich I ont think
> we can get the best from each other that way except for your being so busy
> since almost 40 days /night nons top one cant even say Hi to u in yr awaolow o
> cubicle ?apology to the great politician-.Wither your sisterly
> cadour,ardour,affinity,feminity,psychobiology-u being a gracefully grown up
> xtian sister!
> 
> Are u just that ?not growing multidimensionally-Ps 71 v21 
You don?t want to
> be a proverb 31v.10-31 woman? Too expedient for u ? Too complacent or shall I
> say too cute for u to be a monolinguist or bilingual ?vernacular/English
> alone!!Too burdensome for u to ask how a new -not so new from the time past
> brother(100% single) is doing for a mor e effective living than just
> comfortable living-which is just yr realm of thinking
apology for your God
> ?purpose-life-You still are the most creative of beings ?beeeing a woman who?s
> to complete t! he XYZ of housing,guarding,feeding passively ,nurturing
> passively too b/c much of the caring isn?t done by your wisdom or limited
> peadiartric size foofoo calories-he/she needs more marvelous miconutriments
> thru your chorionic villi & less ataxic fibre food 
u may need more of that to
> swot/pass yr linquistic quiz .your future son needs tender ,psychologically
> adjusted schedules to grow well not a stressful unrelaxed biology of your
> sspecial physiology..Even those xtians who treasure/practise chastity takes
> time to stand/stare
Taake time to go out ?albeit to safe places & with
> trustful brethren ..But then they should ?ve been thoughtful that without time
> consciousness & they allowing for this ?out of their fettered tables ?its just
> impossible!This implies such sisters will still have time to fellow-shipping
> with others even if they ?re writing their Doctoral thesis or just preparing
> fo! r D.Sc viva voce .Im not saying I ?m not divulging my observations of your
> camps p rofile-I m conscious I?m wrapping with an ault babe thatreally
> challenged my brotherhood on the one hand & my libido creativity in the
> lexicon of Sigmund Freud please!Not the meaning the New Testament forbid u &
> I to beware in the books of Paul to The Corinthians & Ephisians
> 
> Surely we cant all do without libido energy as love or love or again as God ?
> LOVE In fact the only anointing we ?d carry to heaven will be our love
> ?LOVELINESS,LOVING in good works,faith inspired by love ,encounters charged
> with love,not just sexual love that be powered by passions or lust or personal
> attraction or infatuation .Thi s is usually very fleeting or fickle or fake or
> satanic ..Deep er love that energises or engineers or shatters all barriers
> at reticence or prevent attrition .Love that ?s beautiful notn a fleeting
> physical complexion .No matter how pretty or handsome a gal or guy is either
> will be come sexually assuaged at time t
when there ?ll be no fresh appeal or
> mating cry except for reproductive pressures or formality of responsible
> spouseship!However if they ?re initially or perennially attracted not just by
> sexual driving-laughs-but by other interior attributes or profile ssuch as
> life outlook,richer values as altruism,Christ teachings that are so
> endearing/enduring though ccdemanding physically /spiritually they ?ll
> associate marvelously
> zestfullyseriously,salaciously,lingiiuistically
culturally & even travel
> overseas & still prefer their own genitalia not strange temples!Hi..do you
> like Don M?s
> 
> I BELIEVE IN YOU
though the impeccable poet-singer also believes in
> nature/natural things not in uncertainties inherent in synthetic thing s we
> make .It alsao shows we ?re stillnot yet a perfect example of God whereas ALL
> THINGS THAT ARE GOOD & PERFECT COME FROM HIM
For instance see
> handsets,aircrafts,motor cars & their diverse modes,brands,varying
> co-efficient of performance & elegance & sequelae ?implicating in
> inequity,envy,hatred,satanic hilarity,CANE & ABEL resurgence ?even within
> modern churches /brethren
> 
> A lady poet eloquently reminds us that true love is not physical beauty
> 
> But an inner
> splendour
> 
> That glows on
> the soul
> 
> Radiates through
> all impediments
> 
> Forsaking all
> boundaries

> 
> True love is not
> perfection
> 
> The perfection
> lies on 
> 
> The wedding of

=== message truncated ===
		
---------------------------------
Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win ?10k with Yahoo! Mail to make your dream a reality.
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From hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk  Wed Dec  8 09:11:16 2004
From: hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk (gbemi tijani-mst)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 14:11:16 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6, Issue 17
Message-ID: <20041208141116.90994.qmail@web26004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

addenda to -About me & you-news  post of 7/12/2004
i m reechoing that no regret at all regarding the content and overviews expressed i n  the monologue but i hope you'll recognize that the u -refers to my subject matter -the linguistic babe that glowin bothers me to send more of such missives-since our cell  phones  dont always connect when our moods   delightfully  or productively deuce  and my usual alternative weapon of sending my thoughts-often lazed with many energies   than biological emergencies  or urgins   is the internet....i 'm   assuming  your ezine is that treasury of poetry news that should not be   allowed to be a oasis of poetic thoughts & related sensibilities ...I wish i started typing directly through the pentium far earlier than now-that several scripts have been murdered by proxy typing.There's still a  maze  of  untouched manuscripts 0diary poems inclusive of many female friends who re majors i n classics yet their creative productions -albeit predominantly rebuttals,indictment ,mating cry,the shorter
 poems,threnodies,  or the 
panegyrics of the teachers  /authors who have influenced them most significantly.For instance hero-worshipping will continue to be perpetuated genuinely in so far as readers& writers & poets adore or prefer or are inclined to a select type of poetry than others .Ashbery? John ASHBERY?I 'm not surprised DAVID GRAHAM ,MICH SNIDER et al are reviewing poetry of ASHBERY-THE TITLES & MUCH MORE THE UBIQUITY,TEMERITY OF HIS VARIED POETRY ON THE PSYCHE OF anonymous audience the works have provoked or fruitfully elicited and possibly aunthentically beyond his generation..As for me i 've not even seen nor read any line of Ashbery poetry yet a lot of indigenous poetry  abound here in Africa 0richly laden with any kind of natural or supernatural metaphors-since all poets 0especially our ancestors wre very close to nature..Other than black poets / activists /humanists /writers like 
web du bois,bradry,ray,abiri baraka,leopold sedar senghor,aimer cesaire,african medical poets such as E.latune odeku,1st neurosurgeon of blessed memory,many anonymous IJALA,ORIKI,OGUN SANGO POETS  authenticatingthat most poets ,artists ,performers grow up in culturally loud environments during their tutelage as yong adults in preparing for  or revulsing  to develop the western way far back in the 1920s...This is another aspect of poetry-oral,heritage  or ritual poetry which i had a mere stint in translating just a tip of the iceberg of my traditional totem -ORIKI OKE AGO published by TIMES INTERNATIONAL ,1990 .CURRENTLY HOWEVER  several viable poetry groups including the CENTRE FOR POETS,IBADAN,IFE POETRY FESTIVAL,ADEYIPO VILLAGE,A RURAL RESORT FOR THE TREASURY,ELEVATION,PRESERVATION OF ARTISTIC WORKS WORLD WIDE ,LED by Dr adebowale,deputy hief of the THE POLYTECHNIC ,IBADAN ,COREN,G15 -GROUP  & budding literary  groups are fervently emergimg in Nigeria's culturally alert mapping of
 writings creatively by ANA-ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS .The major forte of the latter has been her catalysing writers beyond creative fulfilment and prize winning !..
         Beware 
         the apertured door eye 
         trickiling  division 
         to your sea of poetry news
         where lovers meet 
        can anyone   blind the moon 
        nor switch off the sky high star?
      
  Gbemi tijani mst 
8/12/04 


gbemi tijani-mst <hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
dear editor,
please note my apology for those typographical errata -knowing they could,ipso facto ,confuse or change intended meanings a writer is conveying...Again the reality here in Africa-Nigeria inclusive - is that almost all of  the third generation writers /poets      browse from rental public cybercafes excluding those already well established and as such could afford to connect their  laptops to the internet Even a large excess of academics -including creative writing teachers are still yet to be fervent in the internet  despite sophistication of few others like WOLE SOYINKA-THE 1986 nOBEL lAUREAT. LL BE WARY OF WHITE HOT POST though this se a wet blanket for others...with all modesty-mst 

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Today's Topics:

1. about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending intent's
request from a linguistic babe on campus) (gbemi tijani-mst)
2. Re: about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending
intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus) (James Cervantes)
3. Re: about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending
intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus) (Paul Lake)
4. Re: about me & you- a meditative monologue9anunbending
intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus) (Anny Ballardini)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 19:53:41 +0000 (GMT)
From: gbemi tijani-mst 
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <20041207195341.3320.qmail at web26007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


About me & YOU & IMMANUEL
BY gbemi tijani mst

notes to the editor - i really loathe cooking where a medical prof friend who also love poetry & wished i could author a -100 books-mostly of chap book genre-not the atlas type of manuscript he doggedly worked on 24/7 ...i ve been planning to send the petit friend who could chat untiringly enchantingly but could not write speedily askance she's a candidate for MBD-MINIMUM BRAIN DAMAGE-sorry i mean agraphia-inability to write...Do any of your contributors know what the condition of not being able to reply swiftly called especially when the lili has such an immense interest in the language arts...What sort of poetry or style of lov e p oetry bcan catalyse such a real pal as therapy for her young cerebrals-the brocas & the wernicles...i 'm sureyou know 

how to keep linear versification alive...i hope this entertains if not innocously agitate the hearts of ambrosial poets in love -or wooing other poets as friend of compatible talent...Gbemi tijani mst,convener,PLANET FORUM ANTHOLOGY 



Praise God 4 everything
especially for the Grace of Gsm that enables mutual or solo hiding or possibly running away from the mind of Christ-in spite of our busy-ness or schedules ?however tight ?skirted or micro-tendered..The Lord is good to us all!and has availed everything that pertain to life & Godliness-iluding our quest to become a linguist or a world project consultant


I ll stop writing now ?1.30am until I actually see uy or agree graciously to meet /dine together at ?Maybe Ronis Place or somewhere else booked by u for us all ..i HOPE WE CAN MEET THIS WEEK ?NOT JUST CALL NOR FLASH ..this is still right-eous but noot fully productive .Again not spiritually rich I ont think we can get the best from each other that way except for your being so busy since almost 40 days /night nons top one cant even say Hi to u in yr awaolow o cubicle ?apology to the great politician-.Wither your sisterly cadour,ardour,affinity,feminity,psychobiology-u being a gracefully grown up xtian sister!

Are u just that ?not growing multidimensionally-Ps 71 v21 
You don?t want to be a proverb 31v.10-31 woman? Too expedient for u ? Too complacent or shall I say too cute for u to be a monolinguist or bilingual ?vernacular/English alone!!Too burdensome for u to ask how a new -not so new from the time past brother(100% single) is doing for a mor e effective living than just comfortable living-which is just yr realm of thinking
apology for your God ?purpose-life-You still are the most creative of beings ?beeeing a woman who?s to complete the XYZ of housing,guarding,feeding passively ,nurturing passively too b/c much of the caring isn?t done by your wisdom or limited peadiartric size foofoo calories-he/she needs more marvelous miconutriments thru your chorionic villi & less ataxic fibre food 
u may need more of that to swot/pass yr linquistic quiz .your future son needs tender ,psychologically adjusted schedules to grow well not a stressful unrelaxed biology of your sspe!
cial
physiology..Even those xtians who treasure/practise chastity takes time to stand/stare
Taake time to go out ?albeit to safe places & with trustful brethren ..But then they should ?ve been thoughtful that without time consciousness & they allowing for this ?out of their fettered tables ?its just impossible!This implies such sisters will still have time to fellow-shipping with others even if they ?re writing their Doctoral thesis or just preparing for D.Sc viva voce .Im not saying I ?m not divulging my observations of your camps p rofile-I m conscious I?m wrapping with an ault babe thatreally challenged my brotherhood on the one hand & my libido creativity in the lexicon of Sigmund Freud please!Not the meaning the New Testament forbid u & I to beware in the books of Paul to The Corinthians & Ephisians

Surely we cant all do without libido energy as love or love or again as God ? LOVE In fact the only anointing we ?d carry to heaven will be our love ?LOVELINESS,LOVING in good works,faith inspired by love ,encounters charged with love,not just sexual love that be powered by passions or lust or personal attraction or infatuation .Thi s is usually very fleeting or fickle or fake or satanic ..Deep er love that energises or engineers or shatters all barriers at reticence or prevent attrition .Love that ?s beautiful notn a fleeting physical complexion .No matter how pretty or handsome a gal or guy is either will be come sexually assuaged at time t
when there ?ll be no fresh appeal or mating cry except for reproductive pressures or formality of responsible spouseship!However if they ?re initially or perennially attracted not just by sexual driving-laughs-but by other interior attributes or profile ssuch as life outlook,richer values as altruism,Christ teachings that are so
endearing/enduring though ccdemanding physically /spiritually they ?ll associate marvelously zestfullyseriously,salaciously,lingiiuistically
culturally & even travel overseas & still prefer their own genitalia not strange temples!Hi..do you like Don M?s

I BELIEVE IN YOU
though the impeccable poet-singer also believes in nature/natural things not in uncertainties inherent in synthetic thing s we make .It alsao shows we ?re stillnot yet a perfect example of God whereas ALL THINGS THAT ARE GOOD & PERFECT COME FROM HIM
For instance see handsets,aircrafts,motor cars & their diverse modes,brands,varying co-efficient of performance & elegance & sequelae ?implicating in inequity,envy,hatred,satanic hilarity,CANE & ABEL resurgence ?even within modern churches /brethren

A lady poet eloquently reminds us that true love is not physical beauty

But an inner splendour

That glows on the soul

Radiates through all impediments

Forsaking all boundaries


True love is not perfection

The perfection lies on 

The wedding of two hearts

And two souls,to create a bond

That smokes all imperfections

And the passage of time 


True love is not fire

But the kind of warmth one feels

>From a golden fire?s glow

An incomparable comfort

In the face of despair

An offering of hope

When all ?s hopeless




Palpably a real woman likes being a girl,behaves like a lady knows that she?s specia l but she also believes in God ,strives to accomplish His plan for her life
.i ll like to sleep like you right now I?m sure Go d will restore every tranquil state I need for a good sleep
I like you for provoking me to write this quite unlike YOU ! out of a maze of write-ups scheduled /unscheduled,commercial or creative,meditative or moral literary or linguistic,epistles,epigrams,essays,snippets,paula whites,liberty savards,Kenneth copelands,bob & getty g as 
tim lahaye ,haggins,clavels,cartlands,charles smith,verwer,George etc Yes I trust Him always for that miracle of sleeping/ waking -which some assume ordinarily.

Gbemi/07/12/04/mst.pl.dfi.dfj.parry rd/snippets/book of friends/novella.

Coming soon ?the unbending intent

Ps do u believe this ? I don?t think I can remember yr face perfectly around UI except you call me 
then I can identify yr voice xracteristic bold & beautiful voicei JUST KNOW THAT U R RUDY I DON?T KNOW IF U R RESPLENDENT 
I ALSO KNOW THAT you ?re good I don?t know if you re reall y g enerous with your salvation love which should have embodied all affinity of purpose -which isn?t penurious in itself
It should be linguistically fecund,fervent-such new encounters properly /wisely managed often enrich the totality of lanuages-though boundless interaction can also dimish or pollute the friends of Christ especially if it?s a case of Belial versus temple of God,unrighteousssness vs. righteousness,dark & light 
God Forbids
May He guide our hearts and divinely connect us with everything:ALL TO HIS GLORY..

Gbemi/mst7/12/04

Nb.You should realize this state of mind se isn?t impossible-as Keneth Copeland biblically counsels-we have to rest our mind on God and REALISE its not impossible,we have the Word Of God ?our thoughts ,the strength of the Holy Spirit & the mind of Christ.He also expects us to verbally change what we ?re saying about the situation
we have to speak the word confidently,avoid staying on the defensive.We could stay with it however but not carnally ?our weapons are spiritual ,powerful from God.Get around others full of faith Share but don?t over rehearse the problemListen.Pullthe stronghold down .Resist it!Praise God.



As Duewell scripturally admonishes praise drives away frustration,depression,tension.It also flies off worries 

.Praise drives away darkness and turns on God?s Light

.Praise brings about a change of mood.

It opens up an artesian well of faith and joy 

.Praise is one of God ?s means of inner renewal

.Praise cleanses satanic suggestions such as doubts,critisms,irritations,procastination.Dr. Duewell actually recommends that we should plan and practise praise daily.

It gives a wholesome transfusion.It is a tonic.Praise is a wholesome stimulant

.May He give us the grace to to g lorify Him in His PRAISE. Amen.

Gbemi



















---------------------------------
Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win ?10k with Yahoo! Mail to make your dream a reality.
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 13:00:30 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
From: James Cervantes 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID:
<30122208.1102449630476.JavaMail.root at bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Spam?

-----Original Message-----
From: gbemi tijani-mst 
Sent: Dec 7, 2004 12:53 PM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)


About me & YOU & IMMANUEL???BY gbemi tijani mst

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html
Salt River Review: http://www.poetserv.org
RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:04:49 -0600
From: Paul Lake 

Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] about me & you- a meditative monologue9an
unbending intent's request from a linguistic babe on campus)
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Kent Johnson, are you at your tricks again?


On 12/7/04 1:53 PM, "gbemi tijani-mst" wrote:

> About me & YOU & IMMANUEL
BY gbemi tijani mst
> 
> notes to the editor - i really loathe cooking where a medical prof friend
> who also love poetry & wished i could author a -100 books-mostly of chap book
> genre-not the atlas type of manuscript he doggedly worked on 24/7 ...i ve
> been planning to send the petit friend who could chat untiringly enchantingly
> but could not write speedily askance she's a candidate for MBD-MINIMUM BRAIN
> DAMAGE-sorry i mean agraphia-inability to write...Do any of your
> contributors know what the condition of not being able to reply swiftly
> called especially when the lili has such an immense interest in the language
> arts...What sort of poetry or style of lov e p oetry bcan catalyse such a
> real pal as therapy for her young cerebrals-the brocas & the wernicles...i 'm
> sureyou know 
> 
> how to keep linear versification alive...i hope this entertains if not
> innocously agitate the hearts of ambrosial poets in love -or wooing other
> poets as friend of compatible talent...Gbemi tijani mst,convener,PLANET FORUM
> ANTHOLOGY 
> 
> 
> 
> Praise God 4 everything
especially for the Grace of Gsm that enables mutual
> or solo hiding or possibly running away from the mind of Christ-in spite of
> our busy-ness or schedules ?however tight ?skirted or micro-tendered..The Lord
> is good to us all!and has availed everything that pertain to life &
> Godliness-iluding our quest to become a linguist or a world project
> consultant

> 
> I ll stop writing now ?1.30am until I actually see uy or agree graciously to
> meet /dine together at ?Maybe Ronis Place or somewhere else booked by u for us
> all ..i HOPE WE CAN MEET THIS WEEK ?NOT JUST CALL NOR FLASH ..this is still
> right-eous but noot fully productive .Again not spiritually rich I ont think
> we can get the best from each other that way except for your being so busy
> since almost 40 days /night nons top one cant even say Hi to u in yr awaolow o
> cubicle ?apology to the great politician-.Wither your sisterly
> cadour,ardour,affinity,feminity,psychobiology-u being a gracefully grown up
> xtian sister!
> 
> Are u just that ?not growing multidimensionally-Ps 71 v21 
You don?t want to
> be a proverb 31v.10-31 woman? Too expedient for u ? Too complacent or shall I
> say too cute for u to be a monolinguist or bilingual ?vernacular/English
> alone!!Too burdensome for u to ask how a new -not so new from the time past
> brother(100% single) is doing for a mor e effective living than just
> comfortable living-which is just yr realm of thinking
apology for your God
> ?purpose-life-You still are the most creative of beings ?beeeing a woman who?s
> to complete t! he XYZ of housing,guarding,feeding passively ,nurturing
> passively too b/c much of the caring isn?t done by your wisdom or limited
> peadiartric size foofoo calories-he/she needs more marvelous miconutriments
> thru your chorionic villi & less ataxic fibre food 
u may need more of that to
> swot/pass yr linquistic quiz .your future son needs tender ,psychologically
> adjusted schedules to grow well not a stressful unrelaxed biology of your
> sspecial physiology..Even those xtians who treasure/practise chastity takes
> time to stand/stare
Taake time to go out ?albeit to safe places & with
> trustful brethren ..But then they should ?ve been thoughtful that without time
> consciousness & they allowing for this ?out of their fettered tables ?its just
> impossible!This implies such sisters will still have time to fellow-shipping
> with others even if they ?re writing their Doctoral thesis or just preparing
> fo! r D.Sc viva voce .Im not saying I ?m not divulging my observations of your
> camps p rofile-I m conscious I?m wrapping with an ault babe thatreally
> challenged my brotherhood on the one hand & my libido creativity in the
> lexicon of Sigmund Freud please!Not the meaning the New Testament forbid u &
> I to beware in the books of Paul to The Corinthians & Ephisians
> 
> Surely we cant all do without libido energy as love or love or again as God ?
> LOVE In fact the only anointing we ?d carry to heaven will be our love
> ?LOVELINESS,LOVING in good works,faith inspired by love ,encounters charged
> with love,not just sexual love that be powered by passions or lust or personal
> attraction or infatuation .Thi s is usually very fleeting or fickle or fake or
> satanic ..Deep er love that energises or engineers or shatters all barriers
> at reticence or prevent attrition .Love that ?s beautiful notn a fleeting
> physical complexion .No matter how pretty or handsome a gal or guy is either
> will be come sexually assuaged at time t
when there ?ll be no fresh appeal or
> mating cry except for reproductive pressures or formality of responsible
> spouseship!However if they ?re initially or perennially attracted not just by
> sexual driving-laughs-but by other interior attributes or profile ssuch as
> life outlook,richer values as altruism,Christ teachings that are so
> endearing/enduring though ccdemanding physically /spiritually they ?ll
> associate marvelously
> zestfullyseriously,salaciously,lingiiuistically
culturally & even travel
> overseas & still prefer their own genitalia not strange temples!Hi..do you
> like Don M?s
> 
> I BELIEVE IN YOU
though the impeccable poet-singer also believes in
> nature/natural things not in uncertainties inherent in synthetic thing s we
> make .It alsao shows we ?re stillnot yet a perfect example of God whereas ALL
> THINGS THAT ARE GOOD & PERFECT COME FROM HIM
For instance see
> handsets,aircrafts,motor cars & their diverse modes,brands,varying
> co-efficient of performance & elegance & sequelae ?implicating in
> inequity,envy,hatred,satanic hilarity,CANE & ABEL resurgence ?even within
> modern churches /brethren
> 
> A lady poet eloquently reminds us that true love is not physical beauty
> 
> But an inner
> splendour
> 
> That glows on
> the soul
> 
> Radiates through
> all impediments
> 
> Forsaking all
> boundaries

> 
> True love is not
> perfection
> 
> The perfection
> lies on 
> 
> The wedding of

=== message truncated ===

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From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec  8 09:26:01 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 09:26:01 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Responses to Ashbery Questions
In-Reply-To: <20041208130309.29869.qmail@web26008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
References: <20041208130309.29869.qmail@web26008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <6212385.1102515961731.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

For those who are interested, there have been some passionate responses at my blog to the Ashbery questions I posted there and to this list.  You can see the comments (and add your own!) at this incredibly log url:


http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments?u=113501&p=410&link=http%3A%2F%2Fradio.weblogs.com%2F0113501%2F2004%2F12%2F04.html%23a410


-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Wed Dec  8 11:57:49 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 10:57:49 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery
Message-ID: <s1b6de4d.015@mail.highland.edu>

Michael said on his blog:

"Yes people do recite poems together in unison, though I suspect it
happens nore frequently in formalist circles since some of us tend to
think of poems as machines for getting into someone else's memory."

Mike, this is a positively frightening statement. The picture in my
head is of you Formalists standing in a circle around a bust of Anthony
Hecht, chanting hexameter spells, while Ashbery lovers writhe in their
beds, screaming.

Kent 




From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec  8 12:14:38 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 12:14:38 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery
In-Reply-To: <s1b6de4d.015@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1b6de4d.015@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <3837328.1102526078772.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Wednesday, December 08, 2004, at 12:00PM, Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

>Michael said on his blog:
>
>"Yes people do recite poems together in unison, though I suspect it
>happens nore frequently in formalist circles since some of us tend to
>think of poems as machines for getting into someone else's memory."
>
>Mike, this is a positively frightening statement. The picture in my
>head is of you Formalists standing in a circle around a bust of Anthony
>Hecht, chanting hexameter spells, while Ashbery lovers writhe in their
>beds, screaming.
>
>Kent 
>
>

Bwaa-hahahahaaa!

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From hruggier at localnet.com  Wed Dec  8 12:16:24 2004
From: hruggier at localnet.com (Helen Ruggieri)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 12:16:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] poems by others: Jarman's "To the Green Man"
References: <cd.1d14f494.2ee7c668@aol.com>
Message-ID: <01ef01c4dd49$a6257400$e8099942@Helen>



Couldn't help but respond with a poem of my own about a green "man"  who haunts the late, late show. 



helen



SWAMP THING



. . . remember, it's a plant . . . Louis Jordan 



chlorophyll rocks his veins

and he'll wear his green

all year round

like a heart on a stem

or a sheath on a pistil

he's helpful to those in need

avenging evil

spreading good pollen 

where allergies fear to tread

and when he rises

out of murky water 

thick with vegetation 

and murmurs your name 

in the gurgly language 

plants speak

don't yell and scream 

and be a jerk 

thank him for feeding us 

for feeding what we feed on

thank him for presenting 

the great sacrifice and not 

screaming when we bite

but don't ever say you're 

a vegetarian

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 9:52 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] poems by others: Jarman's "To the Green Man"


  To the Green Man

  Lord of the returning leaves, of sleepers
  Waking in their tunnels among roots,
  Of heart and bush and fire-headed stag,
  Of all things branching, stirring the blood like sap,
  Pray for us in your small  commemorations:
  The facet of stained glass, the carved face
  Lapped by decorations on the column side,
  And the entry in the reference book that lists you
  As forester, pub sign, keeper of golf courses.
  King for a day, or week, then sacrificed,
  Drunk on liquor made from honey, urged
  To blossom at your leisure, and caressed-
  The temptation is to think of you without envy.
  In Fewston, Yorkshire, near the open moor,
  You are set in a church window above the altar.
  Wreathed and strangled, amber-glazed, you wear
  A look of non-surprise, a victim's cunning,
  Though your tongue hangs as dumb as any death.
  Elsewhere, when you make your appearances,
  Out of your mouth stems and oak leaves grow-
  Like speech or silence? Your eyes are empty cups.
  Pray, vestige-secret of the trees, for us,
  Surprised and pleased to find you any place.

  --Mark Jarman
  _To the Green Man_, Sarabande Books, 2004



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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Wed Dec  8 14:17:47 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:17:47 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fw: Subatomic and Particle Poetry
Message-ID: <00c001c4dd5a$9a994e70$6dad3452@yourpk9x5fuc06>


From: "Peter Howard" <peter at HPHOWARD.DEMON.CO.UK>
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 7:45 PM


> In the summer I gave a presentation at the trAce symposium on 'Subatomic
> and Particle Poetry'. I've now produced a web version of this. It's
> hosted on Word Circuits at:
> 
> http://www.wordcircuits.com/gallery/subatomic
> 
> It includes animations of poems by Roger McGough and Wendy Cope.
> 
> Running time is about 20 minutes, and if you're on a modem connection
> there'll be a bit of download time to add onto that.
> 
> Cheers,
> --
> Peter
> 
> http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
> http://peterhoward.org
> http://subatomicpoetry.blogspot.com/
> 



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Wed Dec  8 14:55:30 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:55:30 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Particle and sub-atomic poetry
Message-ID: <s1b707f1.079@mail.highland.edu>

This is brilliant and fun!

Congratulations to Peter Howard!

Kent


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Wed Dec  8 15:11:10 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 21:11:10 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] poems by others: Jarman's "To the Green Man"
References: <cd.1d14f494.2ee7c668@aol.com>
	<01ef01c4dd49$a6257400$e8099942@Helen>
Message-ID: <00fd01c4dd62$0f831980$6dad3452@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Hi Helen,

I am a vegetarian, and I thank you for this poem. Our nourishment is a cycle of what has preceded us and of what will grow. Calvino was excellent in his tale in Under the Jaguar Sun when he spoke of Taste. It works in crescendo, I won't therefore talk more about it.

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Helen Ruggieri 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 6:16 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] poems by others: Jarman's "To the Green Man"




  Couldn't help but respond with a poem of my own about a green "man"  who haunts the late, late show. 



  helen



  SWAMP THING



  . . . remember, it's a plant . . . Louis Jordan 



  chlorophyll rocks his veins

  and he'll wear his green

  all year round

  like a heart on a stem

  or a sheath on a pistil

  he's helpful to those in need

  avenging evil

  spreading good pollen 

  where allergies fear to tread

  and when he rises

  out of murky water 

  thick with vegetation 

  and murmurs your name 

  in the gurgly language 

  plants speak

  don't yell and scream 

  and be a jerk 

  thank him for feeding us 

  for feeding what we feed on

  thank him for presenting 

  the great sacrifice and not 

  screaming when we bite

  but don't ever say you're 

  a vegetarian

    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: JforJames at aol.com 
    To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
    Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 9:52 PM
    Subject: [New-Poetry] poems by others: Jarman's "To the Green Man"


    To the Green Man

    Lord of the returning leaves, of sleepers
    Waking in their tunnels among roots,
    Of heart and bush and fire-headed stag,
    Of all things branching, stirring the blood like sap,
    Pray for us in your small  commemorations:
    The facet of stained glass, the carved face
    Lapped by decorations on the column side,
    And the entry in the reference book that lists you
    As forester, pub sign, keeper of golf courses.
    King for a day, or week, then sacrificed,
    Drunk on liquor made from honey, urged
    To blossom at your leisure, and caressed-
    The temptation is to think of you without envy.
    In Fewston, Yorkshire, near the open moor,
    You are set in a church window above the altar.
    Wreathed and strangled, amber-glazed, you wear
    A look of non-surprise, a victim's cunning,
    Though your tongue hangs as dumb as any death.
    Elsewhere, when you make your appearances,
    Out of your mouth stems and oak leaves grow-
    Like speech or silence? Your eyes are empty cups.
    Pray, vestige-secret of the trees, for us,
    Surprised and pleased to find you any place.

    --Mark Jarman
    _To the Green Man_, Sarabande Books, 2004



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From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec  8 19:15:12 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 19:15:12 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery
In-Reply-To: <s1b6de4d.015@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1b6de4d.015@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <64E85796-4977-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 8, 2004, at 11:57 AM, Kent Johnson wrote:

> Michael said on his blog:
>
> "Yes people do recite poems together in unison, though I suspect it
> happens nore frequently in formalist circles since some of us tend to
> think of poems as machines for getting into someone else's memory."
>
> Mike, this is a positively frightening statement. The picture in my
> head is of you Formalists standing in a circle around a bust of Anthony
> Hecht, chanting hexameter spells, while Ashbery lovers writhe in their
> beds, screaming.
>
> Kent
>


A strange counter-example to my formalist hypothesis is that Kasey 
Mohammad and I once recited most of Yeats's "The Second Coming" in 
unison at a bar in Carrboro in the presence of Chris Murray, Murat 
Nemet-Nejat,  Linh Dinh, and, I believe, Lee Ann Brown.



From jsafdie at comcast.net  Wed Dec  8 23:24:10 2004
From: jsafdie at comcast.net (Joe Safdie)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:24:10 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery
References: <s1b6de4d.015@mail.highland.edu>
	<64E85796-4977-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <005e01c4dda6$eedf7cb0$56001118@D6T95L21>

Michael said:

A strange counter-example to my formalist hypothesis is that Kasey
Mohammad and I once recited most of Yeats's "The Second Coming" in
unison at a bar in Carrboro in the presence of Chris Murray, Murat
Nemet-Nejat,  Linh Dinh, and, I believe, Lee Ann Brown.


And I'd like to say that I once got drunk with Bill Merwin on Santa Monica 
Beach and we recited Yeats to each other too. But it was the Crazy Jane 
poems, as I remember. Or maybe "I must lie down where all the ladders start" 
. . . since we were lying on the sand at the time . . .

* * *

Off topic: anyone been to Costa Rica? I'm going for the first time on 
Sunday, and even though I have books, there's nothing like personal 
testimonials . . . back-channels are fine, and encouraged. Thanks.




From wwmorgan at ilstu.edu  Thu Dec  9 06:10:06 2004
From: wwmorgan at ilstu.edu (Bill Morgan)
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 05:10:06 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery
In-Reply-To: <005e01c4dda6$eedf7cb0$56001118@D6T95L21>
References: <s1b6de4d.015@mail.highland.edu>
	<64E85796-4977-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<005e01c4dda6$eedf7cb0$56001118@D6T95L21>
Message-ID: <6.0.2.0.2.20041209050558.03869960@mail.ilstu.edu>

At 10:24 PM 12/8/2004, you wrote:
>  Kasey
>Mohammad and I once recited most of Yeats's "The Second Coming" in
>unison at a bar in Carrboro in the presence of Chris Murray, Murat
>Nemet-Nejat,  Linh Dinh, and, I believe, Lee Ann Brown.
>
>
>And I'd like to say that I once got drunk with Bill Merwin on Santa Monica 
>Beach and we recited Yeats to each other too. But it was the Crazy Jane 
>poems, as I remember. Or maybe "I must lie down where all the ladders 
>start" . . . since we were lying on the sand at the time . . .

I wonder if Yeats is particularly hospitable to this kind of exchange: I 
once (in 1978) swapped Yeats lines and whole poems with Seamus Heaney over 
Jack Daniels (this was at Emory in Atlanta after his reading).  And 
needless to say, the biennial Hardy Conferences are full of conversations 
laced with quotation.







From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Thu Dec  9 10:08:00 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:08:00 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
Message-ID: <s1b81600.047@mail.highland.edu>

Some of you no doubt know by now that Jackson Mac Low died yesterday. I
thought it would be important to note here his passing. He was 82. 

Mac Low was one of the great poetry experimentalists of our time and of
any time. 

The work is vast and mind-boggling in its variousness and strangeness,
astonishing in the range of its formal ambitions. My personal favorites
are The Light Poems, though there is so much. 

Kent


From GrahamD at ripon.edu  Thu Dec  9 10:49:00 2004
From: GrahamD at ripon.edu (Graham, David)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:49:00 -0600 
Subject: [New-Poetry] Reciting poems
Message-ID: <4BBBE1EC8182D511BF9800508BBD75990547A4E0@ariel.ripon.edu>


> ----------
> From: 	new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu on behalf of Bill Morgan
> Reply To: 	NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views
> Sent: 	Thursday, December 9, 2004 5:10 AM
> To: 	NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views
> Subject: 	Re: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery
> 
> I wonder if Yeats is particularly hospitable to this kind of exchange: I 
> once (in 1978) swapped Yeats lines and whole poems with Seamus Heaney over
> 
> Jack Daniels (this was at Emory in Atlanta after his reading).  And 
> needless to say, the biennial Hardy Conferences are full of conversations 
> laced with quotation.
> 
	============

	Everyone else seems to go to better parties than I do. . . .

	About Hardy:  I didn't truly "get" Hardy until I heard poems recited
by Donald Hall at a couple after-reading parties long ago.  At least back
then, Hall didn't need much encouragement to start reciting favorites from
memory; in addition to Hardy, I remember him doing a bunch of E. A.
Robinson.  

	My old teacher Joe Langland has great chunks of the Norton Anthology
of English literature memorized, and, like Hall, doesn't need much
encouragement to launch in.  At readings he used to (maybe still does) ask
the audience to name any one of Keats's odes, and then he'd recite it.  

	Joe is also the best performer of Frost I've ever heard.  

> ============================================
> David Graham
> Department of English, Ripon College
> grahamd at ripon.edu
>      Home Page:  
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
>      My Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> 
> Experience Ripon at http://www.ripon.edu
> ============================================
> 
> 


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Thu Dec  9 10:49:33 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:49:33 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] LA Times piece on the OFAC situtation
Message-ID: <s1b81fba.094@mail.highland.edu>

By Scott Martelle
Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

Dec 7 2004

In the summer of 1956, Russian poet Boris Pasternak * a favorite of the
recently deceased Joseph Stalin * delivered his epic "Doctor Zhivago"
manuscript to 
a Soviet publishing house, hoping for a warm reception and a fast track to
readers who had shared Russia's torturous half-century of revolution and
war, 
oppression and terror.

Instead, Pasternak received one of the all-time classic rejection letters: A
10,000-word missive that stopped just short of accusing him of treason. It
was 
left to foreign publishers to give his smuggled manuscript life, offering
the 
West a peek into the soul of the Cold War enemy, winning Pasternak the 1958
Nobel in literature and providing Hollywood with an epic film.

These days, Pasternak might not fare so well.

In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal Office
of 
Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American firms from publishing works
by dissident writers in countries under sanction unless they first get U.S.
government approval.

The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the 1st Amendment,
means that books and other works banned by some totalitarian regimes cannot
be 
published freely in the United States, a country that prides itself as the
international beacon of free expression.

"It strikes me as very odd," said Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional law
professor at Pepperdine University and former constitutional legal counsel
to 
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. "I think the government has
an uphill 
struggle to justify this constitutionally."

Several groups, led by the PEN American Center and including Arcade
Publishing, have filed suit in U.S. District Court in New York seeking to
overturn the 
regulations, which cover writers in Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and,
until 
recently, Iraq.

Violations carry severe reprisals * publishing houses can be fined $1
million 
and individual violators face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

"Historically, the United States has served as a megaphone for dissidents
from other countries," said Ed Davis of New York, a lawyer leading the PEN
legal 
challenge. "Now we're not able to hear from dissidents."

Yet more than dissident voices are affected.

The regulations already have led publishers to scrap plans for volumes on
Cuban architecture and birds, and publishers complain that the rules
threaten the 
intellectual breadth and independence of academic journals.

Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has joined the lawsuit,
arguing that the rules preclude American publishers from helping craft her
memoirs 
of surviving Iran's Islamic revolution and her efforts to defend human
rights 
in Iranian courts. 

In a further wrinkle, even if publishers obtain a license for a book *
something they are loathe to do * they believe the regulations bar them from
advertising it, forcing readers to find the dissident works on their own.

"It's absolutely against the 1st Amendment," fumed Arcade editor Richard
Seaver, who hopes to publish an anthology of Iranian short stories. "We're
not 
going to ask permission [to publish]. That reeks of censorship. And
'censorship' 
is a word that gets my hackles up very quickly."

Officials from the U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees OFAC, declined
comment on the lawsuit, but spokeswoman Molly Millerwise described the
sanctions 
as "a very important part of our overall national security."

"These are countries that pose serious threats to the United States, to our
economy and security and our well being around the globe," Millerwise said,
adding that publishers can still bring dissident writers to American readers
as 
long as they first apply for a license.

"The licensing is a very important part of the sanctions policy because it
allows people to engage with these countries," Millerwise said. "Anyone is
free 
to apply to OFAC for a license."

Critics say they shouldn't have to.

"We have a long tradition of not accepting prior restraint," said Wendy
Strothman of Boston, who hopes to serve as Ebadi's literary agent should the
regulations be struck down. "The notion of getting a license seems to me to
be 
completely counter to the spirit of the 1st Amendment?. It's really, for me,
mostly 
about the notion of freedom of expression."

Strothman found the logic behind the restrictions perplexing.

"It strikes me as incredible irony that we worry about the value of our
intelligence system while cutting off the voices of people we should be
hearing 
from," she said. "We need to be hearing what people on the street are
thinking 
around the world."

The literature that might be lost to American readers is impossible to
measure, but in recent months the bestseller lists have been dominated by
Azar 
Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran," a memoir she wrote in exile. And
Marjane 
Satrapi's graphic novel, "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood," written and
published after her family left Iran for France, has found an international
audience.

Tom Miller, author of "Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through
Castro's Cuba," said the regulations not only "nullify the 1st Amendment"
but would 
dampen the hopes of censored Cuban writers.

"It would be all the more depressing," said Miller, who travels to Cuba
several times a year under U.S. licenses for journalistic, academic or
cultural 
purposes. "There are two places Cubans get published outside of Cuba * Spain
and 
the States. To cut that short list in half is devastating. In the U.S., it
means less artistic and literary infusion from overseas."

Curt Goering, deputy executive director for the Amnesty International human
rights monitoring group, criticized the regulations as "a violation of some
fundamental human rights."

Goering said international covenants recognize the right of people to
receive 
and distribute information regardless of political boundaries. "It's yet
another example of the hypocrisy of this administration on human rights,"
Goering 
said, adding that while the U.S. defends its role in Iraq as a defense of
liberty at home it is "blocking" publication of dissident voices.

Kmiec, who is not part of the legal challenge, said the 1st Amendment * and
subsequent court rulings * generally preclude the government from
restricting 
publications before they are made.

"It does allow for limitations where there are clear and present dangers and
compelling foreign policy or other interests that can be tangibly and
authentically demonstrated," Kmiec said. "But short of that special
application and 
very rare circumstance, government censorship is properly off-limits. These
efforts to restrain in advance are almost sure to fail."

The dispute centers on a Treasury Department interpretation this year of
regulations rooted in the 1917 "Trading With the Enemy Act," which allows
the 
president to bar transactions with people or businesses in nations during
times of 
war or national emergency. A 1988 amendment by Rep. Howard Berman (D-North
Hollywood) relaxed the act to effectively give publishers an exemption while
maintaining restrictions on general trade.

In April, OFAC regulators amended an earlier interpretation to advise
academic publishers that they can make minor changes to works already
published in 
sanctioned countries and reissue them.

But the regulators said editors cannot provide broader services considered
basic to publishing, such as commissioning works, making "substantive"
changes 
to texts, or adding illustrations.

The regulations seem shaded by Joseph Heller's classic novel "Catch-22."

American publishers are allowed to reissue, for example, Cuban communist
propaganda or officially approved books but not original works by writers
whom the 
Cuban government has stifled.

In a letter to Treasury officials this past spring, Berman described the
regulations as "patently absurd" and said they form a "narrow and misguided
interpretation of the law."

"It is in our national interest to support the dissemination of American
ideas and values, especially in nations with oppressive regimes," Berman
said. "At 
the same time, [the Berman amendment] is intended to ensure the right of
American citizens to have access to a wide range of information and satisfy
their 
curiosity about the world around them."

Had the current Treasury regulations been in place during the Cold War, such
dissidents as Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel could not
have been published unlicensed in the U.S.

But they were published. And while those writers faced severe reprisals at
home * including years of prison camps * knowing that the outside world was
listening helped keep their hopes alive.

"It was like a constant life support," said Serguei Oushakine, a doctoral
candidate in anthropology at New York's Columbia University and a former
Russian 
culture professor at Altai State Technical University in Barnaul, Siberia.

Oushakine said the dissidents' Cold War-era writings in the samizdat * the
underground Russian self-publishing network * and the tamizdat * works
published abroad * infused the political culture of the 1970s and 1980s.
Dissident 
voices helped inform eventual reformers such as Mikhail Gorbachev, who "took
some 
of the dissidents' ideas for granted."

"These publications provided an immediate influx of literature and ideas
when 
changes started happening," Oushakine said. "[They] formed a certain pool of
people who could act as moral authorities of some kind in a situation when
previous hierarchies collapsed."

Without them, he believes, perestroika would not have been possible and the
collapse of the former Soviet regime would have unfolded much differently
and 
much more slowly.

"If you take this long view, I think such a publishing was extremely
important and necessary for the Soviet Union," Oushakine said. "And I think
it could 
be useful for countries like Iran, Cuba or North Korea."





From halvard at earthlink.net  Thu Dec  9 14:09:33 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:09:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: RIP Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
	"Radio Turnbuckle"
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEGEMGJHAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


Radio Turnbuckle

Destiny twinned and paid therapeutic counselors
like a human being getting better and doesn't bind people
or make them clean toilets. Very few people are free
and when one of them gets you you can look at it this way
somewhat. His religion is not taken away from him
and he's given financial help until just before
the beginning of the religion. He did know him
and taught him how to drive. They still held their jobs.

And never went back. They wouldn't allow them radios
and precipitated a great to-do, aware of the real
problems. Do you remember that? He'd had a lobotomy
and were worth their weight in gold and three
meals a day, exactly how they were used. Es-
pecially. I was teaching them how to live
and were faced with being sterilized, hopelessly
crippled, a clock hung around your neck. See it.

You were in perpetual humiliation all the time, how he
would ask astute questions. He was never attacked,
benevolent and all that great. His clay feet triumphed
all the time. Regardless of whether your column is syndicated,
exclusively written and very good to talk to
where there's self-interest at work, you have to
look at those things. An interesting thing is happening
and did not survive forced changing and transferring.

Liable for the defendant's costs, amongst the papers,
designed to cost money, and will constantly keep under
threat, he had a very interesting career. You'll have to bear
some of the costs. He was treated with kid gloves. Afraid of
the legend, he went to incorporate, allegedly high-class
and all in capital letters. Who had the snake? He's out of there
now. Did they escape? They still had a large facility. They
considered him a martyr and lost that one. He may well yet.

He's been sent and it really doesn't matter. I'll put it this way
to mobilize all the members against one another. They begin to
ferret out the most effective form of mind control, baring
your soul and its gets very aggressive. They enjoy
intimacy and everybody gets a turn. I managed to slide
and was just in for the darlingness at a weak moment
in a part of the whole process. This is very rough. It's so
hard and all-encompassing. Engineered to a degree, they left.

They had to go on and went through a stage. We do this
and then after that they forget it. You find out shortly
afterward. No, I haven't. I've seen so many people
absorbed and they gave remarkably convincing speeches
to try that first. They tend toward that sort of thing, refilled
with the good stuff and real informed decisions,
very involved with all sorts of symbols. Going through
a ritual again and again, they learned their therapeutics.

He remains permanently and they go there. They are made
dependent. I know someone. I know several people
who fall down a big step forward. It makes participation
more exciting. There's no such thing as an in-between if
it's all involved with poison. Everybody else was quoted. They
were battling Satan. A relation would never go into any
details. You move up first. It's what you know and it
is very hard for them. Your whole life is a problem.

A thrill from Christian Scientists can tell you one experience
if you leave it alone. I just can't. It's really fine. If
you are exactly the same, can I say the one thing
I'll be back to in a little while? I wouldn't be
thinking about it. Where is it coming from? Body
and soul have no foundation and have tumbled
from of old. When you take up the exact wording,
more will be seen. They talked about it and were lonesome

22 June 1982
New York

--Jackson Mac Low

fr. *Bloomsday*
[Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1984]


Hal          

Halvard Johnson
============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/





From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Thu Dec  9 16:10:25 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 13:10:25 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
In-Reply-To: <s1b81600.047@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <20041209211025.96429.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>

I didn't know much about his work; I think I've read
only a poem or two.  But I do remember that he had
this wonderful writing exercise published in Behn and
Twichell's *Practice of Poetry.*  It was something Mac
Low called "Word Harvesting," an exercise in which a
poet develops some sort of system of harvesting words
from passage.  Mac Low suggested spelling through a
word:  for example, you might spell the word "poem"
through an article about dolphins (or anything, for
that matter).  Every time you finish the word, you
take that particular word from the article.  When
you're done, you write a poem using those words.

I wrote one for a grad poetry workshop.  I used a
Derrida excerpt from a lit theory textbook I had at
the time.  The textbook italicized "differance" and
other theory words.  I took the words right after the
italicized words and wrote a poem.  My teacher hated,
though.  But then again, she hated Derrida.

All of which to say:  does anyone have a favorite
writing exercise for poems (or prose?).  Barring
dismissive commentary like "I don't use writing
exercises for I find them boring and contrived," I'd
like to see what you have to say.

Jeff Newberry


--- Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

> Some of you no doubt know by now that Jackson Mac
> Low died yesterday. I
> thought it would be important to note here his
> passing. He was 82. 
> 
> Mac Low was one of the great poetry experimentalists
> of our time and of
> any time. 
> 
> The work is vast and mind-boggling in its
> variousness and strangeness,
> astonishing in the range of its formal ambitions. My
> personal favorites
> are The Light Poems, though there is so much. 
> 
> Kent
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec  9 16:23:57 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 22:23:57 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
References: <20041209211025.96429.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <017f01c4de35$659d3110$4b2bb750@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Hi Jeff,

believe it or not, but I sometimes use Mac Low's system, and I thought I had
invented it for myself. I sometimes process many words in a day when I have
those moments of _translate-translate_, and if I am not drained out by
words, I note down the ones that have some resonance in me, and gather them
by building a new possibly meaningful context for them under the form of a
poem. Like showing the best apples of the harvest in a different time and
town.

Take care, anny

From: "Jeff Newberry" <jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 10:10 PM


> I didn't know much about his work; I think I've read
> only a poem or two.  But I do remember that he had
> this wonderful writing exercise published in Behn and
> Twichell's *Practice of Poetry.*  It was something Mac
> Low called "Word Harvesting," an exercise in which a
> poet develops some sort of system of harvesting words
> from passage.  Mac Low suggested spelling through a
> word:  for example, you might spell the word "poem"
> through an article about dolphins (or anything, for
> that matter).  Every time you finish the word, you
> take that particular word from the article.  When
> you're done, you write a poem using those words.
>
> I wrote one for a grad poetry workshop.  I used a
> Derrida excerpt from a lit theory textbook I had at
> the time.  The textbook italicized "differance" and
> other theory words.  I took the words right after the
> italicized words and wrote a poem.  My teacher hated,
> though.  But then again, she hated Derrida.
>
> All of which to say:  does anyone have a favorite
> writing exercise for poems (or prose?).  Barring
> dismissive commentary like "I don't use writing
> exercises for I find them boring and contrived," I'd
> like to see what you have to say.
>
> Jeff Newberry
>
>
> --- Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:
>
> > Some of you no doubt know by now that Jackson Mac
> > Low died yesterday. I
> > thought it would be important to note here his
> > passing. He was 82.
> >
> > Mac Low was one of the great poetry experimentalists
> > of our time and of
> > any time.
> >
> > The work is vast and mind-boggling in its
> > variousness and strangeness,
> > astonishing in the range of its formal ambitions. My
> > personal favorites
> > are The Light Poems, though there is so much.
> >
> > Kent
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
>
>
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
>
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry




From tad at opus40.org  Thu Dec  9 19:51:37 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 19:51:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
References: <20041209211025.96429.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <002701c4de52$693bd570$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>

Here's an exercise by Patti Marshock that I liked enough to put up on my 
website. I've used it more than once for myself, and have come up with some 
poems I've liked.

http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/collage.html


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Newberry" <jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 4:10 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)


>I didn't know much about his work; I think I've read
> only a poem or two.  But I do remember that he had
> this wonderful writing exercise published in Behn and
> Twichell's *Practice of Poetry.*  It was something Mac
> Low called "Word Harvesting," an exercise in which a
> poet develops some sort of system of harvesting words
> from passage.  Mac Low suggested spelling through a
> word:  for example, you might spell the word "poem"
> through an article about dolphins (or anything, for
> that matter).  Every time you finish the word, you
> take that particular word from the article.  When
> you're done, you write a poem using those words.
>
> I wrote one for a grad poetry workshop.  I used a
> Derrida excerpt from a lit theory textbook I had at
> the time.  The textbook italicized "differance" and
> other theory words.  I took the words right after the
> italicized words and wrote a poem.  My teacher hated,
> though.  But then again, she hated Derrida.
>
> All of which to say:  does anyone have a favorite
> writing exercise for poems (or prose?).  Barring
> dismissive commentary like "I don't use writing
> exercises for I find them boring and contrived," I'd
> like to see what you have to say.
>
> Jeff Newberry
>
>
> --- Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:
>
>> Some of you no doubt know by now that Jackson Mac
>> Low died yesterday. I
>> thought it would be important to note here his
>> passing. He was 82.
>>
>> Mac Low was one of the great poetry experimentalists
>> of our time and of
>> any time.
>>
>> The work is vast and mind-boggling in its
>> variousness and strangeness,
>> astonishing in the range of its formal ambitions. My
>> personal favorites
>> are The Light Poems, though there is so much.
>>
>> Kent
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>
>
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
>
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From aepstein at english.fsu.edu  Wed Dec  8 14:47:03 2004
From: aepstein at english.fsu.edu (Andrew Epstein)
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 14:47:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery
In-Reply-To: <6212385.1102515961731.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
References: <20041208130309.29869.qmail@web26008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<20041208130309.29869.qmail@web26008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.2.20041208143009.03ae2660@englishmail.fsu.edu>


I guess Mike Snider's pointed questioning (gentle baiting?) about Ashbery's 
work provoked me to want to defend Ashbery, or my enthusiasm for Ashbery, 
which I guess was his intention in the first place.  As others have said, 
the criteria Mike throws out there for why one would call oneself a fan of 
a given poet seem a bit strange, almost intentionally hilarious and 
exaggerated -- are there really people out there who actually rush up to 
their friends and excitedly recite ANY poet's poems in unison?  In 
public?  Without blushing?  Who weep loudly enough upon reading a poem on 
public transportation that passersby notice and beg them for the name of 
the poet?  The whole question sure feels like a loaded one, although it 
seems that Mike is just genuinely curious about why people might  like this 
poet.  But something about it feels designed to bring up what Martin 
Stannard called the tired, decades-old "Ashbery question" -- that is, the 
premise behind it seems to be that: a) Ashbery is mostly just a spewer of 
undifferentiated randomness and nonsense, b) that those who profess to like 
his work don't REALLY understand or enjoy what they so loudly celebrate, 
and c) this is proven by the fact that they couldn't name a single piece of 
his that sticks out in their memory, since his poems are all 
indistinguishable, forgettable, and incapable of producing a powerful 
aesthetic response.  Implicitly, this line of questioning hints that being 
a fan of Ashbery is some kind of a sham, since it implies that when 
pressed, no reader of Ashbery could ever really justify their liking of his 
work the way a lover of Frost or Yeats or whoever could.

But the problem is that this is just not a fair picture of how a pretty 
broad spectrum of people -- ranging from die-hard Ashbery fanatics to 
readers/writers of decidedly non-Ashbery poetry -- respond to Ashbery's 
work.  I have had many conversations about Ashbery with poetry readers of 
various stripes, and can recall debating, on more than one occasion, which 
book of his is the best ("Do you really think Houseboat Days is better than 
the Double Dream of Spring?  No way!") and distinctly remember people 
marvelling at the genius of particular poems.  Come to think of it, just 
last week, before Mike's question, I was talking to a friend of mine, a 
well-known young poet who writes in much more traditional, formal vein, 
about the unspeakable greatness and brilliance of "Self-Portrait in a 
Convex Mirror" and Three Poems, with this friend admitting how it simply 
took his breath away when he recently revisited those works again.

Although I'll admit that, for me, the later Ashbery can often leave 
something to be desired (and perhaps especially in the memorability 
department), if you are truly in search of memorable, peak Ashbery, you 
should return to the series of extraordinary books stretching from Some 
Trees (1956) to Houseboat Days (1977).  There are so many excellent poems 
-- too many actually -- in those books to single out.  But I for one am 
much happier living in a world that has in it poems like "Two Scenes," "The 
Instruction Manual,""Some Trees,""The Painter,""Our Youth,""They Dream Only 
of Amerca,""These Lacustrine Cities,""A Blessing in Disguise," the 
wonderful long poem "The Skaters," the entire volume Double Dream of Spring 
("The Task,""Soonest Mended," "Spring Rain," "Evening in the Country," etc. 
etc.), the 3 remarkable long prose poems of Three Poems (especially his 
tour-de-force, "The System"), just about every poem in the collection 
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, "Street Musicians,""The Other 
Tradition,""And Ut Picture Poesis is Her Name," "Syringa," and many many 
others.

Although the very basic features of Ashbery's style obviously means that 
his poems don't naturally lend themselves to being recited in their 
entirety, I remember memorizing, quite easily (and happily), the terrific, 
unforgettable poem "The One Thing That Can Save America" when I took an 
oral exam for grad school some years back, and can still recite fragments 
without having thought about doing so for a long time.  More importantly, 
given the distinctive qualities of Ashbery's work, I, and many others, 
could recite from memory countless amazing, striking lines from so many 
Ashbery poems -- lines which are so often his stunning openers and closers 
("These are amazing:  each / joining a neighbor, as though speech / Were a 
still performance";  "These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing / Into 
something forgetful, though angry with history";  "Our Youth  / of bricks 
-- who built it?  Like some crazy balloon / When love leans on us / Its 
nights"; "They are preparing to begin again: / Problems, new pennant up the 
flagpole, / In a predicated romance"; "I tried each thing, only some were 
immortal and free. / Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight 
/ Filters down, a little at a time, / Waiting for someone to come"; "The 
summer demands and takes away too much, / But night, the reserved, the 
reticent, gives more than it takes"; "it is finally as though that thing of 
monstrous interest were happening in the sky / but the sun is setting and 
prevents you from seeing it").

Even just typing up these lines leads me to wonder: have the people who 
simply can't fathom why so many readers become Ashbery fans really gone 
back and read these poems lately?  Does one really need to have a 
conversation about whether Ashbery is capable of writing poetry filled with 
rich imagery, music, the play of sound and sense, whether he is capable of 
writing memorable, individual poems when he writes endings like these:

"I plan to stay here a little while
For these are moments only, moments of insight,
And there are reaches to be attained,
A last level of anxiety that melts
In becoming, like the pilgrim's feet." ("The Task")

or

"For this is action, this not being sure, this careless
Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,
Making ready to forget, and always coming back
To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago." ("Soonest Mended")

or

"Our question of a place of origin hangs
Like smoke: how we picnicked in pine forests,
In coves with the water always seeping up, and left
Our trash, sperm, and excrement everywhere, smeared
On the landscape, to make of us what we could."  ("Street Musicians")

At the very beginning of his first book Ashbery writes: "We see us as we 
truly behave: / From every corner comes a distinctive offering ... 
Everything has a schedule, if you can find out what it is."  I've never 
forgotten those lines, never stopped being bothered and haunted by them, 
nor by many of the great Ashbery poems that were to follow.  For many, many 
readers (on both sides of the fictive "great American poetry divide," I 
should add), Ashbery has again and again fashioned what Stevens called "the 
sounds that stick."  And a lot of us are extremely grateful for that.

Take care,
Andrew Epstein


At 09:26 AM 12/8/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>For those who are interested, there have been some passionate responses at 
>my blog to the Ashbery questions I posted there and to this list.  You can 
>see the comments (and add your own!) at this incredibly log url:
>
>
>http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments?u=113501&p=410&link=http%3A%2F%2Fradio.weblogs.com%2F0113501%2F2004%2F12%2F04.html%23a410
>
>
>-----
>Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer.
>http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium
>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From editor at blazevox.org  Wed Dec  8 01:00:43 2004
From: editor at blazevox.org (Geoffrey Gatza)
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 01:00:43 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ::: BlazeVOX [books] ::: Antidotes for an Alibi by Amy
	King
References: <A0CD7B1A-4869-11D9-9513-00306549AD52@lmi.net>
Message-ID: <00a601c4dceb$42ee5f40$864aa145@white2pimprza3>

Antidotes for an Alibi Poetry by Amy King

BlazeVOX [books] http://www.blazevox.org/books/ak.htm


Amy King's first full-length collection, Antidotes for an Alibi, insists 
that we examine the deceptive clarity of our actions and the goals that 
motivate us. How does one actually get from "A" to "B"-and is there ever 
really a "B"? What color is the white space between "A" and "B"? Upon closer 
inspection, surface realities reveal themselves to be porous and fragile, 
layered with textures and grains that lead the eye on varying pathways. So 
what are we to do in a world of newspaper narratives that instruct us toward 
tidy endings, murmuring that such endings are possible and even inevitable?



..... Nominated for a Lambda Award !!! and recently mentioned on Chris 
Murry's texfiles.blogspot.com ......



Amy King's poems think in association, evoking a world familiar but entirely 
unexpectable. Next to us all this turns and spins: under the veil of hum and 
drum is the paradise of possibility. This is a poetry of hope for a world 
shrouded by nearly and almost. -- Charles Bernstein

I like the way the poems in Antidotes for an Alibi seem to turn on their 
axes. Their wit is gone before you know it, but the metaphysical effect 
transports you a considerable distance, where you find yourself happy to be 
pleasantly addled.
-- Ron Padgett


Amy King's poems leap from small, fragile moments into grand gesture and 
godly vision. Her snapshots of downtown folklore connect on the most basic, 
truthful level. "If I were you, I would wait for me," King writes. I advise 
you to do what she says.
--Daniel Nester


http://www.blazevox.org/books/ak.htm
Product Information: Poetry

? Paperback: // pages
? Binding: Perfect-Bound Binding
? Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] (September 2004)
? Size: 6.33" x 10.25"
? ISBN: 0-9759227-5-0
? Nice Price: $11.00



+
++ BlazeVOX |    http://www.blazevox.org
+++                               Poetry USA



From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Dec  9 20:16:33 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 20:16:33 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] PHARES: WINTER 04-05 FICT & PO
Message-ID: <86.1d1e64c6.2eea52f1@aol.com>

 PLOUGHSHARES www.pshares.org ***THE WINTER 2004-05 FICTION & POETRY ISSUE 
HAS ARRIVED*** Ploughshares is pleased to announce the publication of our Winter 
2004-05 issue, guest-edited by Joy Harjo and featuring six stories and 
fifty-three poems by both big names and exciting new voices. See the new issue 
online today at www.pshares.org. ***SPECIAL WEB-ONLY SUBSCRIPTION PRICE*** 
www.pshares.org/Subscriptions/subscribenow.cfm $19.95 for one year (regularly $24), or 
$40.00 for two years (regularly $46)! Plus the first issue of your 
subscription will be shipped to you by Priority Mail at no extra cost. ***UPCOMING 
EVENTS*** www.pshares.org/Events/ Come hear your favorite authors read! Our 
national listing of readings and events featuring Ploughshares authors is constantly 
being updated. ***2004 ZACHARIS AWARDS*** 
www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmarticleID=8129 The $1,500 John C. Zacharis First Book Award honors the best 
debut book by a Ploughshares writer, alternating annually between fiction and 
poetry. Congratulations to this year's winner, Mark Turpin, for his collection 
of poems, Hammer (Sarabande, 2003). ***NEW PRIZE ANTHOLOGY SELECTIONS*** 
www.pshares.org/info/page.cfm?intContentID=66 Stories, poems, and essays from 
Ploughshares have appeared at least 135 times in The Best American Poetry, The 
Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and The Pushcart 
Prize: Best of the Small Presses. See the list. Congratulations to our latest 
prize anthology selections: BEST STORIES: Jill McCorkle?s ?Intervention,? 
from the Fall 2003 issue edited by Alice Hoffman, is included in The Best 
American Short Stories 2004. BEST POETRY: Mary Jo Bang?s ?The Eye Like a Strange 
Balloon Mounts Towards Infinity,? from the Spring 2003 issue edited by Carl 
Phillips, appears in The Best American Poetry 2004. PUSHCART: An excerpt from 
David St. John?s poem ? The Face,? from the Spring 2003 issue, and the stories ?
I Am Not Your Mother? by Alice Mattison, ?Reading in His Wake? by Pamela 
Painter, and ?Fast Sunday? by Sue Standing, all from the Fall 2003 issue, have 
been selected for The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses. BEST 
MYSTERY: Patrick Michael Finn?s story ?Where Beautiful Ladies Dance for You,? 
nominated by Susan Straight for the staff-edited Winter 2003-04 Emerging Writers 
issue, is included in The Best American Mystery Stories 2004. If you do not 
wish to receive future newsletters from us, please reply to this email with ?
REMOVE? in the subject line. 
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From grahamd at ripon.edu  Thu Dec  9 20:35:34 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 19:35:34 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Plath re-revisioning
Message-ID: <BDDE5986.D908%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Meghan O'Rourke article in *Slate* about the two versions of Plath's
*Ariel*:  she prefers Hughes's.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2110754/


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Dec  9 20:50:35 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 20:50:35 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <a9.687e9c92.2eea5aeb@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/8/2004 1:57:42 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
cstroffo at earthlink.net writes:

> Would your valuing of economy also apply to
> a lower judgment of, say, Wordsworth's Prelude
> or Rilke's Duino Elegies, or Whitman and Ginsberg's
> longlined rhapsodes, for instance--none of which 
> I'd value for their "economy," per se---
> or is their a particular ashberian lack of economy
> for you?
> 
> 
Chris,
The Prelude is a mountain I don't know what to do with. 
(Whitman and Rilke, if one could imagine them as skiers, 
never seem to loose the downhill line.)
If I understand your question, my answer would
be that many long poems are strings of bright beads. 
Each bead being the true poems...the rest string.
Johnson said of Paradise Lost, 'none wished it longer'. 
I guess I'd concur...even the best long poems are not 
what draws me to poetry. Throw them all away and I'd 
miss them as I'd miss as any 'species' gone extinct. 
Throw out all the shorter ones (and I'm considering some 
10 page poems as short) and I'd be less interested in 
the phylum of the art itself. I do think the motto of 
'multum in parvo'  is an important dividing line of 
poetic aesthetics.
Finnegan
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From grahamd at ripon.edu  Thu Dec  9 21:12:36 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 20:12:36 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery/thanks to AE
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20041208143009.03ae2660@englishmail.fsu.edu>
Message-ID: <BDDE6234.D90D%grahamd@ripon.edu>

I've been following the Ashbery discussion with great interest.  Right now
I've only got time to say thanks to Andrew Epstein for his wonderful lengthy
post.  Much to chew on there.



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Thu Dec  9 21:28:23 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 20:28:23 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings
Message-ID: <BDDE65E7.D90F%grahamd@ripon.edu>

As I've said, I'm not a particular fan of John Ashbery's poems, with the
exception of some of the shorter ones.  Here's my favorite:


Mixed Feelings

A pleasant smell of frying sausages
Attacks the sense, along with an old, mostly invisible
Photograph of what seems to be girls lounging around
An old fighter bomber, circa 1942 vintage.
How to explain to these girls, if indeed that's what they are,
These Ruths, Lindas, Pats and Sheilas
About the vast change that's taken place
In the fabric of our society, altering the texture
Of all things in it? And yet
They somehow look as if they knew, except
That it's so hard to see them, it's hard to figure out
Exactly what kind of expressions they're wearing.
What are your hobbies, girls? Aw, nerts,
One of them might say, this guy's too much for me.
Let's go on and out, somewhere
Through the canyons of the garment center
To a small cafe and have a cup of coffee.
I am not offended that these creatures (that's the word)
Of my imagination seem to hold me in such light exteem,
Pay so little heed to me. It's part of a complicated
Flirtation routine, anyhow, no doubt. But this talk of
The garment center? Surely that's California sunlight
Belaboring them and the old crate on which they
Have draped themselves, fading its Donald Duck insignia
To the extreme point of legibility.
Maybe they were lying but more likely their
Tiny intelligences cannot retain much information.
Not even one fact, perhaps. That's why
They think they're in New York. I like the way
They look and act and feel. I wonder
How they got that way, but am not going to
Waste any more time thinking about them.
I have already forgotten them
Until some day in the not too distant future
When we meet possibly in the lounge of a modern airport,
They looking astonishingly young and fresh as when this picture was made
But full of contradictory ideas, stupid ones as well as
Worthwhile ones, but all flooding the surface of our minds
As we babble about the sky and the weather and the forests of change.

--John Ashbery.  *Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror*.  1975.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From amyhappens at yahoo.com  Thu Dec  9 21:38:58 2004
From: amyhappens at yahoo.com (amy king)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 21:38:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings
In-Reply-To: <BDDE65E7.D90F%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <JMENIAHNFGOCLHLNNIPHMELFCLAA.amyhappens@yahoo.com>

David just posted his favorite Ashbery poem ... I'm a diehard Ashbery fan,
but I also think there's 'good' Ashbery and 'bad' Ashbery.   I would love to
see other favorites posted and find out which poems make the 'biggest hits
list.'

-----



From jsafdie at comcast.net  Thu Dec  9 22:35:14 2004
From: jsafdie at comcast.net (Joe Safdie)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 19:35:14 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings
References: <JMENIAHNFGOCLHLNNIPHMELFCLAA.amyhappens@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <006f01c4de69$42d20910$56001118@D6T95L21>

Let me respond to Amy's request by, first, posting what another poet, Donald 
Revell, said about Ashbery, in a book of useful interviews of poets called 
*Range of the Possible*, edited by Tod Marshall:

"People are always talking about how much Ashbery comes out of Wallace 
Stevens, and of course, Ashbery benefited enormously from Stevens' project. 
Yet I see Williams in Ashbery as much as I see Stevens. I think it's part of 
Ashbery's genius to understand that the inside is outside too. Part of what 
happens in the making of poems and the reading of poems is the understanding 
of one's inner life as being outside and all around you. So I don't see them 
as being poles at all; I see them as being orchestrations in the same moment 
of music. I think Ashbery daunts people in some ways because he is so 
accessible. They can't quite cope with a poetry that is so on the page. In a 
sense he is the most approachable of American poets because nothing is being 
concealed, and that's why I'm always astonished when people say Ashbery is a 
difficult poet, because he's not. He's quite the opposite. He's the most 
available, the most welcoming of poets I know. Everything is what it is. 
It's not a symbol for anything else. It's this entire exteriorization of the 
inward life, this humility that says there is nothing in me that didn't come 
from the world. It's not as if the world were some pale substitute for my 
splendid inner life. If I have an inner life where do you think it came 
from? It came from the world."

That's about the most prescient thing I've ever seen written about Ashbery. 
I hope some of you share my appreciation. I like it so much because I too 
have always had "mixed feelings" about Ashbery -- there was something in me 
that responded to his poems as if they were too random, as if lots of lines 
could easily have been cut, as if I wanted something harder, more gem-like 
and obdurate. But that was just me and my taste and didn't really reflect 
what was going on in the poems.

The interviewer goes on and asks Revell which of Ashbery's books he likes 
most; that's worth a quote too.

"I think when I started reading Ashbery it was *The Double Dream of Spring* 
and *Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror* that most mattered. As I get older, I 
love most of all *Three Poems*. I don't want to call them prose poems but 
we'll call them prose poems. What happens in there is so enormous I can 
hardly begin to speak of it. All I know is that Ashbery is the first poet 
who taught me that the poem begins when you stop reading."

Isn't that *great*?? "The poem begins when you stop reading" . . . I love 
it. (Not to mention that I agree that *Three Poems* has always been my 
favorite book as well -- it generated a lot of poems way back when. I never 
really understood those earlier books, *The Tennis Court Oath* and such, and 
when he started to become an institution with *Self-Portrait* I assumed my 
usual contrarian stance . . . )

I want to talk about Revell's last book, *My Mohave*, as the most 
interesting book of poems I've read this year, even if it was published in 
2003. But that's for another post. Before I go to Costa Rica this Sunday. 
Hasn't anyone been there?

Amy, your book looks great. Congratulations on getting published by 
Geoffrey, who's doing some really interesting things.

Joe


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "amy king" <amyhappens at yahoo.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 6:38 PM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings


> David just posted his favorite Ashbery poem ... I'm a diehard Ashbery fan,
> but I also think there's 'good' Ashbery and 'bad' Ashbery.   I would love 
> to
> see other favorites posted and find out which poems make the 'biggest hits
> list.'



From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Fri Dec 10 03:40:19 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:40:19 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] the Poets' Corner
Message-ID: <004401c4de93$e2937590$9cec3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Dearest All,

 

                                   ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

with a long red Xmas Ribbon the Poets' Corner's update this time opens with a wonderful poem by Joanna Boutler filed under the section dedicated to our _Father(s)_:

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=884

 

 

 

A Present For Daddy

 

 

When I was a little girl my father had a pipe
and the tune it played was Gallagher's Rubbed-Out Rich Dark Honeydew.

At nearly-Christmas every year
we'd go with our mother to the small brown shop

with the bright glass cabinets and dark wood counter
where the air smelled of honey with liquorice breath,

and we'd say very carefully - If you please
we want Gallagher's Rubbed-Out Rich Dark Honeydew.

And all Christmas long that rich brown scent
would mingle with the smells of turkey and pudding

and our noses would be joyful too.

When I was a little girl my father had a pipe
and the tune it played was

Gallagher's Rubbed-Out Rich Dark Honeydew.



? Joanna Boulter

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=94

 

 

and one by Sharon Brogan on Winter:

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=885

 

 

Winter is hazardous.  The world around my house is a sheet of ice,
scattered with thin, dry snow.   Windows bloom with frost, birch
branches bare on the other side.  I stay indoors, still stiff and sore
from a fall two days ago.  The dogs beg for a walk; they will not have
one.  Yesterday, the river complained, groaning beneath its
ice-spotted skin.  Ducks huddled together on stones above the surface.

            even the moon
            a shard
            of  ice


--
? Sharon Brogan
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=99

 

 

 

Here are the new featured Poets:

 

Barry Schwabsky

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=139

 

Andrew Lundwall

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=140

 

Patrick Herron

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=141

 

Pierre Joris

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=142

 

Kent Johnson

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=143

 

Peter Philpott

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=144

 

Lance Phillips

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=145

 

Susan M. Schultz

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=146

 

Sheila E. Murphy

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=147

 

 

 

 

Alan Sondheim with various incredible contributions,

 

Hollowed

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=839

 

VOTE NEW YORK!!!

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=840

 

char the task of scribe

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=846

 

ah/768

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=863

 

once it happened it was everywhere

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=864

 

For Iris Chang

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=865

 

THE HAMMER

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=868

 

less and less seems to matter and it's good i'm not

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=870

 

Assessment for Azure

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=886

 

 

 

 

 

 

I changed the title _Quotations_ on the main index into _New Poetry Mailing List_ and opened a page with:

Selections from... and three contributions I chose from the posts to the New Poetry Mailing List by James Finnegan:

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=841

 

 

 

 

 

Douglas Clark and his indefatigable wonderful narration:

 

The Mong

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=866

 

Hulagu's Ride

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=867

 

Morning

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=869

 

 

 

 

I finally translated some poems by Arni Ibsen into Italian with my best wish for a soon and safe recovery:

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=871

 

 

 

 

Here you can find the main index:

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content

 

I agree with Ron Silliman's comment when he says that some anthologies are disparate, this collection might also seem to you but _believe it or not_ I greatly value those who are present on the Poets' Corner and I wish them the success they deserve,

 

and hopefully I didn't forget anything or anybody. 

 

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Fri Dec 10 06:51:51 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:51:51 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ubu Roi
Message-ID: <003701c4deae$a4f4d100$9cee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

>From Today in Literature
http://www.todayinliterature.com/today-ct.asp?id=12/10/2004


On this day in 1896, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, opened and closed in Paris. The play caused a near-riot in the audience, and a tempest in the press over the next days; it is now regarded as a landmark moment in the history of modern theater, or the absurdist branch of it. Biographically the play was conventional enough: Pa Ubu was based upon Jarry's high school mathematics teacher, the archetypal classroom tyrant. In Jarry's caricature, Ubu became a grotesquely fat megalomaniac, his symbol for all that was pushy and piggy about the bourgeoisie. The set, costumes and acting style took this further, becoming a slap not just at bourgeois values but at the well-made play. Jarry's characters talked in staccato, as if machines; they moved as marionettes through imaginary scenery, wearing masks and placards. When Ubu came on stage with a large target drawn on his belly, a toilet-brush for a scepter and the play's opening line of "Merdre!" ("Shitre," perhaps -- some translate the play's title as King Turd) there was a 15-minute yelling and shoving match between the avant-garde and the rear-guard. When things finally calmed down, and Ubu was able to say the second line -- "Merdre!" -- there was another. All this was so offensive that Ubu Roi would not be produced again for over a decade, until after Jarry's death. Nonetheless, the one night and attendant scandal left Jarry satisfied that he had given society "the sight of its ignoble double," a portrait of "the eternal imbecility of man, his eternal lubricity, his eternal gluttony, the baseness of instinct raised to the status of tyranny; of the coyness, the virtue, the patriotism, and the ideas of the people who have dined well."

Jarry's absinthe-and-anarchy lifestyle would kill him at the age of thirty-four. His last years were spent as those previous -- carrying the Ubu story on to Ubu Cuckolded and Ubu Enchained, refining his science of "pataphysics," roaming Paris on bicycle while wearing and waving his two pistols, dining on the fish he caught in the Seine, living in his midget-sized rooms, created from a regular apartment cut in half horizontally. . . . In time, Symbolists, Surrealists, Dadaists and Absurdists would claim him as their own -- though W. B. Yeats, who had attended opening/closing night, and even shouted on Ubu's side, afterwards had this warning about the end-of-era event:

After Stephane Mallarme, after Paul Verlaine, after Gustave Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after our own verse, after all our subtle colour and nervous rhythm, after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what more is possible? After us the Savage God. 

      - SK  



Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From halvard at earthlink.net  Fri Dec 10 10:00:24 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 10:00:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others:  Jackson Mac Low, "Unmanifest"
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEIEOGJHAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


Unmanifest

What the maker of a manifesto does not comprehend or acknowledge
is the basic unmanifestness from which and within which each manifes-
tation takes place. It is this neglect or ignorance that calls forth repug-
nance  when a manifesto is proclaimed or published, especially one
regarding art. As if what comes to being in and as the work of  art
could ever be totally manifest or even manifest at all without its abiding
steadfastly in the unmanfest! A work of art is a manifesto only insofar
as it is its own antimanifesto.

21 June 1983
New York

Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)

fr. *Bloomsday*
[Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1984]


Hal           

Halvard Johnson
============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Fri Dec 10 10:13:14 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 08:13:14 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others:  Jackson Mac Low, "Unmanifest"
Message-ID: <2975211.1102691594910.JavaMail.root@waldorf.psp.pas.earthlink.net>

One could have a genderfest with that.

- Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net>
Sent: Dec 10, 2004 8:00 AM
To: New-Poetry <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others:  Jackson Mac Low, "Unmanifest"


Unmanifest

What the maker of a manifesto does not comprehend or acknowledge
is the basic unmanifestness from which and within which each manifes-
tation takes place. It is this neglect or ignorance that calls forth repug-
nance  when a manifesto is proclaimed or published, especially one
regarding art. As if what comes to being in and as the work of  art
could ever be totally manifest or even manifest at all without its abiding
steadfastly in the unmanfest! A work of art is a manifesto only insofar
as it is its own antimanifesto.

21 June 1983
New York

Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)

fr. *Bloomsday*
[Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1984]


Hal           

Halvard Johnson
============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/

_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes:  http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html
Salt River Review:  http://www.poetserv.org
RelativeLinks: http://www.poetserv.com/relativelinks/home.html


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Fri Dec 10 11:50:40 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:50:40 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] from Al Aronowitz
Message-ID: <004501c4ded8$630dd690$dfa93852@yourpk9x5fuc06>

DEAR FRIENDS AND READERS,

I will have an opportunity to meet those of you in the Pittsburgh area on Thursday, December 16, when I appear at Pittsburgh's Club Caf? at 56-58 South 12th Street along with what I consider the Pittsburgh area's best up-and-coming band, MOSES, for a Booksigning party scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. 
With me will be an ample supply of copies of the two books I now have in print, BOB DYLAN AND THE BEATLES, VOLUME ONE OF THE BEST OF THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST and BOBBY DARIN WAS A FRIEND OF MINE, VOLUME THREE OF THE BEST OF THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST. 
You buy 'em and I'll sign 'em.

Otherwise, this message is to inform you that once again we are unavoidably late with this issue of THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST,
COLUMN 112, dated December 1, 2004, which is now on the web. Illness continues to force us to publish an abbreviated issue. To take a
look, click on http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj   

SECTION ONE: 
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column112.html 
LAFAYETTE PARK BLUES. Virginia author Joe Bageant mourns the lost freedom and idealism of the '60s, which he says has been replaced by the 
militaristic attitude of the "Red" states.

SECTION TWO: 
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column112a.html 
ON THE ROAD: HOW COUNTERCULTURE SURVIVES IN AMSTERDAM. Another ON THE ROAD column by the legendary John Sinclair, one of those so important to America's counterculture of the '60s. In this one, John tells how Holland's counterculture continues to exist despite the country's Bush-like rightwing government.

SECTION THREE: THE LITERARY LINKS SECTION: Links to THE ALLEN GINSBERG ORGANIZATION, THE RITA DOVE website, THE PETER COYOTE website; THE MCCLURE-MANZAREK website; the AMERICAN LEGENDS website; Anny Ballardini's POETS CORNER and we now add altweeklies.com, which is a comprehensive compilation of stories from various alternative newspapers from around the country!

SECTION FOUR: THE MOVIE SECTION: THE RITZ FILMBILL. Synopses of foreign, independent and Hollywood movies.

SECTION FIVE: THE MUSIC SECTION, features the usual links to SONGSCENTRAL, PURR, POWER OF POP, all contemporary music e-zines; ART 
ATTACK, all about jazz; THE CELEBRITY CAF?, all about celebrities; the BABUKISHAN DAS BAUL website; and EAR CANDY.

SECTION SIX: THE ADVERTISING SECTION, offers 13 pages of ads from Earwraps; Cleveland International Records; Richard X. Heyman; 
Christopher Pick; J. Crow's Milled Cider; An Advertisement for Myself; Tommy Womack, Compliments of a Friend; Zoe Artemis invites you to 
literary retreat in Greece; Richard Dettrey, who will help you with your shopping; BABY ON THE WATER by Tsaurah Litzky; BOB DYLAN AND THE 
BEATLES; and Arrogant Prick T-shirts. 

Would you, too, like to help keep THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST on the Internet? For a nominal contribution, you can have your own advertising page in the Advertising Section of THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST. Simply send us an email to find out about particulars.
There are links to friendly sites and we also feature MARK PUCCI'S ONLINE REVIEWS, originally edited by John Williams.

Hope you read and enjoy. And hope to see you in Pittsburgh Thursday, 
December 16.
Best, Al Aronowitz
 










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Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Fri Dec 10 05:35:39 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:35:39 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
In-Reply-To: <20041209211025.96429.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <BDDED81B.7AA9%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>

On 12/9/04 3:10 PM, "Jeff Newberry" <jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I didn't know much about his work; I think I've read
> only a poem or two.  But I do remember that he had
> this wonderful writing exercise published in Behn and
> Twichell's *Practice of Poetry.*  It was something Mac
> Low called "Word Harvesting," an exercise in which a
> poet develops some sort of system of harvesting words
> from passage.  Mac Low suggested spelling through a
> word:  for example, you might spell the word "poem"
> through an article about dolphins (or anything, for
> that matter).  Every time you finish the word, you
> take that particular word from the article.  When
> you're done, you write a poem using those words.
> 
> I wrote one for a grad poetry workshop.  I used a
> Derrida excerpt from a lit theory textbook I had at
> the time.  The textbook italicized "differance" and
> other theory words.  I took the words right after the
> italicized words and wrote a poem.  My teacher hated,
> though.  But then again, she hated Derrida.
> 
> All of which to say:  does anyone have a favorite
> writing exercise for poems (or prose?).  Barring
> dismissive commentary like "I don't use writing
> exercises for I find them boring and contrived," I'd
> like to see what you have to say.
> 
> Jeff Newberry
> 
> 
> --- Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Some of you no doubt know by now that Jackson Mac
>> Low died yesterday. I
>> thought it would be important to note here his
>> passing. He was 82.
>> 
>> Mac Low was one of the great poetry experimentalists
>> of our time and of
>> any time. 
>> 
>> The work is vast and mind-boggling in its
>> variousness and strangeness,
>> astonishing in the range of its formal ambitions. My
>> personal favorites
>> are The Light Poems, though there is so much.
>> 
>> Kent
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>> 
> 
> 
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
> 
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> ---
> [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
> 
> 
Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are precisely why
I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless poetry, if you can
call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious influence as well.

But then my suppositions about poetry are already known.

Paul Lake  

Paul Lake

---
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From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Fri Dec 10 05:43:35 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:43:35 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings
In-Reply-To: <BDDE65E7.D90F%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <BDDED9F7.7AAB%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>

On 12/9/04 8:28 PM, "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

> As I've said, I'm not a particular fan of John Ashbery's poems, with the
> exception of some of the shorter ones.  Here's my favorite:
> 
> 
> Mixed Feelings
> 
> A pleasant smell of frying sausages
> Attacks the sense, along with an old, mostly invisible
> Photograph of what seems to be girls lounging around
> An old fighter bomber, circa 1942 vintage.
> How to explain to these girls, if indeed that's what they are,
> These Ruths, Lindas, Pats and Sheilas
> About the vast change that's taken place
> In the fabric of our society, altering the texture
> Of all things in it? And yet
> They somehow look as if they knew, except
> That it's so hard to see them, it's hard to figure out
> Exactly what kind of expressions they're wearing.
> What are your hobbies, girls? Aw, nerts,
> One of them might say, this guy's too much for me.
> Let's go on and out, somewhere
> Through the canyons of the garment center
> To a small cafe and have a cup of coffee.
> I am not offended that these creatures (that's the word)
> Of my imagination seem to hold me in such light exteem,
> Pay so little heed to me. It's part of a complicated
> Flirtation routine, anyhow, no doubt. But this talk of
> The garment center? Surely that's California sunlight
> Belaboring them and the old crate on which they
> Have draped themselves, fading its Donald Duck insignia
> To the extreme point of legibility.
> Maybe they were lying but more likely their
> Tiny intelligences cannot retain much information.
> Not even one fact, perhaps. That's why
> They think they're in New York. I like the way
> They look and act and feel. I wonder
> How they got that way, but am not going to
> Waste any more time thinking about them.
> I have already forgotten them
> Until some day in the not too distant future
> When we meet possibly in the lounge of a modern airport,
> They looking astonishingly young and fresh as when this picture was made
> But full of contradictory ideas, stupid ones as well as
> Worthwhile ones, but all flooding the surface of our minds
> As we babble about the sky and the weather and the forests of change.
> 
> --John Ashbery.  *Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror*.  1975.
> 
> 
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> ---
> [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
> 
> 
Not a bad poem, from the one book of Ashberry's I like.  The poem from it's
first line on, is haunted by the ghost of iambic pentameter and has a nice
conversational feel to it. Not bad. Thanks for posting it.

Paul

---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]



From martinstannard at ntlworld.com  Fri Dec 10 13:41:05 2004
From: martinstannard at ntlworld.com (Martin Stannard)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:41:05 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery etc.
Message-ID: <002401c4dee7$cf9051d0$0fa80252@SPARKLE100>

This Ashbery exchange has been exhilarating, and precisely what I come to lists like this for. I've tried to write about Ashbery a lot, and have always felt (although I'm not sure I've ever quite said) there are two ways of going about it. One is that you try and come up with something as articulate and wonderful as Donald Revell, or you just quote a lot of lines and say Wow! and let the lines otherwise speak for their own brilliance. And by "brilliance" I mean they do those things I thought poetry was supposed to do: blow the top of your head off (to steal a phrase), and thereby open up the world and how we are in it.

What this exchange has revealed, I think, as if we didn't already know it, is that the ways in which one responds to a work of art and comes to "love" it are many and various. That's exactly how it should be. Or, as Jackson Mac Low might have said, it's all to do with the unmanifesto. 

Regards to all,
Martin Stannard

Home Page: www.martinstannard.co.uk

Blog (here will be found musings, poems by various great poets,
book & occasional music reviews & sundry stuff. It's a blog-thing
but also a zine thing ....): http://exultationsanddifficulties.blogspot.com/

"Footnotes can be fun."
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Fri Dec 10 13:44:36 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:44:36 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
References: <20041209211025.96429.qmail@web52606.mail.yahoo.com>
	<002701c4de52$693bd570$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <00d701c4dee8$4d18b3e0$dfa93852@yourpk9x5fuc06>

This is an exceptional relationship between a teacher and a student. I agree
with the translation part. I stubbornly decided to translate into Italian my
numbers from 1-10, which meant that I had to understand perfectly what I had
written. The fact that I was working on my own work, gave me the opportunity
to go back and change things I didn't like in the English version, sometimes
also because the Italian language in order to make sense needed a different
way to express the same concept. It was a long and boring job, but I think
it can be considered a good exercise.

Another exercise is to read your work in a loud voice, record it, read it
again and again, 20 times. You will notice how many corrections you will do,
and finally if you compare the final version to the first maybe only a
couple of thoughts are still there out of say, 14.

Alejandra Pizarnik used to write her poems on pieces of paper and then stick
them on a board (or hang them on a clothesline) so that she could read them
for several days. This is also quite interesting, especially with visual
work, to have it always there in front of you, so that you can re-read it or
see it in different moments of your day according to distinct moods, that
gives some interesting inputs.

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 1:51 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)


> Here's an exercise by Patti Marshock that I liked enough to put up on my
> website. I've used it more than once for myself, and have come up with
some
> poems I've liked.
>
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/collage.html
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jeff Newberry" <jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com>
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,Views"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 4:10 PM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
>
>
> >I didn't know much about his work; I think I've read
> > only a poem or two.  But I do remember that he had
> > this wonderful writing exercise published in Behn and
> > Twichell's *Practice of Poetry.*  It was something Mac
> > Low called "Word Harvesting," an exercise in which a
> > poet develops some sort of system of harvesting words
> > from passage.  Mac Low suggested spelling through a
> > word:  for example, you might spell the word "poem"
> > through an article about dolphins (or anything, for
> > that matter).  Every time you finish the word, you
> > take that particular word from the article.  When
> > you're done, you write a poem using those words.
> >
> > I wrote one for a grad poetry workshop.  I used a
> > Derrida excerpt from a lit theory textbook I had at
> > the time.  The textbook italicized "differance" and
> > other theory words.  I took the words right after the
> > italicized words and wrote a poem.  My teacher hated,
> > though.  But then again, she hated Derrida.
> >
> > All of which to say:  does anyone have a favorite
> > writing exercise for poems (or prose?).  Barring
> > dismissive commentary like "I don't use writing
> > exercises for I find them boring and contrived," I'd
> > like to see what you have to say.
> >
> > Jeff Newberry
> >
> >
> > --- Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> Some of you no doubt know by now that Jackson Mac
> >> Low died yesterday. I
> >> thought it would be important to note here his
> >> passing. He was 82.
> >>
> >> Mac Low was one of the great poetry experimentalists
> >> of our time and of
> >> any time.
> >>
> >> The work is vast and mind-boggling in its
> >> variousness and strangeness,
> >> astonishing in the range of its formal ambitions. My
> >> personal favorites
> >> are The Light Poems, though there is so much.
> >>
> >> Kent
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> New-Poetry mailing list
> >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >>
> >
> >
> > =====
> > Jeff Newberry
> >
> > "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> > especially when your only friend
> > talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> > and you do just the same as him."
> > --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry




From memexikon at mwt.net  Fri Dec 10 14:45:12 2004
From: memexikon at mwt.net (mIEKAL aND)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:45:12 -0600
Subject: Fwd: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
Message-ID: <01DE49F4-4AE4-11D9-A403-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>

Brilliant!


>
> On Friday, December 10, 2004, at 04:35 AM, Paul Lake wrote:
>
>> On 12/9/04 3:10 PM, "Jeff Newberry" <jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are 
>> precisely why
>> I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless poetry, if you 
>> can
>> call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious influence as 
>> well.



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec 10 14:50:03 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:50:03 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
Message-ID: <s1b9a99a.023@mail.highland.edu>

Paul Lake said,

"The poem from it's first line on, is haunted by the ghost of iambic
pentameter and has a nice conversational feel to it."

But Paul, what is there in English-language poetry that *isn't* haunted
by the ghost of iambic pentameter?


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec 10 14:52:44 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:52:44 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery essay
Message-ID: <s1b9aa51.025@mail.highland.edu>

Here is another articulate appraisal of Ashbery, by Forrest Gander:

http://jacketmagazine.com/08/gand-r-ashb.html


From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Fri Dec 10 14:54:33 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:54:33 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
Message-ID: <ee.81d24d3.2eeb58f9@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/10/2004 1:50:55 PM Central Standard Time, 
Kent.Johnson at highland.edu writes: 
> Paul Lake said,
> 
> "The poem from it's first line on, is haunted by the ghost of iambic
> pentameter and has a nice conversational feel to it."
> 
> But Paul, what is there in English-language poetry that *isn't* haunted
> by the ghost of iambic pentameter?

"The Night Before Christmas"?
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From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Fri Dec 10 07:57:11 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:57:11 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
In-Reply-To: <s1b9a99a.023@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <BDDEF947.7AB8%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>

On 12/10/04 1:50 PM, "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

> Paul Lake said,
> 
> "The poem from it's first line on, is haunted by the ghost of iambic
> pentameter and has a nice conversational feel to it."
> 
> But Paul, what is there in English-language poetry that *isn't* haunted
> by the ghost of iambic pentameter?
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> ---
> [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
> 
> 
Most of Williams, the Black Mountain school, Language poetry and its
postmodern progeny. And I'll bet Bob G. cane name some more.

Paul

---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec 10 14:58:46 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:58:46 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] My Author page
Message-ID: <s1b9aba4.030@mail.highland.edu>

This is the closest I come to having a blog, I guess. The page gives
links to various things at Jacket in some kind of relation to the guy in
the photo: poems, essays, interviews (on both sides of the questions),
translations, travelogues. 

http://jacketmagazine.com/bio/index.html

Hope you'll have a look!

Kent


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec 10 15:13:23 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:13:23 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] the ghost of iambic pentameter
Message-ID: <s1b9af19.040@mail.highland.edu>



>'"Twas the Night Before Christmas"?

Actually, the iamb says BOO loudest in the anapest...


From marcus at designerglass.com  Fri Dec 10 15:14:06 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:14:06 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
In-Reply-To: <ee.81d24d3.2eeb58f9@cs.com>
Message-ID: <41B9BD3E.19181.43B869@localhost>

>     Paul Lake said,
>     "The poem from it's first line on, is haunted by the ghost of
>     iambic pentameter and has a nice conversational feel to it."
 
> Kent.Johnson at highland.edu writes: 
>     But Paul, what is there in English-language poetry that *isn't*
>     haunted by the ghost of iambic pentameter?
 
> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:
> "The Night Before Christmas"? 

"The Charge of the Light Brigade"?




From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec 10 15:45:12 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:45:12 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
Message-ID: <s1b9b688.074@mail.highland.edu>

"The Charge of the Light Brigade"?

And in trochees and dactyls, too. The iamb is the Head ghost in the big
spook house of meter. 




From marcus at designerglass.com  Fri Dec 10 16:01:22 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:01:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
In-Reply-To: <s1b9b688.074@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41B9C852.17363.6EFF59@localhost>

> "The Charge of the Light Brigade"?
> 
On 10 Dec 2004 at 14:45, Kent Johnson wrote:
> And in trochees and dactyls, too. The iamb is the Head ghost in the
> big spook house of meter. 

Nah -- saying the iamb is present in dactyls and anapests is like 
saying that death is present in life, or darkness in light, or evil 
in good -- all perfectly true in a portentiously irrelevant 
metaphorical way, perhaps, but no basis for examining how meter 
actually works, and what constitutes the reasons one differs from 
another.

Marcus





From mandolin at mac.com  Fri Dec 10 16:13:59 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:13:59 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
In-Reply-To: <s1b9b688.074@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1b9b688.074@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <555972.1102713239072.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

"
On Friday, December 10, 2004, at 03:49PM, Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

>"The Charge of the Light Brigade"?
>
>And in trochees and dactyls, too. The iamb is the Head ghost in the big
>spook house of meter. 
>
>

Even if that were true, it wouldn't imply anything about iambic /pentameter/ and "Break, Break, Break." Or even "The Road Not Taken.


-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Fri Dec 10 16:22:18 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:22:18 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the iamb
Message-ID: <s1b9bf45.061@mail.highland.edu>

Marcus said,

"Nah -- saying the iamb is present in dactyls and anapests is like 
saying that death is present in life, or darkness in light, or evil 
in good -- all perfectly true in a portentiously irrelevant 
metaphorical way, perhaps, but no basis for examining how meter 
actually works, and what constitutes the reasons one differs from 
another."

Marcus: I love rhythm and it's fun to trace the protoplasm of its
effects. But as for why the ghost of the Iamb is Real and always there,
murmuring through the falling cadences of the low-ghost trochees we spy
in the ultraviolet light of scansion, well, I've got two spooky words
for you : 

anacrusis and catalexis

Kent






From grahamd at ripon.edu  Fri Dec 10 16:35:26 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:35:26 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery again
Message-ID: <BDDF72BE.D9BA%grahamd@ripon.edu>

I find that most of the Ashbery I return to is in *Houseboat Days* and
*Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror*.  I'm not sure whether it's because those
books are among his best (interesting to hear others' high opinions of them)
or mostly because they appeared when I was younger & more impressionable,
ready for his kind of music.

Thinking about why so much of Ashbery leaves me cold, I guess my best stab
at it would be to suggest that he's some kind of a lyric poet, at his best
(to my eyes & ears) in brief pieces.  I realize that many readers just love
his long meditations, but I'm not sure I've ever finished one--with the
exception of "Self-Portrait. . . ," maybe one or two others.

I like a lot of long poems, unlike Jim Finnegan, but for my money, the
longer the poem the more structural backbone is needed: you know,
old-fashioned things like a story, an argument, drama, or a justification of
the ways of God to man. . . .  Exactly the kinds of thing that Ashbery most
scrupulously avoids, of course.


Here's another of my own favorites, from *Self-Portrait":


City Afternoon 

A veil of haze protects this
Long-ago afternoon forgotten by everybody
In this photograph, most of them now
Sucked screaming through old age and death.

If one could seize America
Or at least a fine forgetfulness
That seeps into our outline
Defining our volumes with a stain
That is fleeting too

But commemorates 
Because it does define, after all:
Gray garlands, that threesome
Waiting for the light to change,
Air lifting the hair of one
Upside down in the reflecting pool.

--John Ashbery 




====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From grahamd at vbe.com  Fri Dec 10 16:47:22 2004
From: grahamd at vbe.com (David Graham)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:47:22 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings
In-Reply-To: <JMENIAHNFGOCLHLNNIPHMELFCLAA.amyhappens@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <BDDF758A.39EF%grahamd@vbe.com>

on 12/9/04 8:38 PM, amy king at amyhappens at yahoo.com wrote:

> David just posted his favorite Ashbery poem ... I'm a diehard Ashbery fan,
> but I also think there's 'good' Ashbery and 'bad' Ashbery.   I would love to
> see other favorites posted and find out which poems make the 'biggest hits
> list.'
> 
> -----


OK, Amy, I'll bite.  How about some examples of Ashbery Good and Ashbery
Bad?



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at vbe.com
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================



From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Fri Dec 10 16:54:27 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:54:27 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings
Message-ID: <13c.8449e03.2eeb7513@cs.com>

I've always liked the wackiness of "Leaving Atocha Station" and "Daffy Duck 
in Hollywood," to name two.  But they're both too long to type up and post.

My problem has been--and I'll admit that it's purely subjective--that when 
the critics began to take Ashbery seriously, he did too.  And at that point I 
began to find his poetry less and less interesting.  I did think there was some 
good stuff in Your Name Here, but, as far as telling good Ashbery from bad, I 
just don't have the critical equipment to make the call.  It's kind of like 
the whole question of "camp": if you say it's no good, then you obviously don't 
get it; if you say it's good, you're saying it's so bad it's good.  Or 
something like that.
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From amyhappens at yahoo.com  Fri Dec 10 17:02:51 2004
From: amyhappens at yahoo.com (amy king)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:02:51 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings
In-Reply-To: <BDDF758A.39EF%grahamd@vbe.com>
Message-ID: <JMENIAHNFGOCLHLNNIPHKEMJCLAA.amyhappens@yahoo.com>

>OK, Amy, I'll bite.  How about some examples of Ashbery Good and Ashbery
>Bad?

Or some Ashbery-heavy and Ashbery-lite?  Okay, I'm thinking ... but first an
overdue, well-deserved Friday afternoon nap.

In the meantime, lookie what Ms. Daly did for me:
http://cadaly.blogspot.com/2004/12/because-i-have-two-reviews-due-and.html
I know, I am shameless.  Excited and shameless.





From marcus at designerglass.com  Fri Dec 10 18:22:09 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:22:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the iamb
In-Reply-To: <s1b9bf45.061@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41B9E951.27259.EFE0BB@localhost>

> Marcus said,
> "Nah -- saying the iamb is present in dactyls and anapests is like
> saying that death is present in life, or darkness in light, or evil in
> good -- all perfectly true in a portentiously irrelevant metaphorical
> way, perhaps, but no basis for examining how meter actually works, and
> what constitutes the reasons one differs from another."
 
Kent Johnson wrote:
> I love rhythm and it's fun to trace the protoplasm of its
> effects. But as for why the ghost of the Iamb is Real and always
> there, murmuring through the falling cadences of the low-ghost
> trochees we spy in the ultraviolet light of scansion, well, I've got
> two spooky words for you : 
> anacrusis and catalexis

Sorry, still too portentious in some metaphorical way for me, Kent -- 
especially in the case of the "Light Brigade" where a good deal of 
the charm and much of the point of the chosen meter and insistent 
rhythm was to echo at least faintly the Greek elegaic meter and the 
very un-iambic rhythm of galloping horses. 

There once was a poet named Kent
Who claimed the iambic was bent
   Not broken in meters
   Of stuttered repeaters -- 
But he couldn't explain what he meant.

Marcus




From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Dec 10 20:11:14 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 20:11:14 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
Message-ID: <1da.3171d888.2eeba332@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/10/2004 12:39:31 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes:

> 
> Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are precisely why
> I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless poetry, if you can
> call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious influence as well.
> 
> But then my suppositions about poetry are already known.
> 
> 

Paul, the word 'pernicious' strikes me as all wrong in this case.
Mac Low hardly spawned legions of successful followers who
overran poetry with their own idiosyncratic experiments. I would
count Mac Low as something of an American original; or even
closer to 'outsider' status. And besides, it implies a kind of weakness 
in the art itself....it takes a 30 ft wave to shiver the timbers of this 
ship. 
Finnegan
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From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Dec 10 20:28:17 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 20:28:17 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
Message-ID: <1dd.329a972b.2eeba731@aol.com>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/10/books/10low.html
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From clitophon at yahoo.com  Sat Dec 11 06:30:10 2004
From: clitophon at yahoo.com (Paul Murphy)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 03:30:10 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ubu Roi
In-Reply-To: <003701c4deae$a4f4d100$9cee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <20041211113010.11989.qmail@web40427.mail.yahoo.com>

Hi, I've also written puppet plays inspired by Ubu Roi
and the work of Jarry which you can read at my
website:
www.theengine.net
best wishes,
Paul Murphy
--- Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at tin.it> wrote:

> >From Today in Literature
>
http://www.todayinliterature.com/today-ct.asp?id=12/10/2004
> 
> 
> On this day in 1896, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, opened
> and closed in Paris. The play caused a near-riot in
> the audience, and a tempest in the press over the
> next days; it is now regarded as a landmark moment
> in the history of modern theater, or the absurdist
> branch of it. Biographically the play was
> conventional enough: Pa Ubu was based upon Jarry's
> high school mathematics teacher, the archetypal
> classroom tyrant. In Jarry's caricature, Ubu became
> a grotesquely fat megalomaniac, his symbol for all
> that was pushy and piggy about the bourgeoisie. The
> set, costumes and acting style took this further,
> becoming a slap not just at bourgeois values but at
> the well-made play. Jarry's characters talked in
> staccato, as if machines; they moved as marionettes
> through imaginary scenery, wearing masks and
> placards. When Ubu came on stage with a large target
> drawn on his belly, a toilet-brush for a scepter and
> the play's opening line of "Merdre!" ("Shitre,"
> perhaps -- some translate the play's title as King
> Turd) there was a 15-minute yelling and shoving
> match between the avant-garde and the rear-guard.
> When things finally calmed down, and Ubu was able to
> say the second line -- "Merdre!" -- there was
> another. All this was so offensive that Ubu Roi
> would not be produced again for over a decade, until
> after Jarry's death. Nonetheless, the one night and
> attendant scandal left Jarry satisfied that he had
> given society "the sight of its ignoble double," a
> portrait of "the eternal imbecility of man, his
> eternal lubricity, his eternal gluttony, the
> baseness of instinct raised to the status of
> tyranny; of the coyness, the virtue, the patriotism,
> and the ideas of the people who have dined well."
> 
> Jarry's absinthe-and-anarchy lifestyle would kill
> him at the age of thirty-four. His last years were
> spent as those previous -- carrying the Ubu story on
> to Ubu Cuckolded and Ubu Enchained, refining his
> science of "pataphysics," roaming Paris on bicycle
> while wearing and waving his two pistols, dining on
> the fish he caught in the Seine, living in his
> midget-sized rooms, created from a regular apartment
> cut in half horizontally. . . . In time, Symbolists,
> Surrealists, Dadaists and Absurdists would claim him
> as their own -- though W. B. Yeats, who had attended
> opening/closing night, and even shouted on Ubu's
> side, afterwards had this warning about the
> end-of-era event:
> 
> After Stephane Mallarme, after Paul Verlaine, after
> Gustave Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after our
> own verse, after all our subtle colour and nervous
> rhythm, after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what
> more is possible? After us the Savage God. 
> 
>       - SK  
> 
> 
> 
> Anny Ballardini
> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the
> soul, not to gather admirers.
> Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
> 
> 

> ATTACHMENT part 1.2 image/gif name=spacer.gif
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 



		
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 11 09:34:19 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:34:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
References: <BDDED81B.7AA9%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>
Message-ID: <03fe01c4df8e$80585840$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> I didn't know much about his work; I think I've read
>> only a poem or two.  But I do remember that he had
>> this wonderful writing exercise published in Behn and
>> Twichell's *Practice of Poetry.*  It was something Mac
>> Low called "Word Harvesting," an exercise in which a
>> poet develops some sort of system of harvesting words
>> from passage.  Mac Low suggested spelling through a
>> word:  for example, you might spell the word "poem"
>> through an article about dolphins (or anything, for
>> that matter).  Every time you finish the word, you
>> take that particular word from the article.  When
>> you're done, you write a poem using those words.

Question: do you make the poem simply by listing the words you find in 
order--or do you take the randomly-chosen words and make a poem of it?  The 
former seems trivial, to me, the latter a fun way to get a start into a 
poem, and the kind of thing I often use.  Actually, doesn't any poet bounce 
around trying for an accident that gives him an image, subject, phrase, mood 
or whatever to go to a poem from?  I can see any reasonable objection to the 
practice.

I do see that subject-oriented poets might not think in terms of starting 
with an interesting combination of words rather than with some kind of 
Important Subject.

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 11 09:44:37 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:44:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
References: <BDDEF947.7AB8%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>
Message-ID: <043a01c4df8f$f0d513f0$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> Paul Lake said,
>>
>> "The poem from it's first line on, is haunted by the ghost of iambic
>> pentameter and has a nice conversational feel to it."
>>
>> But Paul, what is there in English-language poetry that *isn't* haunted
>> by the ghost of iambic pentameter?
>>
>>
> Most of Williams, the Black Mountain school, Language poetry and its
> postmodern progeny. And I'll bet Bob G. can name some more.
>
> Paul

Sure.  Most visual poetry, most sound and performanance poetry, most 
mathematical poetry, just about all infraverbal poetry.  Others, I'm sure. 
Interestingly, many of these seem to me haunted by the ghost of haiku.

--Bob G. 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 11 10:13:39 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:13:39 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of iambic pentameter
References: <s1b9a99a.023@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <002801c4df93$ffbb5470$5c169c51@Robin>

From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>

> But Paul, what is there in English-language poetry that *isn't* haunted
> by the ghost of iambic pentameter?

Well, there's (pre-Chaucer) _The Owl and the Nightingale_

Octosyllabic couplets.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague and anapaests ...

Blake and trochiac.

Not to speak of  (which every American should know) Ransom and the Dipodic
metre.

Stuff exists.

R.





From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Sat Dec 11 11:18:41 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:18:41 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
In-Reply-To: <03fe01c4df8e$80585840$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <20041211161841.96491.qmail@web52602.mail.yahoo.com>

> Question: do you make the poem simply by listing the
> words you find in 
> order--or do you take the randomly-chosen words and
> make a poem of it?  

You use the words as raw material to construct a
poem--I guess the latter.  I've never tried to list
the randomly-chosen words in order...though that might
lead to something interesting.

> I do see that subject-oriented poets might not think
> in terms of starting 
> with an interesting combination of words rather than
> with some kind of 
> Important Subject.
> 
> --Bob G. 

I don't know Bob--I think of myself as a
"subject-oriented" poet, but I don't really discover
the subject until the third or fourth draft.  Only
then do the real ideas begin to develop.  Before then,
for me a poem is linguistic free-play.  I like to try
out words in different combinations, just to see how
they sound.  I suppose that I have a kind of
"ur-subject" in mind as I am composing an initial
draft.  But if the poem leads me somewhere else, I'll
quickly abandon that original subject.

Thanks for the comments,

Jeff


=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
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From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 11 11:25:35 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:25:35 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Exercising
In-Reply-To: <03fe01c4df8e$80585840$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <BDE07B9F.DA0A%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/11/04 8:34 AM, Bob Grumman at bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net wrote:

> I do see that subject-oriented poets might not think in terms of starting
> with an interesting combination of words rather than with some kind of
> Important Subject.
> 
> --Bob G. 

All sorts of ways to launch a poem, no?  I think there are quite a few
"subject-oriented poets" who begin with arbitrary exercises:  think of
sestinas, for example, which often begin not with the theme but with a list
of six interesting words.

The "subject" isn't necessarily where one begins, even if it becomes part of
the destination.

The real dividing line I think we often dance around might relate to how
much one values chance itself as part of the process.  Some poets employ the
arbitrary, spontaneous and playful mainly as tools or generating devices,
while others see them as interesting destinations.

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Sat Dec 11 11:33:56 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:33:56 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the iamb (rabbit/duck)
Message-ID: <s1bacd2b.027@mail.highland.edu>

Marcus,

I like the jingle! 

First I want to say I meant ectoplasm and not protoplasm. (My
vocabulary did this to me.)

Second, my little point about the iamb as stubborn haunt arises from a
couple pretty simple facts: 1) English speech is naturally iambic in the
rough; 2) once prosodic scansion allows in the idea of missing or extra
syllables at head or end of the line (my previous mention of anacrusis
and catalexis) the "possibility" of elided or padded feet is ever
present: The ground of meter falls away, making, for one, any
distinction between rising and falling rhythms a more or less arbitrary
imposition-- a mirage,  one of those rabbit-duck pictures. (In fact,
there are linguists who dismiss the notion that there is any such thing
as a "falling" meter--see, for instance, one of my favorite novels, the
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry.)

None of this is new. Prosody is not "there"; it is a language game. Of
course, language games are can be fun and even important enough to make
people kill one another. Like in poetry.

Kent


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 11 11:40:12 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 11:40:12 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
References: <20041211161841.96491.qmail@web52602.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <057901c4dfa0$1618ec30$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> I do see that subject-oriented poets might not think
>> in terms of starting
>> with an interesting combination of words rather than
>> with some kind of
>> Important Subject.
>>
>> --Bob G.
>
> I don't know Bob--I think of myself as a
> "subject-oriented" poet, but I don't really discover
> the subject until the third or fourth draft.  Only
> then do the real ideas begin to develop.  Before then,
> for me a poem is linguistic free-play.  I like to try
> out words in different combinations, just to see how
> they sound.  I suppose that I have a kind of
> "ur-subject" in mind as I am composing an initial
> draft.  But if the poem leads me somewhere else, I'll
> quickly abandon that original subject.

That's me, too.  Some kind of subject must be or seem present to me in a 
poem of mine before I can be satisified with it.  I think I mean by 
"subject-oriented" someone more strictly subject-bound--who starts and ends 
intending to say something about some subject.  Also, one for whom the 
subject is more important than the linguistic free-play, by whatever name, 
that it inspires.  For me, a poem's subject is never more than an excuse 
for, well, the poem's actual poetry.

--Bob G. 




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 11 12:20:06 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 11:20:06 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Materia from Stevens
Message-ID: <BDE08866.DA14%grahamd@ripon.edu>


     XXXIII

The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To
make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation
of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should  reveal things of
which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which
we have been conscious plus imagination.


     XXXIV

The imagination does not add to reality.


     XXXV

The great well of poetry is not other poetry but prose: reality. However it
requires a poet to perceive the poetry in reality.


     XXXVI

At the moments when one's terror of life should be greatest (when one is
young or old) one is usually insensible to it. Some such thing is true of
the most profoundly poetic moments. This is the origin of sentimentality,
which is a failure of feeling.


     XXXVII

Poetry is reality and thought or feeling.


     XXXVIII

If one believes in poetry then questions of principle become vital
questions.  If any case, if there is nothing except reality and art, the
mere statement of the fact discloses the significance of art.


XXXIX

The dichotomy is not between realists and artists. There must be few pure
realists and few pure artists. We are hybrids engaged in hybrid literature.

--Wallace Stevens.  From "Materia Poetica." (Notebooks, 1940)

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 11 12:28:45 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 11:28:45 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Subject-bound
In-Reply-To: <057901c4dfa0$1618ec30$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <BDE08A6D.DA17%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/11/04 10:40 AM, Bob Grumman at bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net wrote:

> I think I mean by
> "subject-oriented" someone more strictly subject-bound--who starts and ends
> intending to say something about some subject.  Also, one for whom the
> subject is more important than the linguistic free-play, by whatever name,
> that it inspires.  For me, a poem's subject is never more than an excuse
> for, well, the poem's actual poetry.
> 
> --Bob G. 

Probably the best example of "subject-bound" in this sense would be Yeats,
hammering his little prose paragraphs into rhyme and meter.  His drafts are
fascinating to look at in terms of watching the process in action--all the
lists of tentative rhyme words in the margins, phrases tried and rejected,
the poem slowly emerging in all its glory from the original pedestrian
prose.  Always that Big Idea in his mind, obviously  (and, sometimes, Alas).

But even here, in a sort of extreme case, I think it would be hard to (a)
quarrel with the end results as poetry or (b) deny the degree of
improvisation and play that gets into the mix along the way.

In other words, "subject-bound" in the sense you're using it may be a
chimera, or at least a straw man.



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Sat Dec 11 12:33:56 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 11:33:56 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
Message-ID: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>

Paul Lake wrote:

"Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are
precisely why I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless
poetry, if you can call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious
influence as well."


Paul, this seems rather unsporting of you. At least you might have
waited until after the memorial service... Geez.

You know, I've often wondered why the cultural field of Poetry can't be
more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy. In the latter, there is
a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and though there are debates
aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and respected. For example,
there are at one end of the spectrum the writers of the popular,
accessible books on astronomy; at the other end are the weirdos and
eccentrics doing things like radio and X-ray astonomy and talking to
very small audiences in esoteric forms. But one does not cancel the
other, nor is one seen as any kind of "pernicious influence" on
anything. 

Much better, I say, if the fundamentalist New Formalists (and their
brethren free-verse narrativists in the Academy of American Poets) who
write the popular, accessible stuff for Garrison Keilor's _Good Poems_ 
would just give the weird radio and X-ray astronomers like Mac Low their
due for the role they play, and vice-versa... 

There's room for everyone!

Kent




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 11 13:08:25 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:08:25 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Subject-bound
References: <BDE08A6D.DA17%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <05ac01c4dfac$7bb33e90$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> I think I mean by
>> "subject-oriented" someone more strictly subject-bound--who starts and 
>> ends
>> intending to say something about some subject.  Also, one for whom the
>> subject is more important than the linguistic free-play, by whatever 
>> name,
>> that it inspires.  For me, a poem's subject is never more than an excuse
>> for, well, the poem's actual poetry.
>>
>> --Bob G.
>
> Probably the best example of "subject-bound" in this sense would be Yeats,
> hammering his little prose paragraphs into rhyme and meter.  His drafts 
> are
> fascinating to look at in terms of watching the process in action--all the
> lists of tentative rhyme words in the margins, phrases tried and rejected,
> the poem slowly emerging in all its glory from the original pedestrian
> prose.  Always that Big Idea in his mind, obviously  (and, sometimes, 
> Alas).
>
> But even here, in a sort of extreme case, I think it would be hard to (a)
> quarrel with the end results as poetry or (b) deny the degree of
> improvisation and play that gets into the mix along the way.
>
> In other words, "subject-bound" in the sense you're using it may be a
> chimera, or at least a straw man.
>
Maybe, but I suspect it's more my inability to indicate exactly what I mean 
that makes it seem so.  I would say that Yeats broke away from his subject 
in his best poems--that is, that the poetry in those poems finally became 
more important than what he was saying.

But did he always compose that way?  Never start with phrases and see what 
subject they might lead to?

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 11 13:11:36 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:11:36 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Materia from Stevens
References: <BDE08866.DA14%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <05bc01c4dfac$dac2b960$a8b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


>     XXXIII
>
> The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. 
> To
> make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The 
> observation
> of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should  reveal things of
> which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of 
> which
> we have been conscious plus imagination.


I wish he'd said "the too-frequent fault" rather than "the essential fault."

--Bob G. 




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec 11 13:41:54 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 19:41:54 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <001d01c4dfb1$169d75c0$74a83252@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Oh Kent,

I think you were born to destroy, Jesus when he made you he told himself,
and now One to get it all do_Wn,

I like Garrison Keilor, ...!
but you are in good company here, we once talked about him and there were
only few with me.

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 6:33 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low


> Paul Lake wrote:
>
> "Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are
> precisely why I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless
> poetry, if you can call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious
> influence as well."
>
>
> Paul, this seems rather unsporting of you. At least you might have
> waited until after the memorial service... Geez.
>
> You know, I've often wondered why the cultural field of Poetry can't be
> more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy. In the latter, there is
> a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and though there are debates
> aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and respected. For example,
> there are at one end of the spectrum the writers of the popular,
> accessible books on astronomy; at the other end are the weirdos and
> eccentrics doing things like radio and X-ray astonomy and talking to
> very small audiences in esoteric forms. But one does not cancel the
> other, nor is one seen as any kind of "pernicious influence" on
> anything.
>
> Much better, I say, if the fundamentalist New Formalists (and their
> brethren free-verse narrativists in the Academy of American Poets) who
> write the popular, accessible stuff for Garrison Keilor's _Good Poems_
> would just give the weird radio and X-ray astronomers like Mac Low their
> due for the role they play, and vice-versa...
>
> There's room for everyone!
>
> Kent
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 11 13:44:46 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:44:46 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
In-Reply-To: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 11, 2004, at 12:33 PM, Kent Johnson wrote:

> Paul Lake wrote:
>
> "Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are
> precisely why I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless
> poetry, if you can call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious
> influence as well."
>
>
> Paul, this seems rather unsporting of you. At least you might have
> waited until after the memorial service... Geez.
>
> You know, I've often wondered why the cultural field of Poetry can't be
> more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy. In the latter, there 
> is
> a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and though there are debates
> aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and respected. For 
> example,
> there are at one end of the spectrum the writers of the popular,
> accessible books on astronomy; at the other end are the weirdos and
> eccentrics doing things like radio and X-ray astonomy and talking to
> very small audiences in esoteric forms. But one does not cancel the
> other, nor is one seen as any kind of "pernicious influence" on
> anything.
>
> Much better, I say, if the fundamentalist New Formalists (and their
> brethren free-verse narrativists in the Academy of American Poets) who
> write the popular, accessible stuff for Garrison Keilor's _Good Poems_
> would just give the weird radio and X-ray astronomers like Mac Low 
> their
> due for the role they play, and vice-versa...
>
> There's room for everyone!
>
> Kent

Of course there's room for everyone, but I hardly think Mac Low is the 
poetic equivalent of  Alan Guth -- more like the one of the cranks who 
send papers on perpetual motion machines to Nature.

Another difference is that the scientists who do the most fundamental 
and/or arcane work are very happy to see their work explained "in 
layman's terms," and are often the very same ones who do the 
explaining.  Think of Darwin, Einstein, Guth, Hawking, Feynman, 
Dawkins, Gould, Antonio Damasio, Brian Greene, E. O. Wilson ...

Only cranks and, I'm afraid, too many in the post-modernist influenced 
humanities (including poets), think of difficulty or quirkiness as in 
and of themselves evidence for value.


Michael



From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 11 13:54:09 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:54:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
In-Reply-To: <BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
	<BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 11, 2004, at 1:44 PM, Michael Snider wrote:

> Only cranks and, I'm afraid, too many in the post-modernist influenced 
> humanities (including poets), think of difficulty or quirkiness as in 
> and of themselves evidence for value.
>

I should have added that it's equally silly to take difficulty or 
quirkiness as in and of themselves evidence for the lack of value.



From halvard at earthlink.net  Sat Dec 11 14:31:54 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:31:54 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] New works from xPress(ed)
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEANJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Crank up your Acrobat Readers! Lots of interesting new titles
in the list below. I won't even mention that a new one of mine 
is there.

Hal                Serving the tri-state area.

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/

=====
New titles from xPress(ed): 

andrew topel & jim leftwich: allies
mark young: calligraphies
annmarie eldon: 27 Poems
rochelle ratner: Leah
john m. bennett: glue
vernon frazer: avenue noir
halvard johnson: Theory of Harmony
andrew lundwall: a calendar page from the edge of form
joey madia: New Mystic Alchemy
clayton a. couch: familiar bifurcations
donna kuhn: rent a tart
michael helsem: IPOMOEA
gregory vincent st. thomasino: Stephen's Lake (a novel in parts)
jeff harrison: Lives of Eminent Assyrians
thomas lowe taylor: short
harry k stammer: (little) Tokyo
steve dalachinsky: arrivin in the okidoke

All chaps are in PDF-format and freely available from

        http://www.xpressed.org


Also two hardcopy POD-titles:

tim gaze: writing
gregory vincent st. thomasino: Stephen's Lake (a novel in parts)


Address for POD-titles is http://www.lulu.com/xpressed


Hope you enjoy !



Sincerely,

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
xPress(ed)



From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec 11 14:42:14 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:42:14 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
	<BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>

I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists, 
particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... of 
course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the collective 
knowledge of this list. ;)

Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
kpaul
mallasch.com



From halvard at earthlink.net  Sat Dec 11 14:45:50 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:45:50 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEMEBAJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

   
{    I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists, 
{    particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... of 
{    course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the collective 
{    knowledge of this list. ;)
{    
{    Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.
{    
{    Thanks!
{    kpaul
{    mallasch.com

Kenneth Fearing, "Newspaperman" (about a page)

Hal                Serving the tri-state area.

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/   



From tad at opus40.org  Sat Dec 11 15:56:36 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:56:36 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu><BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com><0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <005a01c4dfc3$e9839cf0$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>

It's not a poem, but do you know the Pete Seeger song?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "kpaul mallasch" <kpaul at mallasch.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 2:42 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem


> I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists, 
> particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... of 
> course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the collective 
> knowledge of this list. ;)
>
> Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks!
> kpaul
> mallasch.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From cstroffo at earthlink.net  Sat Dec 11 16:19:08 2004
From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (Chris Stroffolino )
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:19:08 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry as Astronomy
Message-ID: <200412112059.iBBKx4Nb418280@pimout3-ext.prodigy.net>


Do people still call astronomy a "hard science"
while astrology, by contrast, is a "soft science"?

Is the relationship of astronomy to astrology
analogous to the relationship between economy and ecology?

Is there such a thing as psychonomy,
and would it have a similar relationship to psychology?

And what would this have to do with poetry?
(am I doing a good job of just asking these questions
without letting my own biases get in the way?)

I'd really love to hear other's thoughts on these questions--

Chris

In a related (but for me less important) issue, Bob G's distinction between
"subject-bound" and "linguistic free play" is interesting,
and yes it's possible the writer who utilizes chance operations
or who truly believes s/he's only interested in the sound of words, etc.,
is at least as "soul revealing" as the one who believes s/he's primarily
"soul revealing" (and vice versa)....






----------
>From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>
>To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
>Date: Sat, Dec 11, 2004, 9:33 AM
>

> You know, I've often wondered why the cultural field of Poetry can't be
> more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy. In the latter, there is
> a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and though there are debates
> aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and respected.


From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 11 16:07:55 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:07:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
	<BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <BA4ACE52-4BB8-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 11, 2004, at 2:42 PM, kpaul mallasch wrote:

> I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists, 
> particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... 
> of course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the 
> collective knowledge of this list. ;)

Do reviewers count?  There's the title poem from Wendy Cope's Serious 
Concerns.

BTW, Are you doing #muground tonight? I was out playing music last week.

Michael



From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Sat Dec 11 16:09:16 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 13:09:16 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry as Astronomy
In-Reply-To: <200412112059.iBBKx4Nb418280@pimout3-ext.prodigy.net>
Message-ID: <20041211210916.18183.qmail@web52610.mail.yahoo.com>

Astrology is a science?

Jeff

--- Chris Stroffolino  <cstroffo at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 
> Do people still call astronomy a "hard science"
> while astrology, by contrast, is a "soft science"?
> 
> Is the relationship of astronomy to astrology
> analogous to the relationship between economy and
> ecology?
> 
> Is there such a thing as psychonomy,
> and would it have a similar relationship to
> psychology?
> 
> And what would this have to do with poetry?
> (am I doing a good job of just asking these
> questions
> without letting my own biases get in the way?)
> 
> I'd really love to hear other's thoughts on these
> questions--
> 
> Chris
> 
> In a related (but for me less important) issue, Bob
> G's distinction between
> "subject-bound" and "linguistic free play" is
> interesting,
> and yes it's possible the writer who utilizes chance
> operations
> or who truly believes s/he's only interested in the
> sound of words, etc.,
> is at least as "soul revealing" as the one who
> believes s/he's primarily
> "soul revealing" (and vice versa)....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------
> >From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>
> >To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> >Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
> >Date: Sat, Dec 11, 2004, 9:33 AM
> >
> 
> > You know, I've often wondered why the cultural
> field of Poetry can't be
> > more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy.
> In the latter, there is
> > a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and
> though there are debates
> > aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and
> respected.
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! 
http://my.yahoo.com 
 



From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 11 16:09:47 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:09:47 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
	<BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <FCC8A3F4-4BB8-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 11, 2004, at 2:42 PM, kpaul mallasch wrote:

> I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists, 
> particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... 
> of course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the 
> collective knowledge of this list. ;)
>

There's also Louis Simpson's "Suddenly," which is in part about his 
brief career at a newspaper.



From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec 11 16:20:04 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:20:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <005a01c4dfc3$e9839cf0$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu><BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com><0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
	<005a01c4dfc3$e9839cf0$6701a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <20041211161951.W42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>

No.

-kpaul

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004, The Old Mole wrote:

> It's not a poem, but do you know the Pete Seeger song?
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "kpaul mallasch" <kpaul at mallasch.com>
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 2:42 PM
> Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
>
>
>> I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists, 
>> particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... of 
>> course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the collective 
>> knowledge of this list. ;)
>> 
>> Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> kpaul
>> mallasch.com
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>> 
>> 
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 11 16:30:55 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:30:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry as Astronomy
In-Reply-To: <200412112059.iBBKx4Nb418280@pimout3-ext.prodigy.net>
References: <200412112059.iBBKx4Nb418280@pimout3-ext.prodigy.net>
Message-ID: <F10CB1F8-4BBB-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 11, 2004, at 4:19 PM, Chris Stroffolino wrote:

> Do people still call astronomy a "hard science"
> while astrology, by contrast, is a "soft science"?

Astronomy's gotten harder and astrology's gotten easier.
Neither makes a good pillow.

>
> Is the relationship of astronomy to astrology
> analogous to the relationship between economy and ecology?

Nope, since both have gotten harder. The theory of consonantal drift 
lost considerable ground on this issue.

> Is there such a thing as psychonomy,
> and would it have a similar relationship to psychology?

Recent work involving MRIs of patients with an unusual pattern of 
lesions in Broca's area indicate such patients are more likely to have 
difficulty pronouncing "Honey" than "Holly," and were therefore 
traumatized when they were six but experience some degree of relief at 
this time of year..

> And what would this have to do with poetry?

Only with the anomalous experiences of anonymous poets, who are large 
majority.

> (am I doing a good job of just asking these questions
> without letting my own biases get in the way?)



> I'd really love to hear other's thoughts on these questions--
>
> Chris
>
> In a related (but for me less important) issue, Bob G's distinction 
> between
> "subject-bound" and "linguistic free play" is interesting,
> and yes it's possible the writer who utilizes chance operations
> or who truly believes s/he's only interested in the sound of words, 
> etc.,
> is at least as "soul revealing" as the one who believes s/he's 
> primarily
> "soul revealing" (and vice versa)....
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----------
>> From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>
>> To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
>> Date: Sat, Dec 11, 2004, 9:33 AM
>>
>
>> You know, I've often wondered why the cultural field of Poetry can't 
>> be
>> more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy. In the latter, there 
>> is
>> a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and though there are debates
>> aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and respected.
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 11 16:49:32 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:49:32 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <BDE0C78C.DA4B%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/11/04 1:42 PM, kpaul mallasch at kpaul at mallasch.com wrote:

> I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists,
> particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... of
> course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the collective
> knowledge of this list. ;)
> 
> Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks!
> kpaul
> mallasch.com


There's always Weldon Kees's "Problems of a Journalist."  I'll see if I can
hunt up a copy, but it's in his collected poems.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 11 17:05:36 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:05:36 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Problems of a Journalist/Kees
Message-ID: <BDE0CB50.DA4D%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Problems Of A Journalist

"I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust,"
Said an editor of Fortune to a man on Time.
But the fire roared and died, the phoenix quacked like a goose,
And all roads to the country fray like shawls
Outside the dusk of suburbs. Pacing the halls
Where mile-high windows frame a dream with witnesses,
You taste, fantast and epicure, the names of towns along the coast,
Black roadsters throbbing on the highways blue with rain
Toward one lamp, burning on those sentences.

"I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust,"
Said an editor of Newsweek to a man on Look.
Dachaus with telephones, Siberias with bonuses.
One reads, as winter settles on the town,
The evening paper, in an Irving Place caf?.

--Weldon Kees


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec 11 17:14:21 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:14:21 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Problems of a Journalist/Kees
References: <BDE0CB50.DA4D%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <013a01c4dfce$c436cfc0$74a83252@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Problems of a Journalist/KeesWhat an incredible encyclopedia you are!

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Graham 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 11:05 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Problems of a Journalist/Kees


  Problems Of A Journalist

  "I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust," 
  Said an editor of Fortune to a man on Time. 
  But the fire roared and died, the phoenix quacked like a goose, 
  And all roads to the country fray like shawls 
  Outside the dusk of suburbs. Pacing the halls 
  Where mile-high windows frame a dream with witnesses, 
  You taste, fantast and epicure, the names of towns along the coast, 
  Black roadsters throbbing on the highways blue with rain 
  Toward one lamp, burning on those sentences.

  "I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust," 
  Said an editor of Newsweek to a man on Look. 
  Dachaus with telephones, Siberias with bonuses. 
  One reads, as winter settles on the town, 
  The evening paper, in an Irving Place caf?.

  --Weldon Kees


  ====================================================
  David Graham
  grahamd at ripon.edu
  Home Page:
  http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
  Poetry Library:
  http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
  ====================================================




------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
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From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec 11 17:24:16 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 17:24:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <BDE0C78C.DA4B%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <BDE0C78C.DA4B%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <20041211172409.C23632@kpaul.spinweb.net>

Would be much appreciated. Thanks.

-kpaul

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004, David Graham wrote:

> on 12/11/04 1:42 PM, kpaul mallasch at kpaul at mallasch.com wrote:
>
>> I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists,
>> particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... of
>> course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the collective
>> knowledge of this list. ;)
>>
>> Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> kpaul
>> mallasch.com
>
>
> There's always Weldon Kees's "Problems of a Journalist."  I'll see if I can
> hunt up a copy, but it's in his collected poems.
>
>
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 11 17:36:54 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 17:36:54 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
References: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
	<BA98D53C-4BA4-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<0A67521E-4BA6-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <28CF1886-4BC5-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 11, 2004, at 2:42 PM, kpaul mallasch wrote:

> I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists, 
> particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher... 
> of course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the 
> collective knowledge of this list. ;)
>
> Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.
>

Howard Nemerov:  Keeping Informed in D.C.

Each morning when I break my buttered toast
Across the columns of the _Morning Post_,
I am astounded by the ways in which
Mankind has managed once again to bitch
Things up to a degree that yesterday
Had looked impossible. Not far away
 From dreams of mine, I read this dream of theirs,
And think: It's true, we _are_ the bankrupt heirs
Of all the ages, history _is_ the bunk.
If you do not believe in all this junk,
If you're not glad things are as they are,
   You can wipe your arse on the _Evening Star_



From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec 11 17:38:23 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:38:23 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Problems of a Journalist/Kees
References: <BDE0CB50.DA4D%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<013a01c4dfce$c436cfc0$74a83252@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <015c01c4dfd2$1fc4e4a0$74a83252@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Problems of a Journalist/KeesHere is my pp (personal production) out of my experience :


we write of the world we make the world while sitting

on a chair invited to a buffet: _Sirs_ Ladies & Gents, 

all here invited to have a great piece of cake

 

you get your salary we get our funds cheers to the

paper and lots of fun_ ART: the most superb artist 

ever since ever _ since the 2WW that's when it started 

- the new I mean - the new of the Old

European it is from the crumbles & so on

 

with a patina of red _ where the news is at

 

chairs are always the same after decades on end

mobiles pc's in the pool of the net the tiny paper

reserves/receives a special seat for the usual guest

 

we write of the world we make the world while sitting

on a chair invited to a buffet...




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From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 11 17:53:16 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:53:16 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <BDE0C78C.DA4B%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <BDE0D67C.DA53%grahamd@ripon.edu>

This isn't really what you're asking for, but I can't resist:



The Boston Evening Transcript
 
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
 
When evening quickens faintly in the street,
Wakening the appetites of life in some
And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,
I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript."

-- T.S. Eliot


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sat Dec 11 18:04:11 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:04:11 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] journo/newspaper/publisher poem
Message-ID: <1b8.83ce240.2eecd6eb@cs.com>

Citizen Kane weighs in:

"SONG OF THE RIVER"

 The snow melts on the mountain
And the water runs down to the spring,
And the spring in a turbulent fountain,
With a song of youth to sing,
Runs down to the riotous river,
And the river flows on to the sea,
And the water again
Goes back in rain
To the hills where it used to be.
And I wonder if Life's deep mystery
Isn't much like the rain and the snow
Returning through all eternity
To the places it used to know. For life was born on the lofty heights
And flows in a laughing stream
To the river below
Whose onward flow
Ends in a peaceful dream.
And so at last,
When our life has passed
And the river has run its course,
It again goes back,
O'er the selfsame track,
To the mountain which was its source.

 So why prize life
Or why fear death,
Or dread what is to be?
The river ran its allotted span
Till it reached the silent sea.
Then the water harked back to the mountaintop
To begin its course once more.

 So we shall run the course begun
Till we reach the silent shore, 
Then revisit earth in a pure rebirth
>From the heart of the virgin snow.
So don't ask why we live or die,
Or wither, or when we go,
Or wonder about the mysteries
That only God may know.

 by William Randolph Hearst



 
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From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec 11 18:16:02 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:16:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <1b8.83ce240.2eecd6eb@cs.com>
References: <1b8.83ce240.2eecd6eb@cs.com>
Message-ID: <20041211181542.N23632@kpaul.spinweb.net>

Wow. I didn't know Hearst wrote poetry. Did he publish any collections? 
What is this from?

thanks,
kpaul

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:

> Citizen Kane weighs in:
>
> "SONG OF THE RIVER"
>
> The snow melts on the mountain
> And the water runs down to the spring,
> And the spring in a turbulent fountain,
> With a song of youth to sing,
> Runs down to the riotous river,
> And the river flows on to the sea,
> And the water again
> Goes back in rain
> To the hills where it used to be.
> And I wonder if Life's deep mystery
> Isn't much like the rain and the snow
> Returning through all eternity
> To the places it used to know. For life was born on the lofty heights
> And flows in a laughing stream
> To the river below
> Whose onward flow
> Ends in a peaceful dream.
> And so at last,
> When our life has passed
> And the river has run its course,
> It again goes back,
> O'er the selfsame track,
> To the mountain which was its source.
>
> So why prize life
> Or why fear death,
> Or dread what is to be?
> The river ran its allotted span
> Till it reached the silent sea.
> Then the water harked back to the mountaintop
> To begin its course once more.
>
> So we shall run the course begun
> Till we reach the silent shore,
> Then revisit earth in a pure rebirth
>> From the heart of the virgin snow.
> So don't ask why we live or die,
> Or wither, or when we go,
> Or wonder about the mysteries
> That only God may know.
>
> by William Randolph Hearst
>
>
>
>
>


From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sat Dec 11 18:23:50 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:23:50 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] journo/newspaper/publisher poem
Message-ID: <80.1cd845ad.2eecdb86@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/11/2004 5:16:31 PM Central Standard Time, 
kpaul at mallasch.com writes: 
> 
> X-INFO: INVALID TO LINE
> Wow. I didn't know Hearst wrote poetry. Did he publish any collections? 
> What is this from?
> 
> thanks,
> kpaul
> 
The Hearst papers publish it every year on his birthday.
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From cstroffo at earthlink.net  Sat Dec 11 19:40:18 2004
From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (Chris Stroffolino )
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:40:18 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <200412120020.iBC0K6Nd308518@pimout3-ext.prodigy.net>




Chris,
The Prelude is a mountain I don't know what to do with. 
(Whitman and Rilke, if one could imagine them as skiers,
never seem to loose the downhill line.)
If I understand your question, my answer would
be that many long poems are strings of bright beads.
Each bead being the true poems...the rest string.

Finn---that's a nice metaphor, and it makes sense to me. I guess I've used a
somewhat analogous "peaks" and "valleys" metaphor to descrribe or evoke
simialr feeling. Yet, at the same time there's a sense of that, as my
resistances to what initially seemed like wordinesses, break down if I
continue reading, I start to find the poem (or poet)'s accumulative lack of
the virtue of "condensation" actually starts weaving a trance---and I start
realizing
that maybe there was some kind of method to the "madness" in, say, The
Prelude. For me, there is something similar in Ashbery's long poems, even
though he utilizes various "disjunct" techniques much more. Despite the
differences,
I realize that the "string" passages seem to make the "bead passages" more
"beady" (and what I thought was a "string" passage on one reading, may later
reveal itself to be a "bead"). Yet, even though I would defend the
Wordsworth, Rilke, Stein and Ashbery long poem (though in Stein's case it
may not even really be called a poem),
I tend to agree with you about, say, The Cantos---in which the "string" is
so submerged, for the sake of the "ideogrammatic" "bead" that they end up
losing their bead quality for me. Thus, his "Metro" poem works for me
better than The Cantos taken as a whole; though if parts of The Cantos were
consdiered complete poems like the "metro" one, I'd probably like them
better....
Thanks for letting me babble. C



Johnson said of Paradise Lost, 'none wished it longer'.
I guess I'd concur...even the best long poems are not
what draws me to poetry. Throw them all away and I'd
miss them as I'd miss as any 'species' gone extinct.
Throw out all the shorter ones (and I'm considering some
10 page poems as short) and I'd be less interested in
the phylum of the art itself. I do think the motto of
'multum in parvo'  is an important dividing line of
poetic aesthetics.
Finnegan _______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


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From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Sat Dec 11 19:44:29 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:44:29 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <BDE0D67C.DA53%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <20041212004429.2978.qmail@web52609.mail.yahoo.com>

David,

You beat me to it.

Jeff


--- David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

> This isn't really what you're asking for, but I
> can't resist:
> 
> 
> 
> The Boston Evening Transcript
>  
> The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
> Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
>  
> When evening quickens faintly in the street,
> Wakening the appetites of life in some
> And to others bringing the Boston Evening
> Transcript,
> I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
> Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to
> Rochefoucauld,
> If the street were time and he at the end of the
> street,
> And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston
> Evening Transcript."
> 
> -- T.S. Eliot
> 
> 
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. 
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail 


From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Dec 12 00:05:15 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 00:05:15 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
Message-ID: <92.1bd01e1f.2eed2b8b@aol.com>

In Those Days
John Ashbery

Music, food, sex, and their accompanying
tropes like a wall of light at a door
once spattered by laughter

come round to how _you_ like it--
was it really you that approved?
And if so what does the loneliness
in all this mean?? How blind are we?

We see a few feet into our future
of shrouded lots and ditches.
Surely that was was the long one
to have come.? Yet nobody

sees anything wrong with what we're doing,
how we came to discuss it, here, with the wind
and the sun sometimes slanting.
You have arrived at this step, and the way down

is paralyzing, though this is the lost
youth I remember as being O.K., once.
Got to shuffle, even if it's only the sarcasm
of speech that gets lost, while the blessed
sense of it bleeds through,

open to all kinds of interpretations.

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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 12 06:15:57 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 06:15:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fans of Ashbery?
References: <92.1bd01e1f.2eed2b8b@aol.com>
Message-ID: <005b01c4e03b$f45a2fe0$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

In Those Days
John Ashbery

Music, food, sex, and their accompanying
tropes like a wall of light at a door
once spattered by laughter

come round to how _you_ like it--
was it really you that approved?
And if so what does the loneliness
in all this mean?  How blind are we?

We see a few feet into our future
of shrouded lots and ditches.
Surely that was was the long one
to have come.  Yet nobody

sees anything wrong with what we're doing,
how we came to discuss it, here, with the wind
and the sun sometimes slanting.
You have arrived at this step, and the way down

is paralyzing, though this is the lost
youth I remember as being O.K., once.
Got to shuffle, even if it's only the sarcasm
of speech that gets lost, while the blessed
sense of it bleeds through,

open to all kinds of interpretations.


Somebody remind me: is the final name I came up with this ort of (okay) poem "Iowa Plaintext Lyric?"

--Bob G.
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From pmetres at jcu.edu  Sun Dec 12 07:44:48 2004
From: pmetres at jcu.edu (Philip Metres)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 07:44:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] mac low 
Message-ID: <8b683e98.ad87de9f.81c1800@mirapoint.jcu.edu>

Folks, 

It saddens me to see Mac Low dragged around like Hector.  I 
came to Jackson Mac Low fairly late--about 5 years ago--when 
I was completing a dissertation on poetry and war resistance 
(Lowell, Stafford, Everson, Levertov, Jordan, Watten, etc.).  
Mac Low was a poet whose lifelong project was devoted to 
displacing the egoic maneuvers in favor of the possibilities 
of chance.  Typically, a Simic will reference him only to 
disparage his extremism in technique--i.e., we can go to him 
to discover our language again through chance operations, but 
if we want to do REAL poetry, we have to keep working at it 
until it's again our own.  Mac Low's choice was to let chance 
co-author his works, as a way of embodying that 
anarchopacifist ideal of keeping off the authoritarian ego 
from its pronouncements and finalities.  There are so many 
delights in his work, however uneven, and I hope that we will 
return to him and his wonder the way we return to a great 
unfinished work. 

Last summer, he gave a reading at the Orono conference and I 
felt in the presence of true poetry.  

Philip Metres
Assistant Professor
Department of English
John Carroll University
20700 N. Park Blvd
University Heights, OH 44118
(216) 397-4528 (work)
http://www.philipmetres.com


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Sun Dec 12 14:33:32 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:33:32 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
Message-ID: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu>

Michael Snider said,

"Only cranks and, I'm afraid, too many in the post-modernist influenced

humanities (including poets), think of difficulty or quirkiness as in 
and of themselves evidence for value."

I think this is a faulty assumption on your part, Mike. Who thinks
this? Maybe John Crowe Ransom used to, kind of. But no: "It must give
pleasure," the difficult poet said... 

Doesn't your view above really underlie your earlier questions about
Ashbery? (And good for you that you asked them--you've got some
responses now to consider!)

People find aesthetic pleasure in different ways and places. That's one
of the great things about poetry! It's true about any art, much as
fundamentalists and ideologues of various stripes (and yes, they
certainly also populate the "avant-garde"!) make this or that formal
tendency an ethical imperative. 

But you can't bottle "beauty" up and say "this is the way." 

Kent




From memexikon at mwt.net  Sun Dec 12 15:12:24 2004
From: memexikon at mwt.net (mIEKAL aND)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 14:12:24 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] SpamPoems by others:  mIEKAL aND, "Viagra"
In-Reply-To: <2975211.1102691594910.JavaMail.root@waldorf.psp.pas.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <23461CC7-4C7A-11D9-A10D-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>

Viagra

I cant find that file
This is where I get my Valium

Unfolding The Rose...
Give Her Something To Smile About!

Your antidepressant with no side effects
You here yet

Fast-Acting
Very Confidencial(please call me)

meeting is on Monday
boys this your chance!

I just called to say I Love You
No one will know!

i'm in your area
Don't wait to find out...

What will your family do?
only this would helps



mIEKAL aND
from SEARCHIX



From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec 12 17:03:40 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:03:40 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <AEAB4382-4C89-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 12, 2004, at 2:33 PM, Kent Johnson wrote:

> Michael Snider said,
>
> "Only cranks and, I'm afraid, too many in the post-modernist influenced
>
> humanities (including poets), think of difficulty or quirkiness as in
> and of themselves evidence for value."
>
> I think this is a faulty assumption on your part, Mike. Who thinks
> this? Maybe John Crowe Ransom used to, kind of. But no: "It must give
> pleasure," the difficult poet said...
>
> Doesn't your view above really underlie your earlier questions about
> Ashbery? (And good for you that you asked them--you've got some
> responses now to consider!)
>
> People find aesthetic pleasure in different ways and places. That's one
> of the great things about poetry! It's true about any art, much as
> fundamentalists and ideologues of various stripes (and yes, they
> certainly also populate the "avant-garde"!) make this or that formal
> tendency an ethical imperative.
>
> But you can't bottle "beauty" up and say "this is the way."
>
> Kent
>

That's why, about 30 seconds later, I wrote:

"I should have added that it's equally silly to take difficulty or 
quirkiness as in and of themselves evidence for the lack of value."


Except for the extremes at either end, difficulty and quirkiness are 
irrelevant to aesthetic value.



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 12 17:43:48 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:43:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
References: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu>
	<AEAB4382-4C89-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <01b701c4e09c$0c1eed90$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Except for the extremes at either end, difficulty and quirkiness are 
> irrelevant to aesthetic value.

I'm not sure I go along with that.  Especially if we speak of "complexity," 
which is the usual cause of difficulty, and "freshness," which quirkiness is 
a form of.

--Bob G. 




From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec 12 18:16:23 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 18:16:23 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <01b701c4e09c$0c1eed90$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu>
	<AEAB4382-4C89-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<01b701c4e09c$0c1eed90$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <D6EC3766-4C93-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 12, 2004, at 5:43 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:

>> Except for the extremes at either end, difficulty and quirkiness are 
>> irrelevant to aesthetic value.
>
> I'm not sure I go along with that.  Especially if we speak of 
> "complexity," which is the usual cause of difficulty, and "freshness," 
> which quirkiness is a form of.
>
> --Bob G.
>
> _____

I don't think either of those alternate terms have much to do with 
aesthetic value either, though they're clearly relvant to indivudual 
tastes, just as  difficulty and quirkiness are.

Complexity is certainly one source of difficulty, but more often 
difficulty is the result of just not having done the work necessary to 
make oneself clear. You can't tell the depth of a muddy pool.


Michael



From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sun Dec 12 18:28:03 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:28:03 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:  "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <D6EC3766-4C93-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <BDE23023.DAB5%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/12/04 5:16 PM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:

>> I'm not sure I go along with that.  Especially if we speak of
>> "complexity," which is the usual cause of difficulty, and "freshness,"
>> which quirkiness is a form of.
>> 
>> --Bob G.
>> 
>> _____
> 
> I don't think either of those alternate terms have much to do with
> aesthetic value either, though they're clearly relvant to indivudual
> tastes, just as  difficulty and quirkiness are.
> 
> Complexity is certainly one source of difficulty, but more often
> difficulty is the result of just not having done the work necessary to
> make oneself clear. You can't tell the depth of a muddy pool.
> 
> 
> Michael


I agree:  as Robert Francis once noted, it's not difficult to be difficult.

And I would add another wrinkle:  that very vexed notion, "accessibility."
>From at least the time of Eliot on, many poets and critics have looked down
their noses at poetry with an accessible style, no matter how difficult the
poems otherwise were, and no matter how powerful as poetry.

A case in point would be Frost, whose academic reputation suffered for a
long time from his being perceived as unduly accessible.  Accessible he is,
and popular to boot, but he's also pretty difficult, as critics eventually
figured out.  

One of my favorite lines of Frost is "the fact is the sweetest dream that
labor knows."  Utterly accessible, but not easy in any sense.

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From memexikon at mwt.net  Sun Dec 12 18:29:03 2004
From: memexikon at mwt.net (mIEKAL aND)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:29:03 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <D6EC3766-4C93-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <9BB90CDA-4C95-11D9-A10D-0003935A5BDA@mwt.net>

Unless you jump in.


On Sunday, December 12, 2004, at 05:16 PM, Michael Snider wrote:

> You can't tell the depth of a muddy pool.



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 12 19:38:35 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 19:38:35 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
References: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu><AEAB4382-4C89-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com><01b701c4e09c$0c1eed90$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<D6EC3766-4C93-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <020401c4e0ac$14b3a210$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> I'm not sure I go along with (the idea that difficulty and quirkiness have little aesthetic value).  Especially if we speak of "complexity," which is the usual cause of difficulty, and "freshness," which quirkiness is a form of.
>>
>> --Bob G.
> 
> I don't think either of those alternate terms have much to do with 
> aesthetic value either, though they're clearly relevant to indivudual 
> tastes, just as  difficulty and quirkiness are.

Michael, you can't really mean a stale poem can have more aesthetic value than a fresh one?  I can't conceive of a poem's having an aesthetic value at all unless there's something fresh about it.
 
> Complexity is certainly one source of difficulty, but more often 
> difficulty is the result of just not having done the work necessary to 
> make oneself clear. You can't tell the depth of a muddy pool.

Right--but difficulty contributes to aesthetic value when it is due to a poem's complexity.  So you can't very well say difficulty is irrelevant to aesthetic value.  I would say that, other things being equal, the more complex a poem is (per unit of length), the more aesthetic value it will have.

What, by the way, do you consider relevant to aesthetic value?

--Bob 
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 12 19:41:48 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 19:41:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:  "difficulty & value"
References: <BDE23023.DAB5%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <020b01c4e0ac$879e1ee0$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>>> I'm not sure I go along with that.  Especially if we speak of
>>> "complexity," which is the usual cause of difficulty, and "freshness,"
>>> which quirkiness is a form of.
>>>
>>> --Bob G.
>>>
>>> _____
>>
>> I don't think either of those alternate terms have much to do with
>> aesthetic value either, though they're clearly relvant to indivudual
>> tastes, just as  difficulty and quirkiness are.
>>
>> Complexity is certainly one source of difficulty, but more often
>> difficulty is the result of just not having done the work necessary to
>> make oneself clear. You can't tell the depth of a muddy pool.
>>
>>
>> Michael
>
>
> I agree:  as Robert Francis once noted, it's not difficult to be 
> difficult.

He's wrong.  What's easy is obscurity.  It's very hard to be difficult.

--BG 




From marcus at designerglass.com  Sun Dec 12 21:49:44 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:49:44 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] request: journo/newspaper/publisher poem
In-Reply-To: <28CF1886-4BC5-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
References: <20041211144028.L42131@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <41BCBCF8.21787.C6C818@localhost>

Journalism
Humbert Wolfe

You cannot hope
To bribe or twist
(Thank God!)
The British Journalist.

But seeing what
The man will do
Unbribed
There's no occasion to.

--- Humbert Wolfe

Marcus


On 11 Dec 2004 at 17:36, Michael Snider wrote:

> 
> On Dec 11, 2004, at 2:42 PM, kpaul mallasch wrote:
> 
> > I'm questing for a good (shortish) poem concerning journalists,
> > particularly in the newspaper world, preferably about a publisher...
> > of course, one stop on my trip is to plumb the depths of the
> > collective knowledge of this list. ;)
> >
> > Any help/pointers greatly appreciated.
> >
> 
> Howard Nemerov:  Keeping Informed in D.C.
> 
> Each morning when I break my buttered toast
> Across the columns of the _Morning Post_,
> I am astounded by the ways in which
> Mankind has managed once again to bitch
> Things up to a degree that yesterday
> Had looked impossible. Not far away
>  From dreams of mine, I read this dream of theirs,
> And think: It's true, we _are_ the bankrupt heirs
> Of all the ages, history _is_ the bunk.
> If you do not believe in all this junk,
> If you're not glad things are as they are,
>    You can wipe your arse on the _Evening Star_
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 





From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec 13 02:22:17 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:22:17 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Mac Low on the Los Angeles Times
Message-ID: <003e01c4e0e4$7ac34780$bd7c3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

      From Ron   <ron.silliman at verizon.net> to POETICS 




        

This ran in the LA Times & The Seattle Times (where I saw it),

Ron

Sunday, December 12, 2004, 12:00 A.M. Pacific

Permission to reprint or copy this article/photo must be obtained from
The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale at seattletimes.com
with your request.

Close-up
Mac Low challenged poetic convention by performing his work

By Mark Swed
Los Angeles Times

Jackson Mac Low, 82, a prolific poet who questioned the nature of poetry
and become a pioneer in liberating language from logic and lifting it
into the realm of sound and performance, died Wednesday at Cabrini
Hospital in New York City. He had suffered a stroke last month.

A typical first response to encountering Mac Low in print or at the
podium was one of mystification. Words and nonsense syllables
unconnected by syntax might splay across the page every which way. He
could write sentences that ran on for pages. Modest, shy, seemingly
uncertain, he performed his poems as if they were inexplicable music,
the weird intoning and droning of utterances coming from somewhere deep
and strange inside him.

Inspired by composer John Cage, with whom he studied in the 1950s, Mac
Low used chance operations in making his art. Influenced also by
Buddhist practice, he attempted to free his ego from his words, to take
away his intentions from his art. Yet in defying the expected nature of
poetry, Mac Low could be a peculiarly mesmerizing figure.

"He really went his own way," Marjorie Perloff, an author of several
books on progressive poetics, said Thursday. "But he was one of the few
people who could combine music and word, and he was a true forerunner in
the areas of conceptual art, sound poetry and performance art."

>From the very start, Mac Low challenged convention. Born in Chicago in
1922, he was educated at the University of Chicago and Brooklyn College.
His first interest was music, but by 1938, he was already writing poems
with lines such as "Gay cake gotta gay cake go gotta gay cake," and
later he sometimes described himself as a "composer of poetry."

Besides poetry and music, Mac Low was actively interested in theater and
had a close association with the experimental Living Theatre in New York
City during the 1950s and '60s. And in doing so, he didn't so much break
genres as ignore them altogether. Hence, he could provide music for a
Living Theatre staging of W.H. Auden's poem "The Age of Anxiety" or
write his own play, "The Marrying Maiden," meant as text for Cage's
music.

His interest in theater, performance, music and Cage - as well as his
involvement with anarchist thought - also made him a key figure in
Fluxus, the neo-Dada art movement of the early '60s. It was then that
Mac Low came into his own as a performer of his works.

Although he published 27 books, it is as a performer that Mac Low may
best be remembered. However abstract the processes he tirelessly
invented to produce his work, however artificial the poetry might look
as printed text, it always came to life when he read.

A tireless advocate of sound poetry, Mac Low held teaching posts at
Mannes School of Music (1966) and New York University (1966-73) and
lectured widely. Among his many honors was the $100,000 Wallace Stevens
Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1999.

Mac Low is survived by his second wife, the poet Anne Tardos; and two
children, Mordecai-Mark Mac Low and Clarinda Mac Low, from a previous
marriage to painter Iris Lezak.


Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From ron.silliman at verizon.net  Mon Dec 13 07:02:41 2004
From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:02:41 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Dry Blog
Message-ID: <000201c4e10b$a605e2f0$6501a8c0@Dell>

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

RECENT TOPICS:

Carla Harryman's Open Box:
poetry vs. flash poetry
(Brian Kim Stefans,
failing the Blake Test)

Alcohol & poetry:
Better to read Jack Spicer
than BE Jack Spicer
(on 20 years without a drink)

Jackson Mac Low
1922 - 2004:
seeing, hearing, feeling language
with the most open mind

57 "notable" books of poetry
as chosen by the NY Times
1997 - 2004
listed by publisher

Why the NY Times
has never had a comics section

The Poker 5:
New poems by Jack Spicer
in a journal that is an "how to"
lesson in editing

What Gertrude Stein, Sandra Gilbert &
"Puff the Magic Dragon"
have in common -
The Berkeley Poetry Walk

Our inner typewriter(s)

Typing the poem as a mechanism for understanding

Pinsky's William Carlos Williams - 
What's wrong with this picture?

Muriel Rukeyser & the Objectivists?

The blogroll reaches 400

An image from another time

The hidden poems in the work of
Elyse Friedman

Thomas Jefferson as polymath -
step inside Monticello

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Mon Dec 13 10:21:15 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 09:21:15 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Dog bites man
Message-ID: <BDE30F8B.DAD7%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Ron Silliman in his blog has taken the trouble to list all the books of
poetry that the *New York Times* has decreed "notable" since 1987.

It's worth a look, even if I wouldn't exactly call this discovery news.

Here's part of what Ron says:

-------------------------
Since 1997, The New York Times has listed 57 "notable" books of poetry in
its annual Books of the Year issues. Of these, 84 percent of the books came
from just eight publishers. Just under half of the "notable" books, 47
percent, were published byKnopf & FSG.

Over a quarter of the "notable books" were written by just seven poets. Two
poets, Anne Carson & Glynn Maxwell, have been listed three times in the past
eight years. Five others (Billy Collins, Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, Ted
Hughes & Charles Simic) have been listed twice. For what it?s worth, only
Collins & Graham were both born & live in the U.S.
                   
It?s worth noting also that these selections are not just biased by
publisher. Penguin Books in recent years has brought out volumes from Alice
Notely, Joanne Kyger, Philip Whalen & John Yau, none of which are listed
here.
--Ron Silliman
-------------------------

Aside from the fact that this wholly mainstream publication prefers
mainstream New York City publishers, what really strikes me about the list
is:  only *57* "notable" poetry books in 8 years?

Full list is in his entry for December 8:

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From marcus at designerglass.com  Mon Dec 13 10:26:28 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:26:28 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the iamb (rabbit/duck)
In-Reply-To: <s1bacd2b.027@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41BD6E54.20055.8A680A@localhost>

On 11 Dec 2004 at 10:33, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ... my little point about the iamb as stubborn haunt arises from a
> couple pretty simple facts: 1) English speech is naturally iambic in
> the rough; 2) once prosodic scansion allows in the idea of missing or
> extra syllables at head or end of the line (my previous mention of
> anacrusis and catalexis) the "possibility" of elided or padded feet is
> ever present...<

This is like saying music is naturally 4/4 and there's no such thing 
as a waltz. It's silly because no one that I know of is claiming that 
the meter is "natural" in the first place. 

> The ground of meter falls away, making, for one, any
> distinction between rising and falling rhythms a more or less
> arbitrary imposition-- a mirage,  one of those rabbit-duck pictures.
> (In fact, there are linguists who dismiss the notion that there is any
> such thing as a "falling" meter--see, for instance, one of my favorite
> novels, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry.)
> None of this is new. Prosody is not "there"; it is a language
> game...<

Of course it's a language game -- who disputes it? That doesn't make 
it any harder to define the rules of any particular game. That judo 
and football are both "games" doesn't make the rules of one or the 
other any more or less applicable to the other. You can't reasonably 
say that football is haunted by the ghost of judo, even though the 
play of the linemen is all about the same kind of combination of 
balance and power that judo is all about. Judo and football are 
artificial -- and deliberately so. Poetry, too, is artificial: it's 
an art, a made thing, with rules that give it its form and structure 
and, most importantly, its point. 

It's not enough to say that poetry is a language game, since what's 
commonly meant by "language game" is to broad to be meaningful in the 
context you're trying to make it mean in.

Marcus








From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Dec 13 10:50:28 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:50:28 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] mac low
Message-ID: <67.3a1580e0.2eef1444@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/12/2004 7:45:13 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
pmetres at jcu.edu writes:


Folks, 

It saddens me to see Mac Low dragged around like Hector.  I 
came to Jackson Mac Low fairly late--about 5 years ago--when 
I was completing a dissertation on poetry and war resistance 
(Lowell, Stafford, Everson, Levertov, Jordan, Watten, etc.).  
Mac Low was a poet whose lifelong project was devoted to 
displacing the egoic maneuvers in favor of the possibilities 
of chance.  Typically, a Simic will reference him only to 
disparage his extremism in technique--i.e., we can go to him 
to discover our language again through chance operations, but 
if we want to do REAL poetry, we have to keep working at it 
until it's again our own.  Mac Low's choice was to let chance 
co-author his works, as a way of embodying that 
anarchopacifist ideal of keeping off the authoritarian ego 
from its pronouncements and finalities.  There are so many 
delights in his work, however uneven, and I hope that we will 
return to him and his wonder the way we return to a great 
unfinished work. 

Last summer, he gave a reading at the Orono conference and I 
felt in the presence of true poetry.  

Philip Metres
Assistant Professor

Philip, nice defence of and tribute to Mac Low. But I don't
think you can make Mac Low a Hector because he had no
Troy to defend. If I were to cast him in some role from antiquity,
he would be an eccentric blacksmith, working alone at a forge
set back in a cave, crafting strangely hammered armorplate 
and involuted patterns of chain mail, never meant for battle.

I don't dismiss the project of Mac Low's work. I do agree with
SImic about its limiitations: More than a curiousity but less than
a course to follow.
Finnegan 
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From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 13 12:50:48 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:50:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <020401c4e0ac$14b3a210$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu>
	<AEAB4382-4C89-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<01b701c4e09c$0c1eed90$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<D6EC3766-4C93-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<020401c4e0ac$14b3a210$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <1951462.1102960248047.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Sunday, December 12, 2004, at 07:38PM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:

>
><<Original Attached>>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>

Bob,  staleness first:

What makes a poem "stale"? What percentage of people, or what kind of people, need to agree on that condition?

Does a poem which isn't stale become so when the number of poems which share certain properties with it passes some threshold? Or is it only those new poems which are stale? What kinds of properties? What is the threshold? 

Can there be no aesthetic response to the wholly familiar? Does that mean that after reading a poem some number of times, or looking at a painting some number of times, the poem or painting becomes stale?

Isn't it possible that one's aesthetic response to some form -- the villanelle, for instance -- grows as one becomes aware through repeated example of the subtleties possible within that form?


Complexity:


Just what is complexity? The number of parts? The kind of internal realtions between the parts? The number of internal relations between the parts? The ration of parts to internal relations, weighted by the kind of internal realtions?

Are longer (or bigger, the case of paintings or statues or buildings) works of art likely to have greater aestheitc value than shorter (or smaller) works becasue there is more opportunity for complexity to arise?

Are you suggesting that, all else being equal, there is an inevitable positive correlation between the complexity of a work of art and its aesthetic value?


What I think matters in aesthetic value:

I confess I'm fairly uncomfortable with the whole idea. I think art should be accessible to any reasonably intelligent and resonably educated person, and the whole notion of aestheitc value implies a class of gatekeepers who get to tell us what is and isn't artful. 

But if I had to say something, I'd say aesthetic value derives from skillfull manipulation of some kind of thing in a context in which some significant number of reasonably intelligent and educated people can recognize the skill involved. I know this comes close to including Michael Jordan and excluding Jackson Mac Low, and perhaps I should also say "non-utilitarian" context, but would exclude ancient Greek pottery and Papuan masks as art objects. As I said, I'm not really happy with the concept at all. Look here ( http://denisdutton.com/carroll_review.htm ) for other reasons why.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium
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From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 13 12:53:32 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:53:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:  "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <020b01c4e0ac$879e1ee0$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <BDE23023.DAB5%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<020b01c4e0ac$879e1ee0$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <16192319.1102960412498.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Sunday, December 12, 2004, at 07:42PM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:

>>>> I'm not sure I go along with that.  Especially if we speak of
>>>> "complexity," which is the usual cause of difficulty, and "freshness,"
>>>> which quirkiness is a form of.
>>>>
>>>> --Bob G.
>>>>
>>>> _____
>>>
>>> I don't think either of those alternate terms have much to do with
>>> aesthetic value either, though they're clearly relvant to indivudual
>>> tastes, just as  difficulty and quirkiness are.
>>>
>>> Complexity is certainly one source of difficulty, but more often
>>> difficulty is the result of just not having done the work necessary to
>>> make oneself clear. You can't tell the depth of a muddy pool.
>>>
>>>
>>> Michael
>>
>>
>> I agree:  as Robert Francis once noted, it's not difficult to be 
>> difficult.
>
>He's wrong.  What's easy is obscurity.  It's very hard to be difficult.
>
>--BG 
>

That's a useful distinction, Bob. But outside math and the sciences there's not really all that much that's conceptually difficult. Musical theory, maybe -- but wholly theory based music hasn't been very successful, amnd I think for very good reason.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From clitophon at yahoo.com  Mon Dec 13 12:57:07 2004
From: clitophon at yahoo.com (Paul Murphy)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 09:57:07 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Stuck
In-Reply-To: <1951462.1102960248047.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <20041213175707.57988.qmail@web40427.mail.yahoo.com>

I'm forming a Stuckist collective, do you want to be a
part of it?
http://www.stuckism.com/enq.html#Artists
pm


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Jazz up your holiday email with celebrity designs. Learn more. 
http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Mon Dec 13 12:58:30 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:58:30 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the iamb (rabbit/duck)
Message-ID: <s1bd8404.082@mail.highland.edu>

Marcus,

You're creating a molehill of confused analogy here. The relationship
between an iamb and a trochee has very little in common with the
relationship between football and judo! 

The underlying thesis, as it were, of my somewhat lighthearted posts on
this matter is clear enough: Prosody is a language game; its "rules," as
such, are importantly contingent and arbitrary. Given this fact, there
is little justification--ontological, epistemological, or ethical--for
taking such "rules" and imposing them as Poetry's "point," as you rather
frighteningly have it. 

New Formalist poetry is *one* point, obviously, but a universe is made
up of lots of those.

peace in multiplicity,

Kent


From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Mon Dec 13 13:05:55 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:05:55 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Mac Low (Simic)
Message-ID: <s1bd85ba.089@mail.highland.edu>

Finnegan said:

"I do agree with SImic about its limiitations: More than a curiousity
but less than a course to follow."

Where does this appear? Someone like Charles Simic accusing someone
like Mac Low of a "limited" poetics is something I just have to see...

Kent



From marcus at designerglass.com  Mon Dec 13 13:15:27 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:15:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the iamb (rabbit/duck)
In-Reply-To: <s1bd8404.082@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41BD95EF.9379.1251E54@localhost>

On 13 Dec 2004 at 11:58, Kent Johnson wrote:
> You're creating a molehill of confused analogy here. The relationship
> between an iamb and a trochee has very little in common with the
> relationship between football and judo! <

I think you're missing the point. If I understand what you mean here, 
you're saying there isn't really any difference between an iamb and a 
trochee and a dactyl and an anapest -- that they're all just iambs of 
loose or strict kind -- which would be like saying that judo and 
football are really the same. 

Now, compared to rocks and rivers, for example, judo and football 
certainly are more the same than they are different, but compared to 
each other as games, they're pretty different, even though the 
principles of mass, inertia, power, etc., and their manipulation, 
have some similarities. 

I'm saying that the games of iamb and dactyl, like the games of judo 
and football, are distinguishable. You're saying all games are just 
games and wotthehell wotthehell, if I understand you correctly. Do I 
not understand you correctly?

> ... Prosody is a language game; its
> "rules," as such, are importantly contingent and arbitrary. Given this
> fact, there is little justification--ontological, epistemological, or
> ethical--for taking such "rules" and imposing them as Poetry's
> "point," as you rather frighteningly have it. <

It is precisely because the rules of the language game are 
importantly contingent and arbitrary that gives us any justification 
for imposing them as poetry's point. Poetry is rhetoric -- it's the 
way you say something, not what you say -- so the rules are the 
justification. Without the rules (whatever rules you may want to play 
by, so long as they are clear enough that the players in your game 
don't get themselves confused in the games of others) there can 
simply be no game.

Marcus





From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 13 13:16:36 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:16:36 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Dog bites man
In-Reply-To: <BDE30F8B.DAD7%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <BDE30F8B.DAD7%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <8282362.1102961796420.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Monday, December 13, 2004, at 10:22AM, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

>Ron Silliman in his blog has taken the trouble to list all the books of
>poetry that the *New York Times* has decreed "notable" since 1987.
>
>It's worth a look, even if I wouldn't exactly call this discovery news.
>
>Here's part of what Ron says:
>
>-------------------------
>Since 1997, The New York Times has listed 57 "notable" books of poetry in
>its annual Books of the Year issues. Of these, 84 percent of the books came
>from just eight publishers. Just under half of the "notable" books, 47
>percent, were published byKnopf & FSG.
>
>Over a quarter of the "notable books" were written by just seven poets. Two
>poets, Anne Carson & Glynn Maxwell, have been listed three times in the past
>eight years. Five others (Billy Collins, Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, Ted
>Hughes & Charles Simic) have been listed twice. For what it?s worth, only
>Collins & Graham were both born & live in the U.S.
>                   
>It?s worth noting also that these selections are not just biased by
>publisher. Penguin Books in recent years has brought out volumes from Alice
>Notely, Joanne Kyger, Philip Whalen & John Yau, none of which are listed
>here.
>--Ron Silliman
>-------------------------
>
>Aside from the fact that this wholly mainstream publication prefers
>mainstream New York City publishers, what really strikes me about the list
>is:  only *57* "notable" poetry books in 8 years?
>
>Full list is in his entry for December 8:
>
>http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

David, you're right in pointing out what Silliman doesn't even notice--that it's mostly New York publishers.  Dana Gioia has been writing for years about the deleterious effects of the dominance of the New York publishing industry on local and regional poetry scenes and how that affects the national scene.

His first piece published after being made chair of the NEA was on Copper Canyon's Collected Rexroth, and how New York poetry was strangling the West Coast scene.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium



From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 13 13:23:47 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:23:47 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the iamb (rabbit/duck)
In-Reply-To: <s1bd8404.082@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1bd8404.082@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <9507651.1102962227726.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Monday, December 13, 2004, at 01:02PM, Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

>Marcus,
>
>You're creating a molehill of confused analogy here. The relationship
>between an iamb and a trochee has very little in common with the
>relationship between football and judo! 
>
>The underlying thesis, as it were, of my somewhat lighthearted posts on
>this matter is clear enough: Prosody is a language game; its "rules," as
>such, are importantly contingent and arbitrary. Given this fact, there
>is little justification--ontological, epistemological, or ethical--for
>taking such "rules" and imposing them as Poetry's "point," as you rather
>frighteningly have it. 
>
>New Formalist poetry is *one* point, obviously, but a universe is made
>up of lots of those.
>
>peace in multiplicity,
>
>Kent

Kent, take that multiplicity seriously, as Marcus did. Within the accentual-syllabic tradition, iambs don't haunt the other feet, and IP doesn't haunt the other meters.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From marcus at designerglass.com  Mon Dec 13 13:26:39 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:26:39 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Dog bites man
In-Reply-To: <8282362.1102961796420.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
References: <BDE30F8B.DAD7%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <41BD988F.1386.12F6072@localhost>

On 13 Dec 2004 at 13:16, Mike Snider wrote:
> David, you're right in pointing out what Silliman doesn't even
> notice--that it's mostly New York publishers.<

Though I agree with much of what Mike Snider writes, and little of 
what Ron Silliman writes, I think Mike's wrong here. Silliman says:

"The problem that the Times book review has is the inherent conflict 
in its double mission as a publication. Its first mission is not to 
review the books of America, but rather books by its advertisers who 
are ? surprise! ? the trade presses. The second is to do it in such a 
way that the review conveys comprehensiveness to its readership. This 
latter requires not only that certain volumes appear and get 'proper 
attention,' but also ? and this may be its most important 
institutional mission ? that the rest of the world also disappears.

Not that the Times is any different in this than, say, The Washington 
Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune or San Francisco 
Chronicle."

That is nothing if not pretty clearly iimplicitly noticing that the 
presses involved are NY presses. Perhaps Silliman thinks that it's 
too obvious a point to belabor.

Marcus





From marcus at designerglass.com  Mon Dec 13 13:50:03 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:50:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <1951462.1102960248047.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
References: <020401c4e0ac$14b3a210$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41BD9E0B.9717.144CB05@localhost>

I'll be interested to see what Bob Grumman says to Mike Snider about 
staleness and complexity, but while waiting for that,

on 13 Dec 2004 at 12:50, Mike Snider wrote:
> I confess I'm fairly uncomfortable with the whole idea. I think art
> should be accessible to any reasonably intelligent and resonably
> educated person, and the whole notion of aestheitc value implies a
> class of gatekeepers who get to tell us what is and isn't artful. 

But isn't the very notion of "reasonably intelligent and reasonably 
educated person" essentially the same notion as "gatekeeper" and as 
"aesthetic value" -- at least as far as persons either not reasonably 
intelligent or educated are concerned? I think we have to start from 
the reality that not everyone is in fact reasonably intelligent or 
reasonably educated, aren't we? Artists are trying to appeal to 
people who have the wit and the resource to appreciate what the 
artists are doing, right? And in any social context there is a range, 
from retro to avant garde, of taste among those who are reasonably 
intelligent and reasonably educated (with the avant garde claiming to 
appreciate everything and the retro claiming there is nothing to 
appreciate in the avant garde) to which the artists of that social 
context are, in fact, in reality, appealling -- right? So isn't the 
very notion of the "reasonably intelligent, reasonably educated 
person" essentially the same notion as the "gatekeeper" and the 
"aesthetic value"? 

> But if I had to say something, I'd say aesthetic value derives from
> skillfull manipulation of some kind of thing in a context in which
> some significant number of reasonably intelligent and educated people
> can recognize the skill involved. I know this comes close to including
> Michael Jordan and excluding Jackson Mac Low, and perhaps I should
> also say "non-utilitarian" context, but would exclude ancient Greek
> pottery and Papuan masks as art objects....<

I wouldn't mind including Michael Jordan and excluding Jackson Mac 
Low, but I'd hate to lose ancient pottery and masks. Why do we say 
that basketball, with its improvisational athleticism, is not art, 
but that ballet, with its athletic choreography, is art?

Marcus

 




From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Dec 13 14:00:50 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:00:50 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Mac Low (Simic)
Message-ID: <198.341d4f00.2eef40e2@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/13/2004 1:06:41 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
Kent.Johnson at highland.edu writes:
I do agree with SImic about its limiitations: More than a curiousity
but less than a course to follow."

Where does this appear? Someone like Charles Simic accusing someone
like Mac Low of a "limited" poetics is something I just have to see...
Kent,
Philip might have a citation...this was what I was responding
to from his post...
"Typically, a Simic will reference him only to 
disparage his extremism in technique--i.e., we can go to him 
to discover our language again through chance operations, but 
if we want to do REAL poetry"

It seems obvious to me that most poets, including Simic, would
see Mac Low's work as 'in extremis'. Certainly the limitation, 
if there is one, is in its usefulness as a model for other writers. 
That's not a value judgment as much as an acknowledgment.
Few poets will use Mac Low's techniques and methods as more 
than exercises for or as means of getting to something/somewhere 
elsein their own work. In that way it's similar to dadaism...many 
poets have read the dadaists, many understand both the method 
to their madness and the politics/reasoning that motivated their
 works, but it's not like this 'project' has become or will ever 
become an important part of contemporary poetics. 
It's an oxbow lake or eddy, not a stream. If we can't think of
Mac Low as 'sui generis' than no one will ever merit the application
of this phrase/praise.
Finnegan
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From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 13 14:02:12 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:02:12 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
In-Reply-To: <41BD9E0B.9717.144CB05@localhost>
References: <020401c4e0ac$14b3a210$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<41BD9E0B.9717.144CB05@localhost>
Message-ID: <6512242.1102964532856.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Monday, December 13, 2004, at 01:51PM, Marcus Bales <marcus at designerglass.com> wrote:

>I'll be interested to see what Bob Grumman says to Mike Snider about 
>staleness and complexity, but while waiting for that,
>
>on 13 Dec 2004 at 12:50, Mike Snider wrote:
>> I confess I'm fairly uncomfortable with the whole idea. I think art
>> should be accessible to any reasonably intelligent and resonably
>> educated person, and the whole notion of aestheitc value implies a
>> class of gatekeepers who get to tell us what is and isn't artful. 
>
>But isn't the very notion of "reasonably intelligent and reasonably 
>educated person" essentially the same notion as "gatekeeper" and as 
>"aesthetic value" -- at least as far as persons either not reasonably 
>intelligent or educated are concerned? I think we have to start from 
>the reality that not everyone is in fact reasonably intelligent or 
>reasonably educated, aren't we? Artists are trying to appeal to 
>people who have the wit and the resource to appreciate what the 
>artists are doing, right? And in any social context there is a range, 
>from retro to avant garde, of taste among those who are reasonably 
>intelligent and reasonably educated (with the avant garde claiming to 
>appreciate everything and the retro claiming there is nothing to 
>appreciate in the avant garde) to which the artists of that social 
>context are, in fact, in reality, appealling -- right? So isn't the 
>very notion of the "reasonably intelligent, reasonably educated 
>person" essentially the same notion as the "gatekeeper" and the 
>"aesthetic value"? 
>

Yeah, you're right. I just don't want the gatekeepers to be academics, who have a vested interest in promoting things they can lecture about.


>> But if I had to say something, I'd say aesthetic value derives from
>> skillfull manipulation of some kind of thing in a context in which
>> some significant number of reasonably intelligent and educated people
>> can recognize the skill involved. I know this comes close to including
>> Michael Jordan and excluding Jackson Mac Low, and perhaps I should
>> also say "non-utilitarian" context, but would exclude ancient Greek
>> pottery and Papuan masks as art objects....<
>
>I wouldn't mind including Michael Jordan and excluding Jackson Mac 
>Low, but I'd hate to lose ancient pottery and masks. Why do we say 
>that basketball, with its improvisational athleticism, is not art, 
>but that ballet, with its athletic choreography, is art?
>
>Marcus
>
>

Just in case of cunfusion, I'd meant to say "but THAT would exclude ancient Greek pottery ...," which I think would be a terrible idea. Do you know Howard Neverov's "Watching Football On TV"

"the tight end staggers into the endzone again, again" is all I remember right now. But sure, those folks are artists.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Mon Dec 13 07:07:25 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 06:07:25 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
In-Reply-To: <1da.3171d888.2eeba332@aol.com>
Message-ID: <BDE2E21D.7B19%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>

On 12/10/04 7:11 PM, "JforJames at aol.com" <JforJames at aol.com> wrote:

> In a message dated 12/10/2004 12:39:31 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes:
> 
>> 
>> Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are precisely why
>> I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless poetry, if you can
>> call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious influence as well.
>> 
>> But then my suppositions about poetry are already known.
>> 
> 
> 
> Paul, the word 'pernicious' strikes me as all wrong in this case.
> Mac Low hardly spawned legions of successful followers who
> overran poetry with their own idiosyncratic experiments. I would
> count Mac Low as something of an American original; or even
> closer to 'outsider' status. And besides, it implies a kind of weakness
> in the art itself....it takes a 30 ft wave to shiver the timbers of this
> ship. 
> Finnegan
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 

Point taken. The word was too strong. Still, just by composing such
experimental stuff and partly legitimizing it, he was one of many bad
influences on the direction of poetry, in my book anyway.

Paul
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Mon Dec 13 14:20:30 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:20:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Mac Low (Simic)
In-Reply-To: <198.341d4f00.2eef40e2@aol.com>
Message-ID: <41BDA52E.24787.160AF71@localhost>

On 13 Dec 2004 at 14:00, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> ... It seems obvious to me that most poets, includingSimic, would
> see Mac Low'swork as 'in extremis'. ... Few poets will use Mac
> Low's techniques and methods as more 
> than exercises for or as means of getting to something/somewhere 
> else in their own work. In that way it's similar to dadaism...many
> poets have read the dadaists, many understand both the method to their
> madness and the politics/reasoning that motivated their works, but
> it's not like this 'project' has become or will ever become an
> important part of contemporary poetics. It's an oxbow lakeor eddy, not
> a stream. If we can't think of Mac Low as 'sui generis' than no
> one will ever merit the application of this phrase/praise.<<

Well the problem with Mac Low's notion is that there is a built-in 
reductio ad absurdum to it: if we accept the proposition that it's 
good poetry to slosh words randomly together, two problems emerge: 
first, why bother to say it's "Mac Low's poetry" at all when he 
himself said he was trying for egolessness and randomness? Why not 
just credit that poetry to "Random Anon" and forget Mac Low 
altogether, as he evidently desired? And, second, why bother to have 
any poets at all -- just let computers slosh words together randomly 
and call all the output "poems". The end-point in both cases is easy 
to see and unappealing. It's not an oxbow, it's a dead-end.

Marcus








From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Mon Dec 13 07:20:18 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 06:20:18 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
In-Reply-To: <s1badb33.040@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <BDE2E522.7B1D%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>


True, Kent, there's room for everyone. I don't want anyone to stop
experimenting. But there's a problem with your astronomy example. All of the
astronomers from the various camps agree upon a set of scientific principles
and methodological procedures. In poetry, there's no gravity or mathematical
constants that everyone must take into account--such as how much "sense" a
poem should make or how much conform to standards of usage, and so anything
goes, even cutting words from newspapers and arranging them by random  or
other arbitrary methods. Experiments in science can fail. Falsifiability is
one constraint on experiments there. But in poetry, the experimental can
defy all objections by insisting that in HIS view it IS a poem.

Paul

P.S. My Poetry and religion essay was postponed till January.


On 12/11/04 11:33 AM, "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

> Paul Lake wrote:
> 
> "Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you describe are
> precisely why I've always felt that Mac Low not only wrote pointless
> poetry, if you can call it "writing" and "poetry," but was a pernicious
> influence as well."
> 
> 
> Paul, this seems rather unsporting of you. At least you might have
> waited until after the memorial service... Geez.
> 
> You know, I've often wondered why the cultural field of Poetry can't be
> more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy. In the latter, there is
> a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and though there are debates
> aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and respected. For example,
> there are at one end of the spectrum the writers of the popular,
> accessible books on astronomy; at the other end are the weirdos and
> eccentrics doing things like radio and X-ray astonomy and talking to
> very small audiences in esoteric forms. But one does not cancel the
> other, nor is one seen as any kind of "pernicious influence" on
> anything. 
> 
> Much better, I say, if the fundamentalist New Formalists (and their
> brethren free-verse narrativists in the Academy of American Poets) who
> write the popular, accessible stuff for Garrison Keilor's _Good Poems_
> would just give the weird radio and X-ray astronomers like Mac Low their
> due for the role they play, and vice-versa...
> 
> There's room for everyone!

---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Mon Dec 13 14:25:25 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:25:25 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the Qiamb
Message-ID: <s1bd9858.062@mail.highland.edu>

Marcus,

Where did I say that other feet were just iambs of a loose or strict
kind? I didn't say that. I said the ghost of the iamb haunts the natural
rhythm of English speech. But that's not a novel proposition. (OK, true,
then I got a little excited and I said that the Iamb was the head ghost,
or something like that, and that scansion was sort of like the trace of
an ectoplasm. I start in with these conceits and then my eyes roll back
into my head and the words just type themselves. It's a problem
sometimes). 

But I'm all for feet, don't get me wrong, and I can hold my own when
marking stresses in a sub-rosa gathering of group-chanting prosodists. I
repeat: I love the foot--including the amphimacer and the amphibrach,
the spondee and the pyrrhic, the bacchius and the choriambus. These are
beautiful things, because they don't really "exist." They are sublime,
evanescent little assemblages, little doors and windows and mirrors in a
miniature haunted house, where Victorian figurines made to scale squint
in horror through their tiny monacles at teeny-weeny copies of Flow
Chart and 22 Light Poems. The singer thinks constructively, builds up
his chant in progressive stages, like a skyscraper. Don't think it
wasn't Mr. Plum who killed the butler in the library with a candleholder
in the shape of an antispast.

Well, OK, sorry again, there I go. But after all is said and done, I
fully agree with your last paragraph below, and it is, in the end, the
most important "point." It's all a game. 

Just don't go thinking, camerado New Formalists, that it's the only
game in town. 

Kent

On 13 Dec 2004 at 11:58, Kent Johnson wrote:
> You're creating a molehill of confused analogy here. The
relationship
> between an iamb and a trochee has very little in common with the
> relationship between football and judo! <

I think you're missing the point. If I understand what you mean here, 
you're saying there isn't really any difference between an iamb and a 
trochee and a dactyl and an anapest -- that they're all just iambs of 
loose or strict kind -- which would be like saying that judo and 
football are really the same. 

Now, compared to rocks and rivers, for example, judo and football 
certainly are more the same than they are different, but compared to 
each other as games, they're pretty different, even though the 
principles of mass, inertia, power, etc., and their manipulation, 
have some similarities. 

I'm saying that the games of iamb and dactyl, like the games of judo 
and football, are distinguishable. You're saying all games are just 
games and wotthehell wotthehell, if I understand you correctly. Do I 
not understand you correctly?

> ... Prosody is a language game; its
> "rules," as such, are importantly contingent and arbitrary. Given
this
> fact, there is little justification--ontological, epistemological,
or
> ethical--for taking such "rules" and imposing them as Poetry's
> "point," as you rather frighteningly have it. <

It is precisely because the rules of the language game are 
importantly contingent and arbitrary that gives us any justification 
for imposing them as poetry's point. Poetry is rhetoric -- it's the 
way you say something, not what you say -- so the rules are the 
justification. Without the rules (whatever rules you may want to play 
by, so long as they are clear enough that the players in your game 
don't get themselves confused in the games of others) there can 
simply be no game.

Marcus







From clitophon at yahoo.com  Mon Dec 13 14:48:09 2004
From: clitophon at yahoo.com (Paul Murphy)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:48:09 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Paul Lake & Jackson Mac Low
In-Reply-To: <BDE2E522.7B1D%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>
Message-ID: <20041213194809.23859.qmail@web40411.mail.yahoo.com>

I think that the banning of the poem is also the
banning of a new scientific innovation.  So I don't
agree with you.  You live in a Utopia where freedom of
thought and speech is complete but that isn't the case
where I am.  Not very long ago in historical terms,
James Kirkup fled to Japan for his famous/infamous
poem (depending where one stands) and the blasphemy
laws that underpinned that banning are still
unchanged.  Of course I couldn't care less about what
the poem actually says but of course it can only say
one thing.  All men are brothers and all women are
sisters.  But that is not an idea that can be
countenanced in the UK where we still have an
unelected Head of State, aka a Queen.
best wishes,
Paul Murphy 
--- Paul Lake <paul.lake at mail.atu.edu> wrote:

> 
> True, Kent, there's room for everyone. I don't want
> anyone to stop
> experimenting. But there's a problem with your
> astronomy example. All of the
> astronomers from the various camps agree upon a set
> of scientific principles
> and methodological procedures. In poetry, there's no
> gravity or mathematical
> constants that everyone must take into account--such
> as how much "sense" a
> poem should make or how much conform to standards of
> usage, and so anything
> goes, even cutting words from newspapers and
> arranging them by random  or
> other arbitrary methods. Experiments in science can
> fail. Falsifiability is
> one constraint on experiments there. But in poetry,
> the experimental can
> defy all objections by insisting that in HIS view it
> IS a poem.
> 
> Paul
> 
> P.S. My Poetry and religion essay was postponed till
> January.
> 
> 
> On 12/11/04 11:33 AM, "Kent Johnson"
> <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:
> 
> > Paul Lake wrote:
> > 
> > "Pointless, mechanical exercises like the one you
> describe are
> > precisely why I've always felt that Mac Low not
> only wrote pointless
> > poetry, if you can call it "writing" and "poetry,"
> but was a pernicious
> > influence as well."
> > 
> > 
> > Paul, this seems rather unsporting of you. At
> least you might have
> > waited until after the memorial service... Geez.
> > 
> > You know, I've often wondered why the cultural
> field of Poetry can't be
> > more like, say, the cultural field of Astronomy.
> In the latter, there is
> > a spectrum of interests and disciplines, and
> though there are debates
> > aplenty, everyone's contribution is accepted and
> respected. For example,
> > there are at one end of the spectrum the writers
> of the popular,
> > accessible books on astronomy; at the other end
> are the weirdos and
> > eccentrics doing things like radio and X-ray
> astonomy and talking to
> > very small audiences in esoteric forms. But one
> does not cancel the
> > other, nor is one seen as any kind of "pernicious
> influence" on
> > anything. 
> > 
> > Much better, I say, if the fundamentalist New
> Formalists (and their
> > brethren free-verse narrativists in the Academy of
> American Poets) who
> > write the popular, accessible stuff for Garrison
> Keilor's _Good Poems_
> > would just give the weird radio and X-ray
> astronomers like Mac Low their
> > due for the role they play, and vice-versa...
> > 
> > There's room for everyone!
> 
> ---
> [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 



		
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Mon Dec 13 14:49:05 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:49:05 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ghost of the Qiamb
In-Reply-To: <s1bd9858.062@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41BDABE1.15604.17AD93D@localhost>

On 13 Dec 2004 at 13:25, Kent Johnson wrote:
> Where did I say that other feet were just iambs of a loose or strict
> kind? I didn't say that. I said the ghost of the iamb haunts the
> natural rhythm of English speech.<

Clever, Kent, but you said not that the iamb haunts the natural 
rhythm of English speech, which would have been inoffensively 
trivial, but that it haunts dactyls and anapests and the meters of 
poetry that use dactyls and anapests -- and other feet. Your point 
wasn't aimed at speaking of the natural rhythm of English speech, but 
at something else -- at, apparently, some "New Formalist" notion.

But I think I may see where you're heading now: if the iamb is the 
natural rhythm of English speech, then that sounds a lot like you're 
putting forward the proposition the the iamb is real -- at least as 
real as English speech is real. So, if that's the case, there's no 
good reason for writing in anything but iambs -- and in prose, at 
that. Are you advocating throwing poetry out the window altogether 
because it's not real, not natural? Is that what you're aiming at?

On 13 Dec 2004 at 13:25, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ... I love the foot--including the amphimacer and the
> amphibrach, the spondee and the pyrrhic, the bacchius and the
> choriambus. These are beautiful things, because they don't really
> "exist." <<

But the great iamb that iamb does?

On 13 Dec 2004 at 13:25, Kent Johnson wrote:
> I fully agree with your last paragraph below, and it is, in the end, the
> most important "point." It's all a game. 
> Just don't go thinking, camerado New Formalists, that it's the only
> game in town. 

How odd -- it would have been my observation that it is the anti- and 
non-formalists who insist there is one and only one game in town: 
theirs. 

Marcus


> On 13 Dec 2004 at 11:58, Kent Johnson wrote:
> > You're creating a molehill of confused analogy here. The
> relationship
> > between an iamb and a trochee has very little in common with the
> > relationship between football and judo! <
> 
> I think you're missing the point. If I understand what you mean here,
> you're saying there isn't really any difference between an iamb and a
> trochee and a dactyl and an anapest -- that they're all just iambs of
> loose or strict kind -- which would be like saying that judo and
> football are really the same. 
> 
> Now, compared to rocks and rivers, for example, judo and football
> certainly are more the same than they are different, but compared to
> each other as games, they're pretty different, even though the
> principles of mass, inertia, power, etc., and their manipulation, have
> some similarities. 
> 
> I'm saying that the games of iamb and dactyl, like the games of judo
> and football, are distinguishable. You're saying all games are just
> games and wotthehell wotthehell, if I understand you correctly. Do I
> not understand you correctly?
> 
> > ... Prosody is a language game; its
> > "rules," as such, are importantly contingent and arbitrary. Given
> this
> > fact, there is little justification--ontological, epistemological,
> or
> > ethical--for taking such "rules" and imposing them as Poetry's
> > "point," as you rather frighteningly have it. <
> 
> It is precisely because the rules of the language game are 
> importantly contingent and arbitrary that gives us any justification
> for imposing them as poetry's point. Poetry is rhetoric -- it's the
> way you say something, not what you say -- so the rules are the
> justification. Without the rules (whatever rules you may want to play
> by, so long as they are clear enough that the players in your game
> don't get themselves confused in the games of others) there can simply
> be no game.
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 





From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec 13 16:27:49 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:27:49 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] the Poetry Kit
Message-ID: <004801c4e15a$98ecd2a0$a6ed3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

A couple of lines to let you know that Jim Bennett of the Poetry Kit chose, among others*, the Poets' Corner as a _recommended site_, there is also a time to be proud. Thank you Jim, very much!

(* re.: Howard Nemerov,

...
If you're not glad things are as they are,
   You can wipe your arse on the _Evening Star_
...
thanks Michael!)


Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Mon Dec 13 20:49:10 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:49:10 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
Message-ID: <s1bdf250.058@mail.highland.edu>

Marcus and Mike,

I realized, after I sent that last post and after reading Marcus's
last, that I had failed to type in a crucial section in the first
paragraph, and so I'm going to do that below, in CAPS, with apologies,
but so it's clear, and have that serve as answer to the last sharp
comment by Marcus (even if we're on different ends of the astronomy
spectrum, I really think you guys are smart, OK?). Of course, by now,
Paul Lake has probably deleted his reference to me in his forthcoming
interview with Contemporary Poetry Review, sigh. But as Frank O'Hara
once brilliantly said at the end of a line: "Well,"
*

>Marcus,

Where did I say that other feet were just iambs of a loose or strict
kind? I didn't say that. I said the ghost of the iamb haunts the natural
rhythm of English speech. But that's not a novel proposition. (OK, true,
then I got a little excited and I said that the Iamb was the head ghost,
or something like that, and that scansion was sort of like the trace of
an ectoplasm, WHICH AT A MUCH DEEPER METAPHYSICAL LEVEL IS VERY PURE,
BUT WHICH IN OUR REALM GETS DIVIDED UP INTO THE SHADOWS OF FALLING FEET
ON THE WALL. "ANACRUSIS" AND "CATALEXIS" ARE FAINT WHISPER-HINTS FROM
THE GODS:  "OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE VAST AND UNWORLDLY IDEA OF FORM, YOU
BLIND BATS, YOU NEW FORMALISTS AND LANGUAGE POETS CHAINED TOGETHER IN A
CAVE!." 
I start in with these conceits and then my eyes roll back into my head
and the words just type themselves. It's a problem sometimes). 

But I'm all for feet, don't get me wrong, and I can hold my own when
marking stresses in a sub-rosa gathering of group-chanting prosodists. I
repeat: I love the foot--including the amphimacer and the amphibrach,
the spondee and the pyrrhic, the bacchius and the choriambus. These are
beautiful things, because they don't really "exist." They are sublime,
evanescent little assemblages, little doors and windows and mirrors in a
miniature haunted house, where Victorian figurines made to scale squint
in horror through their tiny monacles at teeny-weeny copies of Flow
Chart and 22 Light Poems. The singer thinks constructively, builds up
his chant in progressive stages, like a skyscraper. Don't think it
wasn't Mr. Plum who killed the butler in the library with a candleholder
in the shape of an antispast.

Well, OK, sorry again, there I go. But after all is said and done, I
fully agree with your last paragraph below, and it is, in the end, the
most important "point." It's all a game. 

Just don't go thinking, camerado New Formalists, that it's the only
game in town. 

Kent



From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Mon Dec 13 20:58:44 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:58:44 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] missing posts by people
Message-ID: <s1bdf496.059@mail.highland.edu>

For what it's worth, I'm on digest and I read (awkwardly) off from the
archives, and I just realized I have missed posts that some people have
sent in threads I've been in, but which appear up north by title on the
"by date" screen that I'm reading from!  Lake, Murphy, JforJames, and
others... Just saw them, including Paul Lake's follow up on Mac Low,
which I thought was rather "sporting."

Kent


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Dec 13 21:21:32 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:21:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "difficulty & value"
References: <s1bc48b6.078@mail.highland.edu><AEAB4382-4C89-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com><01b701c4e09c$0c1eed90$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><D6EC3766-4C93-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com><020401c4e0ac$14b3a210$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<1951462.1102960248047.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <021701c4e183$a1500d80$84b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>




Bob,  staleness first:

What makes a poem "stale"? What percentage of people, or what kind of people, need to agree on that condition?

One person--the receiver of the poem.

Does a poem which isn't stale become so when the number of poems which share certain properties with it passes some threshold? Or is it only those new poems which are stale? What kinds of properties? What is the threshold? 

It all has to do with predictability.  That will vary from one receiver to another, but certainly a kind of poem can become generally predictable.  


Can there be no aesthetic response to the wholly familiar?

Sure: boredom.  



Does that mean that after reading a poem some number of times, or looking at a painting some number of times, the poem or painting becomes stale?

Absolutely.   

Isn't it possible that one's aesthetic response to some form -- the villanelle, for instance -- grows as one becomes aware through repeated example of the subtleties possible within that form?

Sure.  But eventually one will have to come to know everything about the form, everything of any consequence that can be done with it; at that point, the form will become a bore.  However, there's more to any poem than its form, so a poet may still be able to use a boring form and counteract its boringness with brilliant metaphors or . . . gah, the use of some technique not seven hundred-years-old.


Complexity:


Just what is complexity? The number of parts? The kind of internal relations between the parts? The number of internal relations between the parts? The ration of parts to internal relations, weighted by the kind of internal relations?

All these things.



Are longer (or bigger, the case of paintings or statues or buildings) works of art likely to have greater aesthetic value than shorter (or smaller) works becasue there is more opportunity for complexity to arise?

Yes.

Are you suggesting that, all else being equal, there is an inevitable positive correlation between the complexity of a work of art and its aesthetic value?

Yes.

What I think matters in aesthetic value:

I confess I'm fairly uncomfortable with the whole idea. I think art should be accessible to any reasonably intelligent and resonably educated person, and the whole notion of aesthetic value implies a class of gatekeepers who get to tell us what is and isn't artful. 

Some people will misuse the idea that aesthetic works have aesthetic value, so we should not think in terms of aesthetic value?  What kind of value should a poem have if not aesthetic value?

But if I had to say something, I'd say aesthetic value derives from skillfull manipulation of some kind of thing in a context in which some significant number of reasonably intelligent and educated people can recognize the skill involved. I know this comes close to including Michael Jordan and excluding Jackson Mac Low, and perhaps I should also say "non-utilitarian" context, but would exclude ancient Greek pottery and Papuan masks as art objects. As I said, I'm not really happy with the concept at all.

I'll just say that skill has little to do with aesthetic value, for me.  It's the result that counts.  Sports are not art because they are utilitarian--the object is to win, not be beautiful.  As for objects that usually have utilitarian functions like poettry or urinals, whether they are art or not depends on their context.


 Look here ( http://denisdutton.com/carroll_review.htm ) for other reasons why.

When I have time, I will.

--Bob G. (conversing, Marcus, not making a formal declaration of my aesthetic principles).
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Dec 13 21:32:51 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:32:51 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:  "difficulty & value"
References: <BDE23023.DAB5%grahamd@ripon.edu><020b01c4e0ac$879e1ee0$3eb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<16192319.1102960412498.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <022301c4e185$35a0b100$84b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>>He's wrong.  What's easy is obscurity.  It's very hard to be difficult.
>>
>>--BG 
>>
> 
> That's a useful distinction, Bob. But outside math and the sciences there's not really all that much that's conceptually difficult. Musical theory, maybe -- 

There are many kinds of difficulty besides conceptual difficulty.  Poetry can be technically difficult.  It can even be literarily difficult--because of its allusions to a wide range of other literary works.  Music can be incredibly difficult musically.
There's also the simple difficulty of the new.  Then there's the problem of things that are simple for some people but impossibile difficult for others, like appreciating "lighght" (which, by the way, bores me now because I've seen it and thought about it so much--but I continue to admire it and praise it because I remember what it did for me before the inevitable happened).

but wholly theory based music hasn't been very successful, and I think for very good reason.

Wholly theory-based anything isn't likely to be successful, I should think--even in the sciences.


--Bob G.
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Dec 13 21:36:43 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:36:43 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Dog bites man
References: <BDE30F8B.DAD7%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<8282362.1102961796420.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <022b01c4e185$c00a7fb0$84b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> David, you're right in pointing out what Silliman doesn't even notice--that it's mostly New York publishers.  Dana Gioia has been writing for years about the deleterious effects of the dominance of the New York publishing industry on local and regional poetry scenes and how that affects the national scene.
> 
> His first piece published after being made chair of the NEA was on Copper Canyon's Collected Rexroth, and how New York poetry was strangling the West Coast scene.

Yeah, he has always wanted more mediocrities published than just the ones with ties to NY.

--Bob G.
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From amyhappens at yahoo.com  Mon Dec 13 22:05:33 2004
From: amyhappens at yahoo.com (amy king)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:05:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Winter Solstice Reading at CPF Tues.,
	December 21st 
Message-ID: <JMENIAHNFGOCLHLNNIPHOEABCMAA.amyhappens@yahoo.com>

Dear Friends,

The BROOKLYN RAIL PRESENTS
An evening reading to celebrate the Winter Solstice --

Please join us at Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts for a Winter Solstice celebration
with readings from these highly regarded poets and writers. There will be
drinks, snacks, and lots of atmosphere (Tamara Gonzales' show will be up
with a few added touches).

You are encouraged to wear a funny hat!

6 - 8 PM - Tuesday - December 21, 2004

John Yau
Amy King
Monica de la Torre
Phong Bui
Arthur Bradford


The Egyptian and Persian traditions of celebrating the return of the sun
merged in ancient Rome in a festival to the ancient god of seed-time,
Saturn.

The people gave themselves up to wild joy. The usual order of the year was
suspended:  grudges and quarrels forgotten, wars interrupted or postponed.
Rich and poor were equal, masters served slaves, children headed the family.
Cross-dressing and masquerades, merriment of all kinds prevailed.  A mock
king -- the Lord of Misrule -- was crowned.  Candles and lamps chased away
the spirits of darkness.


 Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts, 13 Jay Street, New York, NY 10013-2848
 Jay Street is two blocks south of Franklin between Greenwich and Hudson St.
 Tel: (212) 925-9424




>



From grahamd at ripon.edu  Mon Dec 13 23:01:31 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:01:31 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wrinkled, all in a heap
Message-ID: <BDE3C1BB.DB47%grahamd@ripon.edu>

In Praise of Ironing

Poetry is pure white.
It emerges from water covered in drops,
is wrinkled, all in a heap.
It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,
has to be ironed out, the sea's whiteness;
and the hands keep moving, moving,
the holy surfaces are smoothed out,
and that is how things are accomplished.
Every day, hands are creating the world,
fire is married to steel,
and canvas, linen, and cotton come back
from the skirmishes of the laundries,
and out of light a dove is born--
pure innocence returns out of the swirl.

--Pablo Neruda.  trans. Alastair Reid.  *Fully Empowered*.  New Directions,
1975.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From amyhappens at yahoo.com  Mon Dec 13 23:47:04 2004
From: amyhappens at yahoo.com (amy king)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:47:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ashbery/Mixed Feelings    
In-Reply-To: <BDDF758A.39EF%grahamd@vbe.com>
Message-ID: <JMENIAHNFGOCLHLNNIPHCEAHCMAA.amyhappens@yahoo.com>

Nothing like typing Ashbery to draw blood into cold hands again:


Some Money

I said I am awkward.
I said we make fools of our lives
For a little money and a coat.
The great tree, once grown, passes over.
I said you can catch all kinds of weird activities.

Meanwhile the child disturbs you.
You are never asked back with its dog
And the fishing pole leans against the steps.
Why have all the windows darkened?
The laurel burned its image into the sky like smoke?

All was gold and shiny in the queen's parlor.
In the pigsty outside it was winter however
With one headache after another
Leading to the blasted bush
On which a felt hat was stuck
Closer to the image of you, of how it feels.
The dogs were in time for no luck.
The lobster shouted how it was long ago
No pen mightier than this said the object
As though to ward off a step
To kiss my sweetheart in the narrow alley
Before it was wartime and the cold ended
On that note.



Not Selected, The Assorted Poems of John Ashbery:


Insane Decisions

Somehow I always do manage but
You found them for me, what
I love, lakes and paintings.

In the night it slipped its mooring.
By daybreak they were gone.
All I did was let the kettle boil.
The familiar silhouette
Kept me from thinking about it.

It's vestigial.
Nothing is missing.
So everything is OK,
Houses markedly more modest,
On and on and on.
A view of the parking lot.

Certain frequencies
Haven't abandoned it yet.
You can still find those pleasures somewhere,
In old stalls.  Negative
Listener response hasn't drowned
The very simple thing of this world
We were taught to respect
As we were growing up.
Comma in the eye of God.
The desired effect.



Alli Warren and Carra Stratton this morning evacuated my kitchen floor:


White Roses

The worst side of it all-
The white sunlight on the polished floor-
Pressed into service,
And then the window closed
And the night ends and begins again.
Her face goes green, her eyes are green;
In the dark corner playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever."  I try to
describe for you,
But you will not listen, you are like the swan.

No stars are there,
No stripes,
But a blind man's cane poking, however clumsily, into the inmost corners of
the house.
Nothing can be harmed!  Night and day are beginning again!
So put away the book,
The flowers you were keeping to give someone:
Only the white, tremendous foam of the street has any importance,
The new white flowers that are beginning to shoot up about now.


Tonight in Buffalo, Alli will meet her first snow:


An Additional Poem

Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
The harbor cold to the mating ships,
And you have lost as you stand by the balcony
With the forest of the sea calm and gray beneath.
A strong impression torn from the descending light
But night is guilty.  You knew the shadow
In the trunk was raving
But as you keep growing hungry you forget.
The distant box is open.  A sound of grain
Poured over the floor in some eagerness-we
Rise with the night let out of the box of wind.


That poem reminds me of the empty grain silos in Buffalo.  The next one
reminds me of a true story:


In an Inchoate Place

I

Is there another person you would like me to invite?
I shall, you know,
if only for the exquisite confusion is causes in you,
like a rope of starfish, tonight.

Opinion is divided on the merits of the majority of the guests.
The siblings are standardized but substandard:
red tadpoles lisping.

II

They are all free to come and go as they please
through the vanilla-flavored venetian blinds.




Good, good night~



From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec 14 03:54:43 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (anny.ballardini at tin.it)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:54:43 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] NYTimes.com Article: Google Is Adding Major Libraries
	to Its Database 
Message-ID: <20041214085443.3B58D35040@web38t.prvt.nytimes.com>

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by anny.ballardini at tin.it.


Google and libraries

anny.ballardini at tin.it


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ELECTION and ABOUT SCHMIDT and starring Paul Giamatti,
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Watch the trailer at:  http://www.foxsearchlight.com/sideways

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Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database

December 14, 2004
 By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT 



 

Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet
search service, plans to announce an agreement today with
some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford
University to begin converting their holdings into digital
files that would be freely searchable over the Web. 

It may be only a step on a long road toward the
long-predicted global virtual library. But the
collaboration of Google and research institutions that also
include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and
the New York Public Library is a major stride in an
ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is
to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic,
body of material and create a digital card catalog and
searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers
and special collections. 

Google - newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer
- has agreed to underwrite the projects being announced
today while also adding its own technical abilities to the
task of scanning and digitizing tens of thousands of pages
a day at each library. 

Although Google executives declined to comment on its
technology or the cost of the undertaking, others involved
estimate the figure at $10 for each of the more than 15
million books and other documents covered in the
agreements. Librarians involved predict the project could
take at least a decade. 

Because the Google agreements are not exclusive, the pacts
are almost certain to touch off a race with other major
Internet search providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Like Google, they might seek the right to offer online
access to library materials in return for selling
advertising, while libraries would receive corporate help
in digitizing their collections for their own institutional
uses. 

"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be
digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the
Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries
today," said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University's head
librarian. 

The Google effort and others like it that are already under
way, including projects by the Library of Congress to put
selections of its best holdings online, are part of a trend
to potentially democratize access to information that has
long been available to only small, select groups of
students and scholars. 

Last night the Library of Congress and a group of
international libraries from the United States, Canada,
Egypt, China and the Netherlands announced a plan to create
a publicly available digital archive of one million books
on the Internet. The group said it planned to have 70,000
volumes online by next April. 

"Having the great libraries at your fingertips allows us to
build on and create great works based on the work of
others," said Brewster Kahle, founder and president of the
Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library
that is also trying to digitize existing print information.


The agreements to be announced today will allow Google to
publish the full text of only those library books old
enough to no longer be under copyright. For copyrighted
works, Google would scan in the entire text, but make only
short excerpts available online. 

Each agreement with a library is slightly different. Google
plans to digitize nearly all the eight million books in
Stanford's collection and the seven million at Michigan.
The Harvard project will initially be limited to only about
40,000 volumes. The scanning at Bodleian Library at Oxford
will be limited to an unspecified number of books published
before 1900, while the New York Public Library project will
involve fragile material not under copyright that library
officials said would be of interest primarily to scholars. 

The trend toward online libraries and virtual card
catalogs is one that already has book publishers scrambling
to respond. 

At least a dozen major publishing companies, including some
of the country's biggest producers of nonfiction books -
the primary target for the online text-search efforts -
have already entered ventures with Google and Amazon that
allow users to search the text of copyrighted books online
and read excerpts. 

Publishers including HarperCollins, the Penguin Group,
Houghton Mifflin and Scholastic have signed up for both the
Google and Amazon programs. The largest American trade
publisher, Random House, participates in Amazon's program
but is still negotiating with Google, which calls its
program Google Print. 

The Amazon and Google programs work by restricting the
access of users to only a few pages of a copyrighted book
during each search, offering enough to help them decide
whether the book meets their requirements enough to justify
ordering the print version. Those features restrict a
user's ability to copy, cut or print the copyrighted
material, while limiting on-screen reading to a few pages
at a time. Books still under copyright at the libraries
involved in Google's new project are likely to be protected
by similar restrictions. 

The challenge for publishers in coming years will be to
continue to have libraries serve as major influential
buyers of their books, without letting the newly vast
digital public reading rooms undermine the companies'
ability to make money commissioning and publishing authors'
work. 

>From the earliest days of the printing press, book
publishers were wary of the development of libraries at
all. In many instances, they opposed the idea of a central
facility offering free access to books that people would
otherwise be compelled to buy. 

But as libraries developed and publishers became aware that
they could be among their best customers, that opposition
faded. Now publishers aggressively court librarians with
advance copies of books, seeking positive reviews of books
in library journals and otherwise trying to influence the
opinion of the people who influence the reading habits of
millions. Some of that promotional impulse may translate to
the online world, publishing executives say. 

But at least initially, the search services are likely to
be most useful to publishers whose nonfiction backlists, or
catalogs of previously published titles, are of interest to
scholars but do not sell regularly enough to be carried in
large quantities in retail stores, said David Steinberger,
the president and chief executive the Perseus Books Group,
which publishes mostly nonfiction books under the Basic
Books, PublicAffairs, Da Capo and other imprints. 

Based on his experiences with Amazon's and Google's
commercial search services so far, Mr. Steinberger said, "I
think there is minimal risk, or virtually no risk, of
copyrighted material being misused." But he said he would
object to a library's providing copyrighted material online
without a license. "If you're talking about the
instantaneous, free distribution of books, I think that
would represent a problem," Mr. Steinberger said. 

For their part, libraries themselves will have to rethink
their central missions as storehouses of printed, indexed
material. 

"Our world is about to change in a big, big way," said
Daniel Greenstein, university librarian for the California
Digital Library of the University of California, which is a
project to organize and retain existing digital materials. 

Instead of expending considerable time and money to
managing their collections of printed materials, Mr.
Greenstein said, libraries in the future can devote more
energy to gathering information and making it accessible -
and more easily manageable - online. 

But Paul LeClerc, the president and chief executive of the
New York Public Library, sees Web access as an expansion of
libraries' reach, not a replacement for physical
collections. "Librarians will add a new dimension to their
work," Mr. LeClerc said. "They will not abandon their
mission of collecting printed material and keeping them for
decades and even centuries." 

Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have long
vowed to make all of the world's information accessible to
anyone with a Web browser. The agreements to be announced
today will put them a few steps closer to that goal - at
least in terms of the English-language portion of the
world's information. Mr. Page said yesterday that the
project traced to the roots of Google, which he and Mr.
Brin founded in 1998 after taking a leave from a graduate
computer science program at Stanford where they worked on a
"digital libraries" project. "What we first discussed at
Stanford is now becoming practical," Mr. Page said. 

At Stanford, Google hopes to be able to scan 50,000 pages a
day within the month, eventually doubling that rate,
according to a person involved in the project. 

The Google plan calls for making the library materials
available as part of Google's regular Web service, which
currently has an estimated eight billion Web pages in its
database and tens of millions of users a day. As with the
other information on its service, Google will sell
advertising to generate revenue from its library material.
(In it existing Google Print program, the company shares
advertising revenue with the participating book
publishers.) 

Each library, meanwhile, will receive its own copy of the
digital database created from that institution's holdings,
which the library can make available through its own Web
site if it chooses. 

Harvard officials said they would be happy to use the
Internet to share their collections widely. "We have always
thought of our libraries at Harvard as being a global
resource," said Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard. 

At least initially, Google's digitizing task will be labor
intensive, with people placing the books and documents on
sophisticated scanners whose high-resolution cameras
capture an image of each page and convert it to a digital
file. 

Google, whose corporate campus in Mountain View, Calif., is
just a few miles from Stanford, plans to transport books to
a copying center it has established at its headquarters.
There the books will be scanned and then returned to the
Stanford libraries. Google plans to set up remote scanning
operations at both Michigan and Harvard. 

The company refused to comment on the technology that it
was using to digitize books, except to say that it was
nondestructive. But according to a person who has been
briefed on the project, Google's technology is more
labor-intensive than systems that are already commercially
available. 

Two small start-up companies, 4DigitalBooks of St. Aubin,
Switzerland, and Kirtas Technologies of Victor, N.Y., are
selling systems that automatically turn pages to capture
images. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/technology/14google.html?ex=1104014483&ei=1&en=fff7ff08341f72be


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From dbarone at sjc.edu  Tue Dec 14 07:55:14 2004
From: dbarone at sjc.edu (Barone, Dennis)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:55:14 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Mac Low
Message-ID: <954A5413620E074797298540927621C59815A9@sjcexchange.SJC.EDU>


I've taken a quick look at some of the current discussion about Jackson Mac Low.  I'd like to respnd, but wouldn't have the faintest idea where to begin.  The task is too huge.  The comments to me seem unfortunate and uninformed.  I'll just say I'm one of those fools who has found Jackson Mac Low an inspiration, a guide, and a model.

Dennis Barone
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From pmetres at jcu.edu  Tue Dec 14 08:14:36 2004
From: pmetres at jcu.edu (Philip Metres)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:14:36 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] mac low simic reference
Message-ID: <33c91d64.ae9252f8.81ec400@mirapoint.jcu.edu>

Kent asked for the Simic reference--Simic refs Mac Low and 
Cage in his book, *The Unemployed Fortune Teller*.  And yes, 
I agree, it's funny to think of Simic thinking someone else's 
aesthetic is narrow.  I've liked some of Simic's work, 
borscht belt meets surrealism, but his stature at one of the 
critics at New York Review of Books does surprise me a little 
bit.  

Philip Metres
Assistant Professor
Department of English
John Carroll University
20700 N. Park Blvd
University Heights, OH 44118
(216) 397-4528 (work)
http://www.philipmetres.com


From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Tue Dec 14 09:00:37 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 06:00:37 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Christmas Poems
Message-ID: <20041214140037.14735.qmail@web52602.mail.yahoo.com>

Okay, here's a query:

What's your favorite Christmas/Holiday-themed poem? 
I've posted mine below.

Merry Christmas and all that jazz,

Jeff Newberry


The Oxen
Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
    "Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
    By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
    They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
    To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
    In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
    "Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
    Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
    Hoping it might be so.

=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. 
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 14 09:29:13 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:29:13 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] mac low
Message-ID: <1d4.31a5b173.2ef052b9@aol.com>

Only have time to type a short one, and I tried
to pick one that wouldn't be a formatting challenge.
A little bit Steinian involution and good measure of 
Cummings' playfulness in this one...


27th Dance -- Walking -- 22 March 1964

Nobody does any waiting,
& nobody has an example.

Does nobody give gold cushions or seem to do so,
& does nobody kick?

Nobody.

& nobody's seeming to send things or's putting wires 
  on things--
nobody's keeping to the news.

At least nobody ends up handing or seeming to hand 
  snakes to people.

     --Jackson Mac Low, The Pronouns, 1964
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Tue Dec 14 09:30:57 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:30:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
In-Reply-To: <s1bdf250.058@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41BEB2D1.19363.565B7D@localhost>

On 13 Dec 2004 at 19:49, Kent Johnson wrote:
> I realized, after I sent that last post and after reading Marcus's
> last, that I had failed to type in a crucial section in the first
> paragraph, and so I'm going to do that below, in CAPS, with apologies,

> (OK, true, then I got a little excited and I said that the Iamb was
> the head ghost, or something like that, and that scansion was sort of
> like the trace of an ectoplasm, WHICH AT A MUCH DEEPER METAPHYSICAL
> LEVEL IS VERY PURE, BUT WHICH IN OUR REALM GETS DIVIDED UP INTO THE
> SHADOWS OF FALLING FEET ON THE WALL. "ANACRUSIS" AND "CATALEXIS" ARE
> FAINT WHISPER-HINTS FROM THE GODS:  "OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE VAST AND
> UNWORLDLY IDEA OF FORM, YOU BLIND BATS, YOU NEW FORMALISTS AND
> LANGUAGE POETS CHAINED TOGETHER IN A CAVE!." I start in with these
> conceits and then my eyes roll back into my head and the words just
> type themselves. It's a problem sometimes). 

It won't do, Kent -- and I was going to say this before, so glad to 
have the opportunity to revisit your post -- because of the last 
sentence. You're taking the Cretan position on whether Cretans are 
all liars, here. You're trying to carve out a space for plausible 
deniability for yourself, an excuse for retreating from what you call 
the conceits that you offer whenever they're challenged, but you only 
succeed in making yourself an unreliable narrator of your own 
opinions. We can believe nothing you say until and unless you're 
challenged down to the last comma and made to roll your eyes back 
down out of your head and say what you mean and mean what you say, 
you see. That's an interesting way to get attention, I guess, but 
it's going to be pretty much a guarantee of bad attention, isn't it? 

On 13 Dec 2004 at 19:49, Kent Johnson wrote:
> But I'm all for feet, don't get me wrong, and I can hold my own when
> marking stresses in a sub-rosa gathering of group-chanting prosodists.<

Oh, I'm all for freedom, Kent -- don't ge me wrong. I can better than 
hold my own when finding poems or letting randomness write a poem for 
me, righteously breaking the pentameter in any gathering of 
snickering anti-intellectuals. I can better than hold my own for the 
same reason any civil person can play barbarian among the barbarians 
but no barbarian can play the civil person in civilization. Freedom's 
not another word for nothing left to lose; freedom means you choose, 
not let the consequences choose.


On 13 Dec 2004 at 19:49, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ... It's all a game. 
> Just don't go thinking, camerado New Formalists, that it's the only
> game in town. <<

We are often told by the intuitionists (the free versists, the anti- 
and non-formalists), that their work is a mystery that escapes 
articulation. But to say something escapes articulation is simply to 
say that it is unintelligible. If their work is unintelligible then 
those intuitionists who are trying to describe it must be speaking 
nonsense about it. Now the intuitionist may say that we cannot rule 
out that he or she has come to some synthetic truth by intuition, 
instead of by the means that we are accustomed to come to it, and 
that?s right. We cannot, and must not, rule out any approach out of 
hand. But we must demand that the approach be testable in some 
reasonable way.

Mike Snider suggests that we appeal to the reasonably intelligent and 
reasonably well-educated person to see whether an example of poetry 
has aesthetic value. He says it should show ?
 skillfull manipulation 
of some kind of thing in a context in which some significant number 
of reasonably intelligent and educated people can recognize the skill 
involved.?

I?d add that the further apart in time the artist and audience the 
better educated the audience has to be, but with that caveat I?ll 
agree with this for the time being. Mike says he?s uncomfortable with 
the notion of a class of gate-keepers but has agreed that there is no 
essential difference between a class of gatekeepers and his class of 
reasonably intelligent and well-educated persons, and that so long as 
that class is not the same as the class of academics, he?s 
comfortable with acknowledging its gatekeeper status at least with 
regard to less-intelligent and less well-educated audiences. I?ll 
agree with this, too.

So that leaves us looking beyond the academy for reasonably 
intelligent and reasonably well-educated persons whose collective 
taste we may reasonably appeal to as a test of whether an example of 
poetry has aesthetic value. And that leaves us with the question of 
whether the intuitionists, the free versists, the anti- and non-
formalists, have succeeded in appealing over the last hundred years, 
roughly, of their ascendance in English, to that audience. Has 
English poetry, in their hands, kept its place in the popular and 
intellectual pantheons? Is poetry as respected after 1900 as before? 

The deafening silence is revelatory. Of course it?s not -- and it?s 
not because of the vast wasteland of television, either. It?s because 
the intuitionist experiment has failed in its attempt to broaden and 
expand the audience for poetry by removing every requirement by which 
excellence might be judged until folks such as Jackson Mac Low run 
around winning significant prizes for random word salads, and 
accepting large amounts of money in their own names for what they 
claim to be work done in ego-less anonymity.

So, while we must not deny beforehand that the intuitionists may 
discover truths by their own special methods, we wait to hear what 
the propositions are that embody their conclusions so we can see 
whether they are verified or not by reasonable observations. If the 
intuitionists apprehend truths then they should be able to express 
them in ways that might be reasonably examined. The fact that they 
cannot say, quite, what it is they do know, nor offer any reasonable 
test to examine their claims, reveals that their states of 
intuitional insight are not really cognitive states at all. In giving 
us his or her vision, the intuitionist does not give us any direct 
information about the world, but rather gives us indirect information 
about the condition of his or her own feelings or mind -- and isn?t 
that nice. Nice as that may be, though, it?s not enough.

I don?t remember who said that there can be no mute inglorious 
Miltons because the function of a Milton is to be neither mute nor 
inglorious, but I think it?s true. The idea that the smartest people 
in the world about language and human beings are, secure behind the 
walls of academia, deliberately working diligently away at texts and 
un-texts that reasonably intelligent and reasonably well-educated 
people cannot recognize as poetry seems not merely silly but actually 
fraudulent precisely because it demands that the more mute, the more 
inglorious, the poet the more widely acclaimed by the academy he or 
she must be as the next coming of Milton.





From tad at opus40.org  Tue Dec 14 09:44:59 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:44:59 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] mac low simic reference
References: <33c91d64.ae9252f8.81ec400@mirapoint.jcu.edu>
Message-ID: <004101c4e1eb$7f1763e0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

Why does Simic have less right than the rest of us to an aesthetic?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip Metres" <pmetres at jcu.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 8:14 AM
Subject: [New-Poetry] mac low simic reference


> Kent asked for the Simic reference--Simic refs Mac Low and 
> Cage in his book, *The Unemployed Fortune Teller*.  And yes, 
> I agree, it's funny to think of Simic thinking someone else's 
> aesthetic is narrow.  I've liked some of Simic's work, 
> borscht belt meets surrealism, but his stature at one of the 
> critics at New York Review of Books does surprise me a little 
> bit.  
> 
> Philip Metres
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> John Carroll University
> 20700 N. Park Blvd
> University Heights, OH 44118
> (216) 397-4528 (work)
> http://www.philipmetres.com
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
>



From marcus at designerglass.com  Tue Dec 14 09:54:18 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:54:18 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Christmas Poems
In-Reply-To: <20041214140037.14735.qmail@web52602.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <41BEB84A.5380.6BBC52@localhost>

On 14 Dec 2004 at 6:00, Jeff Newberry wrote:
> Okay, here's a query:
> What's your favorite Christmas/Holiday-themed poem? 
> Jeff Newberry

Christmas in the Trenches
John McCutcheon

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.

'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, ``Now listen up, me boys!'' each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.

``He's singing bloody well, you know!'' my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war

As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
``God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen'' struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was ``Stille Nacht.'' ``Tis `Silent Night','' says 
I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky

``There's someone coming toward us!'' the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode unarmed into the night.

Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.

We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men.

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
``Whose family have I fixed within my sights?''

'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore.

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.




From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Tue Dec 14 12:54:32 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:54:32 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
Message-ID: <s1bed47e.088@mail.highland.edu>

Marcus,

That's a long reply. But I still don't see where anything I've said has
really been "challenged." To the contrary, you have already stated broad
agreement with most of my general points about the troubled
"epistemological" status of meter, especially its "falling-foot"
variety. And there is nothing unusual about those points, really, except
for the eccentric way I have framed them. TVF Brogan agrees with me,
too, you know--or at least he acknowledges that such skepticism has
existed among many students of prosody since, well,... the Renaissance!
So I ask you: Not counting your (faulty) analogy via judo and football,
what exactly are you challenging in what I have said, having said it
while my eyes go rolling around in my head? I remind you, again, that I,
too, think meter is fun, even if I think poetry's power and mystery can
often exceed the rules of its game.

But the main thing I wanted to say about your last post, Marcus, of
which a snippet below, is that you make it sound as if no one has
published a word in defense of what you call "intuitionist" poetry (by
which you seem to mean most everything since Charles Olson penned
"Projective Verse"). The image I'm getting is of the cosmetics girl on
Mad TV, pressing her hands over her ears and shouting LaLaLaLaLaLa...
How does one answer such a "challenge"? It is in league with Mike
Snider's attitude, it seems to me, too: dozens of people take time to
write in to his blog, send posts to New-Poetry, offer links to essays by
others, etc. and his response is, "I have now read Ashbery again and I
have nothing to say." 

One begins to get from this, frankly, an uncomfortable sense of bad
faith. A kind of ideological fistedness, no matter what...

Kent

*
Marcus said, 

>The fact that they 
cannot say, quite, what it is they do know, nor offer any reasonable 
test to examine their claims, reveals that their states of 
intuitional insight are not really cognitive states at all. In giving 
us his or her vision, the intuitionist does not give us any direct 
information about the world, but rather gives us indirect information 
about the condition of his or her own feelings or mind -- and isn't 
that nice. Nice as that may be, though, it's not enough.



From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Dec 14 13:29:24 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:29:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others:  Anselm Berrigan,
	"Do Service Changes Puzzle You?"
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEGIJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


Do Service Changes Puzzle You?

perhaps morals and their systems were mutations
to begin with chum, in a bucket, seducing sharks
for one of a billion photo-ops teeth flashing
sustained analysis being a degradation of why we fight
o lord, the train to your pantry needs black gold
ogling the gesture of defiance, sometimes it takes
decades of brutality you've financed to see a dirty dog
drunk, coming at me, second time that I got home
drunk as I could be, there's another mule in the stable
where my mule oughta be, let me tell you about
the way he's not there

--Anselm Berrigan

in *88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry*
Issue 3, October 2003


Hal                Serving the tri-state area.

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



From marcus at designerglass.com  Tue Dec 14 14:15:02 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:15:02 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
In-Reply-To: <s1bed47e.088@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41BEF566.14228.15A70D1@localhost>

On 14 Dec 2004 at 11:54, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ...  I still don't see where anything I've said
> has really been "challenged." To the contrary, you have already stated
> broad agreement with most of my general points about the troubled
> "epistemological" status of meter, especially its "falling-foot"
> variety.<

You call my agreement that you may have your own opinion about it 
while in my opinion you may be at the same time completely wrong 
"broad agreement"? That's broad indeed!  

On 14 Dec 2004 at 11:54, Kent Johnson wrote:
> And there is nothing unusual about those points, really,
> except for the eccentric way I have framed them. TVF Brogan agrees
> with me, too, you know--or at least he acknowledges that such
> skepticism has existed among many students of prosody since, well,...
> the Renaissance!<

I'm not disputing that any tin-eared free-versist could read "HALF a 
LEAGUE, HALF a LEAGUE, HALF a LEAGUE ONward" and make a crippled 
stumping-along out of Tennyson's gallop, but just because it can be 
done doesn't mean that that's what Tennyson intended.

On 14 Dec 2004 at 11:54, Kent Johnson wrote:
> So I ask you: Not counting your (faulty) analogy via
> judo and football,<

Speaking of showing things, Kent, merely repeating that something is 
faulty is not a demonstration that there is a fault. I've explained 
that analogy twice, now -- why don't you explain what you think is 
faulty about it, and we'll compare notes.

On 14 Dec 2004 at 11:54, Kent Johnson wrote:
> what exactly are you challenging in what I have
> said, having said it while my eyes go rolling around in my head?<

I'm challenging your notion that iambs haunt dactyls and anapests 
(the example I gave, the example Sam gave). I'm saying that we can 
distinguish dactyls and anapests in English from iambs, that dactyls 
and anapests are distinguishable from iambs, that 4/4 time is 
different from 3/4 time, that judo is different from football, even 
though they are all games.
 
> Marcus said, 
> >The fact that they 
> cannot say, quite, what it is they do know, nor offer any reasonable
> test to examine their claims, reveals that their states of intuitional
> insight are not really cognitive states at all. In giving us his or
> her vision, the intuitionist does not give us any direct information
> about the world, but rather gives us indirect information about the
> condition of his or her own feelings or mind -- and isn't that nice.
> Nice as that may be, though, it's not enough.

On 14 Dec 2004 at 11:54, Kent Johnson wrote:
> But the main thing I wanted to say about your last post, Marcus ...
> is that you make it sound as if no one has
> published a word in defense of what you call "intuitionist" poetry
> (by which you seem to mean most everything since Charles Olson
> penned "Projective Verse").

The intuitionist claim is that whatever poetry is it is intuitional, 
not a matter of craft, not even of intent (else Mac Low would have 
been laughed out of the room), but of something mystically other, 
something spiritual.

Some have claimed poetry is not a matter of how a thing is said, but 
of what is said. Their claim, in short, is that poetry is really 
philosophy. If you approach their work as philosophy, though, 
bringing to it the tools of philosophy, they get pretty upset, since 
it doesn?t take much effort to expose their work  as pretty bad 
philosophy right away. Their defense of free verse fails because 
neither  the ideas they present in their work, nor their manners of 
presentation, stand up to philosophical scrutiny. They defend their 
work against poetry critics by saying "But it?s philosophy!" and 
against philosopher critics by saying "But it?s poetry!" -- and 
they?re wrong on both counts.

Others say that the distinction between poetry and prose is the line-
break, or flow-break, taking Jeremy Bentham?s antique joke and making 
it the cornerstone of their work. Built on a joke, it quickly falls 
apart: if anything that is ragged-right is a poem, then an address on 
an envelope is a poem, and so is the return address, and the date and 
salutation of a letter -- or nearly any typing. Imagine business 
correspondence being considered poetry just because its margins are 
ragged-right! This defense of free verse fails because it is absurd. 
Should all businesspeople, like some new M. Jourdain  swimming into 
literature?s ken, preen themselves and say "I was speaking poetry all 
along"? 

Still others argue that the distinction between poetry and prose is 
like the definition of pornography: we?ll know it when we see it, but 
we can?t say just what it is. What good is an attempt at definition 
that denies that the definition is possible? No good: this fails on 
the grounds of simple uselessness. A definition that refuses to 
define is no definition at all.

Others still claim that there is a natural meter to any piece of free 
verse: that the poem finds its own meter naturally, and whatever form 
the poem takes is its natural meter. This is preposterous on the face 
of it because a piece of language art is not "natural" in the least --
 it is artifice, intended to play with and on the language, and with 
and on the expectations of the native language speakers of that 
language. A piece of language art hasn?t got a "natural" meter -- it 
is either given one by the artist, or such a meter cannot exist. The 
only way meter can be explained is that it?s a piece of artifice, an 
artificial imposing of an expectation on that which, in nature, in 
its natural state, hasn?t been artificially imposed-on. This defense 
of free verse fails as special pleading, even though it?s the most 
twisty bit of special pleading I?ve read since Aquinas.

Others yet claim, in the face of these objections, that they don?t 
write "poems", they write "texts" that are called "poems" by default, 
no one, not critics, not themselves,  having any other term to hand 
by which to distinguish their writings from, well, from prose. This 
defense of free verse fails because it is disingenuous: it tries to 
say "But I don?t call them poems, other people call them poems", thus 
attempting not only to have their cake and eat it too, but deny it?s 
cake in the first place, so don?t blame them. One imagines these are 
the people most easily convinced by the Bush/Cheney Republicans.

Even others try to defend free verse by taking a little from this and 
a little from that failed argument, but we need not worry too much 
about them, because combining two failed arguments doesn?t make a 
good one -- nor does combining three, or four, or more, or all.

And yet, say still others, there it is, the mass of free verse 
written in the 20th century: what are we to make of that brute fact 
if not that free verse is poetry after all? Because it?s been a 
hundred years since free verse has arrived on the scene, isn?t that 
enough to say that it?s a tradition of its own? How, they ask, can we 
say that something so successful in the marketplace of ideas as free 
verse has been is not in and of itself a good thing? This may be the 
most cockamamie defense of all. Coca Cola has been around for as 
long, but no one claims that it is a good in and of itself, even 
after the cocaine originally in it was replaced with caffeine. Free 
verse offers a quick easy fix of empty self-esteem, as Coke offers a 
quick easy fix of empty calories: and neither is good for long.

And, finally, a few claim that it?s even easier than that: that you 
needn?t even write the words yourself: just take any collection of 
words from any text you find about, cut the lines up so they go 
between a third and half-way across the page, justify the left 
margin, select a couple words from the middle of the text, and title 
it "Found Poem: a couple words from the middle of the text" and, in 
just a little more time than it takes you to warm your instant coffee 
in the microwave, you?re a poet.

I'm not sure what it is that has driven intuitionist practitioners so 
far into the further reaches of absurdity in pursuit of ease of 
manufacture of the product. Perhaps it's just an American thing: why 
make things really well one at a time by hand when by making the 
product uniform you can make fifty gajillion of them on an assembly 
line? 

At any rate, the notion that poetry is rhetoric, an intellectual 
sport, the function of which has been, until the 20th century, to 
delight its audience by sharing between maker and receiver a common 
heightened sense of participation in the nuances of the culture, is 
alien now. Entire generations of people have been puzzled and put off 
by the mass production of free verse, found poems, the poetry of 
erasure, language poetry, randomness poetry, and the rest. It can be, 
and is, made by the running yard with almost no effort at all -- so, 
for people brought up in a commercial world, where scarcity or 
craftsmanship, but not pebble-commonness, creates value, how valuable 
can such product be? They expect mass-produced goods to be sold at a 
heavy discount, and view them as written in a hurry to be read in a 
hurry, throw-away items.

It's no wonder if poets are down among the used car salesman and 
politicians when it comes to opinions about professions. 

It's taken a hundred years to take the notion of being a poet from an 
honored and respected ambition to something anyone can be without 
craft, without art, without effort, without even intending to be. 
When any business letter, any random salad of words, any data-burb of 
a test-print is a poem as good as any other poem, why should anyone 
read yours or mine? Why bother to distinguish yours from mine or from 
the data-burp? The intuitionist enterprise has created not poetry but 
disaster. Eleanor asks Henry in _The Lion In Winter_ ?How from where 
we started did we ever get to this?? Henry responds "Step. By. Step." 
Similarly, the intuitionists have brought here. Too bad.

Marcus





From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Tue Dec 14 15:25:31 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:25:31 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] ta-DUM! (or do we have a case of anacrusis, here?)
Message-ID: <s1bef7eb.048@mail.highland.edu>

Marcus,

OK, OK, you are right, in your Condensed History of Free and
Intuitionist Verse, to say that anything written in English in the past
one hundred years not employing rhyme and clear meter in the tradition
of Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Frost is easy, production-line
garbage and doesn't deserve to be called Poetry. I see what you mean
now, and chastened, I want to say: YOU WIN THAT ARGUMENT!

And a trochee is like a football game, too.

When I come to the CCCP this April, stop on by, and I'll buy you a pint
at The Eagle. Ludwig, Bertrand, and John Maynard might be there, too.

By the way, have you ever heard Tennyson reading "The Charge of the
Light Brigade," as recorded by Edison on wax cylinders? I don't think he
quite reads it as you scan it... But the recording is pretty crackly!

spondees and ionics to you,

Kent




From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 14 16:40:49 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:40:49 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Rimbaud in Ethiopia
Message-ID: <1e1.316eb138.2ef0b7e1@aol.com>

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/afplifestyleethiopia

Ethiopian town celebrates 150th birthday of French poet Arthur Rimbaud
 
Sun Dec 12, 4:03 PM ET
 
There are few remaining traces of Rimbaud in the town, and many of the town's 
residents confuse the poet with the American film character "Rambo".
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Dec 14 16:43:53 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:43:53 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Rimbaud in Ethiopia
In-Reply-To: <1e1.316eb138.2ef0b7e1@aol.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEHCJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

{ There are few remaining traces of Rimbaud in the town, and many  
{ of the town's residents confuse the poet with the  American film  
{ character "Rambo".  

Just as many Americans (even many New Jerseyites) think Walt
Whitman was the man who invented chocolate samplers.

Hal         "I think I think; therefore I think I am."
                                --Ambrose Bierce
Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/ 

 
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec 14 17:22:02 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 23:22:02 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Rimbaud in Ethiopia
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEHCJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <010401c4e22b$565eeff0$f4ee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

or when the French called Modigliani : maudit (modi)
:-)

(I don't think, I don't think, that is why I know I am
                                  AB)

From: Halvard Johnson 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 10:43 PM
  Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Rimbaud in Ethiopia


  { There are few remaining traces of Rimbaud in the town, and many  
  { of the town's residents confuse the poet with the  American film  
  { character "Rambo".  

  Just as many Americans (even many New Jerseyites) think Walt
  Whitman was the man who invented chocolate samplers.

  Hal         "I think I think; therefore I think I am."
                                  --Ambrose Bierce
  Halvard Johnson
  ===============
  email: halvard at earthlink.net
  website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
  blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/ 

   
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From mandolin at mac.com  Tue Dec 14 19:04:10 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:04:10 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
In-Reply-To: <41BEB2D1.19363.565B7D@localhost>
References: <41BEB2D1.19363.565B7D@localhost>
Message-ID: <D89768C6-4E2C-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 14, 2004, at 9:30 AM, Marcus Bales wrote:

> On 13 Dec 2004 at 19:49, Kent Johnson wrote:
>> I realized, after I sent that last post and after reading Marcus's
>> last, that I had failed to type in a crucial section in the first
>> paragraph, and so I'm going to do that below, in CAPS, with apologies,
>
>> (OK, true, then I got a little excited and I said that the Iamb was
>> the head ghost, or something like that, and that scansion was sort of
>> like the trace of an ectoplasm, WHICH AT A MUCH DEEPER METAPHYSICAL
>> LEVEL IS VERY PURE, BUT WHICH IN OUR REALM GETS DIVIDED UP INTO THE
>> SHADOWS OF FALLING FEET ON THE WALL. "ANACRUSIS" AND "CATALEXIS" ARE
>> FAINT WHISPER-HINTS FROM THE GODS:  "OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE VAST AND
>> UNWORLDLY IDEA OF FORM, YOU BLIND BATS, YOU NEW FORMALISTS AND
>> LANGUAGE POETS CHAINED TOGETHER IN A CAVE!." I start in with these
>> conceits and then my eyes roll back into my head and the words just
>> type themselves. It's a problem sometimes).
>
> It won't do, Kent -- and I was going to say this before, so glad to
> have the opportunity to revisit your post -- because of the last
> sentence. You're taking the Cretan position on whether Cretans are
> all liars, here. You're trying to carve out a space for plausible
> deniability for yourself, an excuse for retreating from what you call
> the conceits that you offer whenever they're challenged, but you only
> succeed in making yourself an unreliable narrator of your own
> opinions. We can believe nothing you say until and unless you're
> challenged down to the last comma and made to roll your eyes back
> down out of your head and say what you mean and mean what you say,
> you see. That's an interesting way to get attention, I guess, but
> it's going to be pretty much a guarantee of bad attention, isn't it?
>
> On 13 Dec 2004 at 19:49, Kent Johnson wrote:
>> But I'm all for feet, don't get me wrong, and I can hold my own when
>> marking stresses in a sub-rosa gathering of group-chanting 
>> prosodists.<
>
> Oh, I'm all for freedom, Kent -- don't ge me wrong. I can better than
> hold my own when finding poems or letting randomness write a poem for
> me, righteously breaking the pentameter in any gathering of
> snickering anti-intellectuals. I can better than hold my own for the
> same reason any civil person can play barbarian among the barbarians
> but no barbarian can play the civil person in civilization. Freedom's
> not another word for nothing left to lose; freedom means you choose,
> not let the consequences choose.
>
>
> On 13 Dec 2004 at 19:49, Kent Johnson wrote:
>> ... It's all a game.
>> Just don't go thinking, camerado New Formalists, that it's the only
>> game in town. <<
>
> We are often told by the intuitionists (the free versists, the anti-
> and non-formalists), that their work is a mystery that escapes
> articulation. But to say something escapes articulation is simply to
> say that it is unintelligible. If their work is unintelligible then
> those intuitionists who are trying to describe it must be speaking
> nonsense about it. Now the intuitionist may say that we cannot rule
> out that he or she has come to some synthetic truth by intuition,
> instead of by the means that we are accustomed to come to it, and
> that?s right. We cannot, and must not, rule out any approach out of
> hand. But we must demand that the approach be testable in some
> reasonable way.
>
> Mike Snider suggests that we appeal to the reasonably intelligent and
> reasonably well-educated person to see whether an example of poetry
> has aesthetic value. He says it should show ?? skillfull manipulation
> of some kind of thing in a context in which some significant number
> of reasonably intelligent and educated people can recognize the skill
> involved.?
>
> I?d add that the further apart in time the artist and audience the
> better educated the audience has to be, but with that caveat I?ll
> agree with this for the time being. Mike says he?s uncomfortable with
> the notion of a class of gate-keepers but has agreed that there is no
> essential difference between a class of gatekeepers and his class of
> reasonably intelligent and well-educated persons, and that so long as
> that class is not the same as the class of academics, he?s
> comfortable with acknowledging its gatekeeper status at least with
> regard to less-intelligent and less well-educated audiences. I?ll
> agree with this, too.
>
> So that leaves us looking beyond the academy for reasonably
> intelligent and reasonably well-educated persons whose collective
> taste we may reasonably appeal to as a test of whether an example of
> poetry has aesthetic value. And that leaves us with the question of
> whether the intuitionists, the free versists, the anti- and non-
> formalists, have succeeded in appealing over the last hundred years,
> roughly, of their ascendance in English, to that audience. Has
> English poetry, in their hands, kept its place in the popular and
> intellectual pantheons? Is poetry as respected after 1900 as before?
>
> The deafening silence is revelatory. Of course it?s not -- and it?s
> not because of the vast wasteland of television, either. It?s because
> the intuitionist experiment has failed in its attempt to broaden and
> expand the audience for poetry by removing every requirement by which
> excellence might be judged until folks such as Jackson Mac Low run
> around winning significant prizes for random word salads, and
> accepting large amounts of money in their own names for what they
> claim to be work done in ego-less anonymity.
>
> So, while we must not deny beforehand that the intuitionists may
> discover truths by their own special methods, we wait to hear what
> the propositions are that embody their conclusions so we can see
> whether they are verified or not by reasonable observations. If the
> intuitionists apprehend truths then they should be able to express
> them in ways that might be reasonably examined. The fact that they
> cannot say, quite, what it is they do know, nor offer any reasonable
> test to examine their claims, reveals that their states of
> intuitional insight are not really cognitive states at all. In giving
> us his or her vision, the intuitionist does not give us any direct
> information about the world, but rather gives us indirect information
> about the condition of his or her own feelings or mind -- and isn?t
> that nice. Nice as that may be, though, it?s not enough.
>
> I don?t remember who said that there can be no mute inglorious
> Miltons because the function of a Milton is to be neither mute nor
> inglorious, but I think it?s true. The idea that the smartest people
> in the world about language and human beings are, secure behind the
> walls of academia, deliberately working diligently away at texts and
> un-texts that reasonably intelligent and reasonably well-educated
> people cannot recognize as poetry seems not merely silly but actually
> fraudulent precisely because it demands that the more mute, the more
> inglorious, the poet the more widely acclaimed by the academy he or
> she must be as the next coming of Milton.
>
>

Marcus, I agree almost entirely  with this. There are many free verse 
poems I love, but free verse's dominance has been a disaster. In 
particular, there's no clear way to teach a young poet how to get 
started with free verse -- since it's all intuition and taste, all one 
can do is point and say "that one works" or "that one doesn't," and if 
someone else disagrees, then what?

I wrote  at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of 
things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way around 
that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and prose poems 
had been understood to be something different from poetry.  They're at 
least as different as judo and football.



From mandolin at mac.com  Tue Dec 14 19:39:10 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:39:10 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
In-Reply-To: <s1bdf250.058@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1bdf250.058@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <BC5BC5FA-4E31-11D9-84B2-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 13, 2004, at 8:49 PM, Kent Johnson wrote:

>
> Where did I say that other feet were just iambs of a loose or strict
> kind? I didn't say that. I said the ghost of the iamb haunts the 
> natural
> rhythm of English speech. But that's not a novel proposition. (OK, 
> true,
> then I got a little excited and I said that the Iamb was the head 
> ghost,
> or something like that, and that scansion was sort of like the trace of
> an ectoplasm, WHICH AT A MUCH DEEPER METAPHYSICAL LEVEL IS VERY PURE,
> BUT WHICH IN OUR REALM GETS DIVIDED UP INTO THE SHADOWS OF FALLING FEET
> ON THE WALL. "ANACRUSIS" AND "CATALEXIS" ARE FAINT WHISPER-HINTS FROM
> THE GODS:  "OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE VAST AND UNWORLDLY IDEA OF FORM, YOU
> BLIND BATS, YOU NEW FORMALISTS AND LANGUAGE POETS CHAINED TOGETHER IN A
> CAVE!."


Kent, there ain't no gods to whisper and there ain't no metaphysical 
status for any scansion. Iambs and trochees and the rest of the 
menagerie only exist as they're defined by human use -- that's why a 
Greek dactyl is not an English dactyl -- but, within the realm, or game 
if you prefer, in which people do use them, they're easily 
distinguishable from each other in all but a very few cases -- not 
unlike living things. Deliberately or lazily confusing them makes a 
hash of a rich and still vital tradition. That's your  loss, not mine, 
and I'm working as hard as I know how to keep that pernicious confusion 
from robbing still more people of access to that  tradition.

I don't claim it's the only poetic tradition, or the only poetic game, 
but it's certainly deepest and richest one we have.

best,

Michael



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Dec 14 19:50:27 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:50:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
References: <41BEB2D1.19363.565B7D@localhost>
	<D89768C6-4E2C-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <03e001c4e240$11fcc8e0$2db831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


> I wrote  at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of
> things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way around 
> that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and prose poems had 
> been understood to be something different from poetry.  They're at least 
> as different as judo and football.

Why this need to keep the magic word, "poetry," for your kind of texts 
alone, Michael?  As I see it, free verse is clearly distinguished from 
formal verse.  Why does it matter that both are considered by most people as 
two kinds of poetry rather than as two kinds of literature.

That they both be considered poetry seems to me simply more rational than 
one's being considered poetry, the other something else.  In the former 
case, one has verbal experession divided into prose and poetry, and the 
poetry divided into formal and free verse (or, as my taxonomy has it, 
"songmode" and "plaintext" poetry); in the latter, we must have three kinds 
of verbal expression, one of which, free verse, is much much more similar to 
one of the other two than it is to the other of the other two.  Or do you 
think free verse is more or as much like prose than like formal poetry? 
Even though it uses lineation and puts a premium on all the standard poetic 
devices, and even generally favors rhythm, if not strict meter?

As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.

--Bob G. 




From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 14 20:14:52 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:14:52 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <a9.68c74e0c.2ef0ea0c@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/14/2004 7:50:39 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:

> I wrote  at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of
> >things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way around 
> >that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and prose poems had 
> >been understood to be something different from poetry.  They're at least 
> >as different as judo and football.
> 
> Why this need to keep the magic word, "poetry," for your kind of texts 
> alone, Michael?  As I see it, free verse is clearly distinguished from 
> formal verse.  Why does it matter that both are considered by most people as 
> 
> two kinds of poetry rather than as two kinds of literature.
> 
> That they both be considered poetry seems to me simply more rational than 
> one's being considered poetry, the other something else.  In the former 
> case, one has verbal experession divided into prose and poetry, and the 
> poetry divided into formal and free verse (or, as my taxonomy has it, 
> "songmode" and "plaintext" poetry); in the latter, we must have three kinds 
> of verbal expression, one of which, free verse, is much much more similar to 
> 
> one of the other two than it is to the other of the other two.  Or do you 
> think free verse is more or as much like prose than like formal poetry? 
> Even though it uses lineation and puts a premium on all the standard poetic 
> devices, and even generally favors rhythm, if not strict meter?
> 
> As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.
> 
> 

Mike, why don't you just add an adjective like 'traditional' or
'formalist' to poetry and be content with that? Distinctions are good,
and useful; but hard and fast demarcations with razor wire strung along
the top of the fence are bad. 
Bob, you surprise me, too...suggesting that poetry isn't powerful
enuf to co-opt prose....poetry is a maw: Run away, run away, 
it's eating its way through dictionaries, encyclopedia, grammars, 
genres, and any other word prison you got.
Finnegan
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From mandolin at mac.com  Tue Dec 14 20:31:22 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:31:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
In-Reply-To: <03e001c4e240$11fcc8e0$2db831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <41BEB2D1.19363.565B7D@localhost>
	<D89768C6-4E2C-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com>
	<03e001c4e240$11fcc8e0$2db831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <06F942C8-4E39-11D9-84B2-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 14, 2004, at 7:50 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:

>
>> I wrote  at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of
>> things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way around 
>> that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and prose 
>> poems had been understood to be something different from poetry.  
>> They're at least as different as judo and football.
>
> Why this need to keep the magic word, "poetry," for your kind of texts 
> alone, Michael?  As I see it, free verse is clearly distinguished from 
> formal verse.  Why does it matter that both are considered by most 
> people as two kinds of poetry rather than as two kinds of literature.

I've got no such need, Bob. It's a done deal, and my wish that things 
were different is just farting in the wind.

> That they both be considered poetry seems to me simply more rational 
> than one's being considered poetry, the other something else.  In the 
> former case, one has verbal experession divided into prose and poetry, 
> and the poetry divided into formal and free verse (or, as my taxonomy 
> has it, "songmode" and "plaintext" poetry); in the latter, we must 
> have three kinds of verbal expression, one of which, free verse, is 
> much much more similar to one of the other two than it is to the other 
> of the other two.  Or do you think free verse is more or as much like 
> prose than like formal poetry? Even though it uses lineation and puts 
> a premium on all the standard poetic devices, and even generally 
> favors rhythm, if not strict meter?
>

There's great swatches of Creeley and Williams and Snyder and Rexroth 
and Levertov and Jeffers and Waldman that I love dearly. But I don't 
think they use standard poetic devices--whatever that might mean--any 
more than Thomas Browne or Dickens or A. S. Byatt or J.R.R. Tolkien. 
For millenia the "standard poetic device" was meter,  generally 
recognized as necessary but not sufficient.

> As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.
>

None of us get everything we'd like.

Best,

Michael



From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 14 21:00:28 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:00:28 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Brigit Pegeen Kelly,
	"The Satyr's Heart"
Message-ID: <90.530f07ba.2ef0f4bc@aol.com>

The Satyr's Heart

Now I rest my head on the satyr's carved chest,
The hallow where the heart would have been, if sandstone
Had a heart, if a headless goat man could have a heart.
His neck rises to a dull point, points upward
To something long gone, elusive, and at his feet
The small flowers swarm, earnest and sweet, a clamor
Of white, a clamor of blue, and black the sweating soil
They breed in...If I sit without moving, how quickly
Things change, birds turning tricks in the trees,
Colorless birds and those with color, the wind fingering
The twigs, and the furred creatures doing whatever
Furred creatures do.  So, and so.  There is the smell of fruit
And the smell of wet coins.  There is the sound of a bird 
Crying, and the sound of water that does not move...
If I pick the dead iris?  If I wave it above me 
Like a flag, a blazoned flag?  My fanfare?  Little fare
With which I buy my way, making things brave?
No, that's not it.  Uncovering what is brave.  The way
Now I bend over and with my foot turn up a stone,
And there they are: the armies of pale creatures who
Without cease or doubt sew the sweet sad earth.


Brigit Pegeen Kelly
The Orchard
BOA Editions, Ltd 2004
ISBN: 1-929918-48-8
Price: $14.95

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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Dec 14 21:16:19 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:16:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
References: <41BEB2D1.19363.565B7D@localhost><D89768C6-4E2C-11D9-8A69-000393C29586@mac.com><03e001c4e240$11fcc8e0$2db831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<06F942C8-4E39-11D9-84B2-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <03f401c4e24c$114d7fa0$2db831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>



>
> On Dec 14, 2004, at 7:50 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>>
>>> I wrote  at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of
>>> things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way around 
>>> that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and prose poems 
>>> had been understood to be something different from poetry.  They're at 
>>> least as different as judo and football.
>>
>> Why this need to keep the magic word, "poetry," for your kind of texts 
>> alone, Michael?  As I see it, free verse is clearly distinguished from 
>> formal verse.  Why does it matter that both are considered by most people 
>> as two kinds of poetry rather than as two kinds of literature.
>
> I've got no such need, Bob. It's a done deal, and my wish that things were 
> different is just farting in the wind.
>
>> That they both be considered poetry seems to me simply more rational than 
>> one's being considered poetry, the other something else.  In the former 
>> case, one has verbal experession divided into prose and poetry, and the 
>> poetry divided into formal and free verse (or, as my taxonomy has it, 
>> "songmode" and "plaintext" poetry); in the latter, we must have three 
>> kinds of verbal expression, one of which, free verse, is much much more 
>> similar to one of the other two than it is to the other of the other two. 
>> Or do you think free verse is more or as much like prose than like formal 
>> poetry? Even though it uses lineation and puts a premium on all the 
>> standard poetic devices, and even generally favors rhythm, if not strict 
>> meter?
>>
>
> There's great swatches of Creeley and Williams and Snyder and Rexroth and 
> Levertov and Jeffers and Waldman that I love dearly. But I don't think 
> they use standard poetic devices--whatever that might mean--

The ones you're familiar with, as opposed to the ones invented since 1880 or 
so.


>any  more than Thomas Browne or Dickens or A. S. Byatt or J.R.R. Tolkien.

The former use lineation, which is hugely important.  But I suspect they use 
more figures of speech per syllable than any prose writers, and various ways 
of heightening their language rather than the drama of what story they are 
telling.  Can you truthfully say that the great swatches of free verse that 
you love, you love for the same reasons you love any of the work of the 
prose writers you mention (assuming you do love some of it, as I'm sure you 
do).


> For millenia the "standard poetic device" was meter,  generally recognized 
> as necessary but not sufficient.

I'm not sure of all that, but certainly repeated sounds have always been a 
part of poetry, or standard poetic devices.
And lineation--which can be oral.  I admit to not knowing anything about the 
history of all this, but I can't believe there hasn't always been a kind of 
verbal expression that consisted of sentences, and a kind that consisted of 
lines.

>> As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.
>>
>
> None of us get everything we'd like.

I think a majority of readers of serious literature might agree that prose 
poems are not poetry.

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Dec 14 21:36:24 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:36:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <a9.68c74e0c.2ef0ea0c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <040701c4e24e$df63c280$2db831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>



    I wrote  at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of
    >things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way around 
    >that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and prose poems had 
    >been understood to be something different from poetry.  They're at least 
    >as different as judo and football.

    Why this need to keep the magic word, "poetry," for your kind of texts 
    alone, Michael?  As I see it, free verse is clearly distinguished from 
    formal verse.  Why does it matter that both are considered by most people as 
    two kinds of poetry rather than as two kinds of literature.

    That they both be considered poetry seems to me simply more rational than 
    one's being considered poetry, the other something else.  In the former 
    case, one has verbal experession divided into prose and poetry, and the 
    poetry divided into formal and free verse (or, as my taxonomy has it, 
    "songmode" and "plaintext" poetry); in the latter, we must have three kinds 
    of verbal expression, one of which, free verse, is much much more similar to 
    one of the other two than it is to the other of the other two.  Or do you 
    think free verse is more or as much like prose than like formal poetry? 
    Even though it uses lineation and puts a premium on all the standard poetic 
    devices, and even generally favors rhythm, if not strict meter?

    As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.




  Mike, why don't you just add an adjective like 'traditional' or
  'formalist' to poetry and be content with that? Distinctions are good,
  and useful; but hard and fast demarcations with razor wire strung along
  the top of the fence are bad. 
  Bob, you surprise me, too...suggesting that poetry isn't powerful
  enuf to co-opt prose....poetry is a maw: Run away, run away, 
  it's eating its way through dictionaries, encyclopedia, grammars, 
  genres, and any other word prison you got.
  Finnegan 

  You shouldn't be surprised, James.  I've always argued that it is possible to distinguish one thing from another, like black from white, and I've never bowed to any authority.  Heck, I don't even trust the NY Times!

  --Bob G.  
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From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 14 21:39:36 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:39:36 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] momento mori
Message-ID: <54.399a0b9a.2ef0fde8@aol.com>

"What counts is not the quality of Derrida's arguments,
but that he has changed the standards of discourse."

--David Carrier, "Derrida as Philosopher," _The Aesthete
       in the City: The Philosophy and Practice of American Abstract      
       Painting In the 1980's_
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Dec 14 23:00:24 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 23:00:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
In-Reply-To: <03e001c4e240$11fcc8e0$2db831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEHMJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


{    As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.
{    
{    --Bob G. 

Just so (to borrow a Marcusian locution)--they're poems in prose.

Hal         "I think I think; therefore I think I am."
                                --Ambrose Bierce
Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



From cc at opus0.com  Wed Dec 15 01:41:06 2004
From: cc at opus0.com (Crisman Cooley)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 22:41:06 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] San Miguel, etc.
In-Reply-To: <200411221700.iAMH03Am010848@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHAEIIDBAA.cc@opus0.com>

Arrived in San Miguel de Allende few weeks ago and am settled now for a
while.  Working on a long poem (multum in multum) and list lurking.

Is anyone on the list currently in this part of MX?  CE?  Hal?  Others?  I
hear WD Snodgrass is a part time resident.  Poetry section in library is
about the same size as the whole Clive Cussler collection.





From cc at opus0.com  Wed Dec 15 03:20:21 2004
From: cc at opus0.com (Crisman Cooley)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:20:21 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: forwarding a mail (Re: Graves)
In-Reply-To: <200410212032.i9LKWJAm017430@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHIEIIDBAA.cc@opus0.com>

Anny,
Two books have influenced me tremendously in my life (past & recent) and
these correspond to what the structuralists called the expression plane and
content plane of language: 1. Silence, by John Cage and 2. The White
Goddess, by Robert Graves.  As a musician, Cage's use of chance plays on the
expression plane, where music lives.  One of the difficulties of the 'limit
cases' of 20C art-- such as Jarry's Ubu, Duchamp's Large Glass, Cage's
4'33", William's Paterson, Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, Beckett's Three Novels,
Stein's Making of the Americans (I don't think Ashbery belongs on the list
of limit cases), others-- is that they do not encourage (purposely perhaps)
further experimentation in the same direction.  (Duchamp said, 'I am not a
role model.')  Mac Low's use of chance on the content plane is another
example I can read, yes, but not carry on.  These are traditions to end all
traditions.  Art at the end of civilization.  Terribly interesting, but not
at all encouraging.  However, there are many ways to use chance techniques
and langpo-etics on the expression plane of language.  This leaves the
question unanswered, so far as I know, by Ron Silliman and language
poetics-- bless them and you Ron...I have been quite interested in your
blog-- that is: what to do on the content plane, at the end of civilization?
Shall we blabber meaninglessly under the shadow of doom?  (I'm not making
any predictions, by the way.  Just noting that we've thought the
unthinkable.)  What do we do now that we know that every speech act is
meaningless outside of the context of interpretation?    Enter Graves.  This
thesis is hastily sketched.  (Haha.)  What is hollow and meaningless is the
patriarchy.  The patriarchal institutions.  Those
political/religious/economic/military structures set up in the change from a
horticultural society to an agricultural one when men took control of the
institutions (and I agree with Ken Wilbur, that women necessarily went along
with the change and that men did not like having to stay home from the hunt
to plow the field).  What is no longer meaningful is the cultural
superstratum that lives on top of language, specifically those iconotropic
(Graves' word) reinterpretations of Goddess mythology to serve the new male
cultural dominance-- immortalized in Judaic and Christian texts.  The
suppression of the muse must have an impact on the production of texts she
inspires.  What's weird is that we don't have any written text from before
the patriarchal era.  (Do you know of one?  Maybe Sappho is outside its
influence?  But that's a tatters.)  If you start with Homer, patriarchal
institutions and glorification of war has already been going on for over
2,000 years.  So you have to look at the artifacts from 25,000 BCE to 3,000
BCE collected by archaeologists like Gimbutas (dead now)...or you have to
read between the lines of ancient texts, the way Graves does--well, did-- in
The White Goddess.  His methods are decried even in the introduction to his
work in the Norton Anthology.  But personally, I think Graves is doing
exactly the right thing, and a sorta revolutionary thing.  And Graves comes
right at a time in history when women can do the same heavy lifting as men
because information is practically weightless.  Graves says poetry has a
single Theme: 'Life and Death and what remains of the beloved'.  You have to
look at that several times before you can see it as a single theme.
Revivification of the Muse-- outside of the ways sanctioned today for her
worship (basically, slavering over ad copy)-- is an interesting approach to
ridding poetry of the effects of attempts by Puritan forebears and offspring
to rub her out of the world.  BTW, Mexico worships the Muse under guise of
Catholicism in Our Lady of Guadalupe.  There is no such worship in
Protestantism.  You have to go to Hooters.

Disagree with Malo's reading of Graves: '...poetry is often a trance, a
spontaneous pouring forth, an automatic writing if you will...'  Graves
specifically disdains automatic writing.  And nowhere advocates trance
states.  He does say that when the Gods ate ambrosia, they were eating
psilocybin mushrooms.

Enough, too much, for now.

Crisman


> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:32:08 +0200
> From: "Anny Ballardini" <anny.ballardini at tin.it>
> Subject: [New-Poetry]
>
> I find this mail sent by Mary Jo Malo to the Buffalo list quite
> interesting, :
>
> Poetry was originally both prophetic and eerie and has been elucidated as
> such by Robert Graves in his controversial tome, The White
> Goddess. The ancient
> Hebrew prophets and psalmists were poets in this tradition, and
> even Thomas
> Paine tried to explain this to a fledgling but Puritan America.
> Epic warrior and
> religious poetry in many cultures was often prophetic, and later
> converted to
> the romance cycle or perverted into secular law. I'm particularly
> prejudiced
> to Grave's work regarding the ancient oracle traditions, but I'm
> completely
> sympathetic with his recognition of the poet's (druid or
> whatever) indebtedness
> to a woman's dreams and intuition in their unconscious environment. In the
> finest Celtic tradition of the 'hywl', poetry is often a trance,
> a spontaneous
> pouring forth, an automatic writing if you will. Poets teach
> themselves and by
> extension anyone else who wants to know. Yes, we can craft and
> perfect, but the
> content is 'inspired' and most often reflects the poetic theme:
> life, death
> and what remains of the beloved. Poets make connections, and that they can
> transcend time shouldn't surprise us.
> ___________________________________________
>
> Anny Ballardini
> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to
> gather admirers.
> Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
>
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*****************************************



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 07:22:26 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:22:26 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] momento mori
References: <54.399a0b9a.2ef0fde8@aol.com>
Message-ID: <006b01c4e2a0$bd4b9b30$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What counts is not the quality of Derrida's arguments,
but that he has changed the standards of discourse."

--David Carrier, "Derrida as Philosopher," _The Aesthete
       in the City: The Philosophy and Practice of American Abstract      
       Painting In the 1980's_ 

But I thought sophistry was well-established in the Athens of Aristophanes--and no doubt existed many centuries before that.

--Bob G.
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 07:28:32 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:28:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEHMJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <007001c4e2a1$97a4f9c0$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


> {    As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.
> {
> {    --Bob G.
>
> Just so (to borrow a Marcusian locution)--they're poems in prose.
>
> Hal

Ah, like the thoughts of Marcuse are fallacies in verity.

--Bob G.  "If I am not, then what am?" 




From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec 15 07:51:41 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:51:41 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] San Miguel, etc.
In-Reply-To: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHAEIIDBAA.cc@opus0.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEIFJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

    
{    Arrived in San Miguel de Allende few weeks ago and am settled now for a
{    while.  Working on a long poem (multum in multum) and list lurking.
{    
{    Is anyone on the list currently in this part of MX?  CE?  Hal?  Others?  I
{    hear WD Snodgrass is a part time resident.  Poetry section in library is
{    about the same size as the whole Clive Cussler collection.

Have fun, Crisman. Lynda and I returned to NY back in August. 
Heard Snodgrass on Whitman there back in Feb. though. A bit
over-the-toppish, but maybe that was just me.

Hal              "The only way to do it is to do it."
                              --Merce Cunningham
Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/



From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Dec 15 07:57:23 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:57:23 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] ...builds up his chant in progressive stages
In-Reply-To: <007001c4e2a1$97a4f9c0$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEIEIFJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


{    > {    As for prose poems, I simply refuse to grant that they are not prose.
{    > {
{    > {    --Bob G.
{    >
{    > Just so (to borrow a Marcusian locution)--they're poems in prose.
{    >
{    > Hal
{    
{    Ah, like the thoughts of Marcuse are fallacies in verity.
{    
{    --Bob G.  "If I am not, then what am?" 

Good question there in the tag, Bob.

Btw, in my remark read "Marcusian" as in "MarcusBalesian."

Hal         You Are Not Authorized to View This Page

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/ 





From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Dec 15 08:31:17 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:31:17 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] momento mori
Message-ID: <7b.3a991d15.2ef196a5@aol.com>

Catherine Audard on her memories of Jacques Derrida
http://www.philosophersnet.com/magazine/article.php?id=828


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From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Dec 15 08:42:42 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:42:42 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] San Miguel, etc.
Message-ID: <1d5.31d09a94.2ef19952@aol.com>


> 
> {   Arrived in San Miguel de Allende few weeks ago and am settled now for a
> {   while.  Working on a long poem (multum in multum)

You dog. Here in New England poets have to write long poems 
just to stay warm. Either that or chop wood. 22"F this morning.
Finnegan
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 08:56:52 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:56:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <a9.68c74e0c.2ef0ea0c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost>

Michael Snider writes:
> >  I wrote at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of
> >  things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way
> >  around that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and
> >  prose poems had been understood to be something different from
> >  poetry. They're at least as different as judo and football.
 
> bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
>     Why this need to keep the magic word, "poetry," for your kind of
>     texts alone, Michael? As I see it, free verse is clearly
>     distinguished from formal verse. Why does it matter that both are
>     considered by most people as two kinds of poetry rather than as
>     two kinds of literature.<

Michael's view may be different from mine, but mine is that the 
reason to keep the magic word "poetry" for metered texts, and 
dispense with that word for unmetered texts is precisely that it is a 
magic word -- a magic word that the unmetered texts folk have been 
working hard to appropriate inappropriately. The real question is why 
do people who clearly do not write poetry want to claim they do? And 
the answer is because "poetry" is indeed a magic word -- and they 
want to claim some of that magic for themselves without having to do 
the practice at the prestidigitation of language that it takes to 
actually do the magic of poetry. 

The unmetered text folk want to be known as poets, not to write 
poems, and they cleverly realized a hundred years ago, as the Bush 
Administration has realized in politics now, that simple lying is all 
that's required. Just call it the Clean Air Act and who can vote 
against it? Just call it poetry and who will say it's not? Those are 
examples of the  same breath-takingly bold tactics.

The unmetered text folk don't write poetry, because poetry in our 
culture is written in meter, and what they do is not written in 
meter. But they've discovered that by bold politicking and constant 
repetition, they can take advantage of the great liberal idea of 
tolerance for divergent ideas. 

Even more outrageously, these folks are not content with having thus 
made their way into the discussion, they have demanded that their 
kind of writing is in fact the only thing that's really that magic 
word "poetry", and that all that metered stuff is tired and stale non-
poetry, mere jangly verse, duh dumb duh dumber dumbest.

But even more outrageously, now, here is a claim that it is those who 
advocate meter as the basis for poetry who are being unreasonable 
about the misappropriation of the magic word "poetry" by the 
unmetered text folks! 
 
> bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
>     That they both be considered poetry seems to me simply more
>     rational than one's being considered poetry, the other something
>     else.<

It's not more rational in the least. For thousands of years poetry 
has been distinguished from prose by meter, a very rational 
distinction in fact. 

Bob wants to say that he'll be "reasonable" and stop claiming that 
only unmetered text is poetry if Michael will be "reasonable" and 
accept that both metered and unmetered texts are poetry. But that's 
asking Michael, and me, and the entire tradition of poetry in 
English, to abandon the basic distinction in our literature between 
poetry and prose, a distinction that is based on meter. 

What Bob is trying to pull here is a "Clean Air Act" act: he wants to 
take advantage of the tendency to say that the truth must lie between 
any two advocated points of view. But that's simply not the case, as 
it is easy to show in thousands of cases -- for example, we used to 
have a policy of burning all witches, and the radical notion was to 
burn only some. Bob would say, with the Bush Administration, that the 
truth lies in the middle, that we should burn more than some, but not 
all. It's preposterous on the face of it, of course, but that's the  
kind of reasoning Bob and Bush employ. 

> bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
> In the former case, one has verbal experession divided into
>     prose and poetry, and the poetry divided into formal and free
>     verse (or, as my taxonomy has it, "songmode" and "plaintext"
>     poetry)<

Again with the "taxonomy". I've demonstrated a couple times the 
bogusness of Bob's entire endeavor with regard to this "taxonomy", 
and I won't bore you by repeating it all here. Suffice it to say that 
Bob is doing with scientific-sounding words such as "taxonomy" just 
what he is trying to do with the magic word of "poetry": 
misappropriate it for his own use. Bob writes the most egregious 
kinds of texts, substituting mathematical operands for English 
grammar and pretending that there's meaning in it. He has been forced 
to recognize over his career just how egregious this notion is, and 
his solution is his "taxonomy" by which he means to level all kinds 
of text-making into goofily neologically named categories in his 
pseudo-scientific "taxonomy" in order to argue that since in a real 
scientific taxonomy no category is privileged over another, and all 
must be treated with equal care and attention, his texts in their 
category must be treated with care and attention equal to any anyone 
else's poetry gets. It's clever, but it's fatally flawed by the fact 
that he is merely, again, misappropriating a word for his own ends.

On 14 Dec 2004 at 20:14, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> Mike, why don't you just add an adjective like 'traditional' or
> 'formalist' to poetry and be content with that?<

Unfortunately, this merely takes Bob's side in the dispute about 
whether to call his mathemaku "poetry". Bob's working hard to pretend 
to be reasonable with a political agenda in mind. I'm not sure 
whether JforJames is actually of the same view, or just trying to be 
a reasonable buffer in this dispute. But once again, it is simply not 
the case that in every dispute the middle is reasonable. In the 
dispute about whether to murder someone for failing to call you 
"Sir", or just beat them into quadraplegia, advocating just breaking 
their legs and letting it go at that is not the reasonable solution, 
however middling. 

Marcus





From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 09:06:08 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 09:06:08 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: forwarding a mail (Re: Graves)
In-Reply-To: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHIEIIDBAA.cc@opus0.com>
References: <200410212032.i9LKWJAm017430@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <41BFFE80.27600.62BAEF@localhost>

On 15 Dec 2004 at 0:20, Crisman Cooley wrote:
> ... Mac Low's use of chance on the content plane is another
> example I can read, yes, but not carry on.  These are traditions to
> end all traditions.  Art at the end of civilization. ...<

Very fine stuff after this on Graves, but what's this about the end 
of civilization? 

Marcus






From grahamd at ripon.edu  Wed Dec 15 10:11:56 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 09:11:56 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Petite poets in prose
In-Reply-To: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost>
Message-ID: <BDE5B05C.DC07%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/15/04 7:56 AM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote:

> The unmetered text folk don't write poetry, because poetry in our
> culture is written in meter, and what they do is not written in
> meter.


Glad we've got that cleared up, finally.

Personally, following the same logic, I am a little weary of this particular
debate.  Why?  Well, that's easy:  because I am tired of it.  But that's
just me.

About prose poetry I always think of a remark reported by a friend who was
visiting Ireland, and discovered somebody talking about "the little people"
as if they were real.  "You don't actually believe in leprechauns, do you?"
he asked.

"Of course not," was the reply.  After a pause: "But they're there!"

In that light, here's a poem-in-prose that I enjoyed, by one of my favorite
unmetrical Irish-American poets.  The whole book from which this comes is
available at Wendy Battin's lovely CAPA site:

http://capa.conncoll.edu/fell.persistence.html


The Practice

We lived on Winter Street. Bricks escaped from factory walls, distraught.
Ours was a building with too many corners. Families got lost and were never
heard from again, small names gathering dust or pinned to the wallpaper like
religious medals, their blue ribbons fading.

Every step shook plaster from the ceilings. We carried it into the street on
our shoulders. Whole rooms blew away by morning. Old aunts went on shopping
trips and never returned. Dishes vanished as we ate breakfast. My own mother
disappeared one day into her bedclothes, thinking she was better off.

All my life it's been like this. I tell you, there's no sense believing what
you see. I learned early to practice not being fooled.

--Mary Fell.  *The Persistence of Memory*.  Random House, 1984.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 10:28:01 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:28:01 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Petite poets in prose
In-Reply-To: <BDE5B05C.DC07%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost>
Message-ID: <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>

On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:11, David Graham wrote:
> About prose poetry I always think of a remark reported by a friend who
> was visiting Ireland, and discovered somebody talking about "the
> little people" as if they were real.  "You don't actually believe in
> leprechauns, do you?" he asked.
> "Of course not," was the reply.  After a pause: "But they're there!"

This reminds me of Lincoln's question: "How many legs does a dog have 
if you call a tail a leg? Four -- calling a tail a leg doesn't make 
it one."

The "logic" that prose poems exist because there's a name for them is 
like the "logic" that the Christian God exists because there's a name 
for Him. It's hooey in either case. 

On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:11, David Graham wrote:
> The Practice
> --Mary Fell.  *The Persistence of Memory*.  Random House, 1984.
> 
> We lived on Winter Street. Bricks escaped from factory walls,
> distraught. Ours was a building with too many corners. Families got
> lost and were never heard from again, small names gathering dust or
> pinned to the wallpaper like religious medals, their blue ribbons
> fading.
> 
> Every step shook plaster from the ceilings. We carried it into the
> street on our shoulders. Whole rooms blew away by morning. Old aunts
> went on shopping trips and never returned. Dishes vanished as we ate
> breakfast. My own mother disappeared one day into her bedclothes,
> thinking she was better off.
> 
> All my life it's been like this. I tell you, there's no sense
> believing what you see. I learned early to practice not being fooled.

What makes this a poem? What, for that matter, makes it prose? The 
way it came lineated in email and the way it relineates in this reply 
are different -- and I imagine both are different from the way it's 
printed in the book, and perhaps even from the way you typed it in. 
What's the justifying theory for prose poems, anyway? Is it just an 
attempt to lie to the reader, to say "This is just a prose paragraph 
or two, nothing fancy, nothing arcane, nothing demanding, certainly 
nothing as high-falutin as poetry!"? 

Marcus






From grahamd at ripon.edu  Wed Dec 15 10:44:42 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 09:44:42 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:Petite poets in prose
In-Reply-To: <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>
Message-ID: <BDE5B80A.DC0F%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/15/04 9:28 AM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote:

> What's the justifying theory for prose poems, anyway? Is it just an
> attempt to lie to the reader, to say "This is just a prose paragraph
> or two, nothing fancy, nothing arcane, nothing demanding, certainly
> nothing as high-falutin as poetry!"?
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 


Hey, that works for me.  One small erratum, though: for "lie" please read
"entertain" throughout.

You'll get no more argument from this arguer, at least for now.  Fell's
piece is an interesting piece of writing I wanted to share, which happens to
be (a) written in prose, and (b) published within a book of lined poems and
called a poem by the writer.

The point being, in case anyone needs to be clubbed with it, that
leprechauns don't need to exist in order to be entertaining.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From Kent.Johnson at highland.edu  Wed Dec 15 13:31:30 2004
From: Kent.Johnson at highland.edu (Kent Johnson)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 12:31:30 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
Message-ID: <s1c02ebb.032@mail.highland.edu>

Mike said,

>Kent, there ain't no gods to whisper and there ain't no metaphysical 
status for any scansion. Iambs and trochees and the rest of the 
menagerie only exist as they're defined by human use -- that's why a 
Greek dactyl is not an English dactyl -- but, within the realm, or game

if you prefer, in which people do use them, they're easily 
distinguishable from each other in all but a very few cases -- not 
unlike living things. Deliberately or lazily confusing them makes a 
hash of a rich and still vital tradition. That's your  loss, not mine,

and I'm working as hard as I know how to keep that pernicious confusion

from robbing still more people of access to that  tradition.
***

Mike, there's considerable confusion in your comments above on my
stance, no doubt partly brought about by my somewhat eye-rolling
jousting with Marcus's tirades about the Evil Empire of Free Verse, from
Leaves of Grass to Girls on the Run-- and Marcus's repeated, weird
insistence that I had said one could never tell an iamb from a dactyl. 

Like David Graham, I've grown sleepy with this nonsense too (though
Marcus's last post, definitively defining the magic of Poetry for all of
us, was quite an eye-opener)... So just one more time, quickly,
repeating myself, for the most part, though slightly less fancifully
this time, and then that will be all. And I do wish everyone a nice
holiday:

1) I have nothing at all against traditional forms, and I enjoy fooling
around with scansion as much as anyone. And I like to compose in them,
here and there, too: My last book, The Miseries of Poetry, with
Alexandra Papaditsas, has a rather lovely, if strange, prefatory
fragment, written in two quatrains of rhyming and faultless iambic
tetrameter--and a number of the Traductions in the book are actually in
classical meters.

2) But accentual syllabic meter and rhyme is only one
dimension/manifestation (isn't this obvious?) of the formal
possibilities available to poetry.  

3) And as I said, and as you yourself agree, it is an entirely
artificial system--and one that, save the ideological insistences of its
true believers, has no convincing claim to superiority over any other. 

4) As I also said --and even though, yes, you can scan a dactyl and
tell it apart from the spondee that apparently preceeds it, for
example-- the "existence" of these feet is suspect, inasmuch as
acephalous openings, anacrusis, catalexis, etc. can always be applied to
the scansion of a line (as they very often are, particularly when the
line is at all syncopated and resistant to the reading the prosodist
wishes to impose): A hexameter of trochees not only bears no real
rhythmic difference from a string of iambs (falling rhythm is a
projection once you have more than a few syllables underway), it is also
(that hexameter of trochees), *in its "reality," just as much a line of
iambs with an acephalous foot (lots of those in the tradition!), or even
a sequence of amphibrachs and amphimacers. With tri-syllabic patterning,
the possibility of various readings becomes even greater. The very
"rules" and formal constituents of meter allow one to do pretty much
anything one wants in analysis. And let's not even talk about rhetorical
stress and its vagaries... So, yes, you can mark the line, and you can
say, aha! a pyrrhic! an anapest!, but in the end the whole point becomes
rather fuzzy and decidedly unscientific, despite the epistemological
claims made by some, including on this list. 

So bully for sonnets, sapphics, and all the rest, I say. And good on
you and Marcus, too, for "keeping the tradition alive." But a long,
luscious, ravishing line of Whitman or Hopkins is still long and
luscious and ravishing, no matter what "feet" you or I may "see" in
there. Thank goodness for that. Because that's where the metaphysics
*really* starts to come in...

Kent





From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Wed Dec 15 07:32:22 2004
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:32:22 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] momento mori
In-Reply-To: <7b.3a991d15.2ef196a5@aol.com>
Message-ID: <BDE58AF6.7B75%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>

On 12/15/04 7:31 AM, "JforJames at aol.com" <JforJames at aol.com> wrote:

> Catherine Audard on her memories of Jacques Derrida
> http://www.philosophersnet.com/magazine/article.php?id=828
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 

Another?s  memories of J. D. (for those who?ve never seen the piece).

Paul Lake
*
                       Critics and Cannibals
 

    Jeffrey Dahmer meets Jacques Derrida over a dining room table and they
laugh over the coincidence that they share the same initials: J.D.  Jacques
is tied down and gagged but manages to chortle through the rag stuffed into
his mouth.  Jeffrey is sharpening a knife and eyeing Jacques's naked belly.

    "The thing is," says Jeffrey, "we must realize that a man is nothing
more than a bag of organs and bodily fluids: heart, lung, brain, spleen;
blood, lymph, urine, bile. Our first task is to abolish the notion that it
existed before this particular moment or to anyone other than me.

    "We start here, then: A body on a table.  Whatever the thing believes
itself to be--brother, lover, father, son--is not to our purpose. There is
only skin and blood, a pump at the center, a bellows of air, a labyrinth of
excremental tunnels: a set of things we can disassemble and manipulate at
our pleasure.  Above all, we must ignore such special pleading as when,
under critical analysis, it appears to say such things as stop doing this
let me go whatever you do please please don't hurt me.

    "These seemingly significant expressions, when looked at closely, reduce
to arrangements of sound--mere language, if you will, produced by air forced
across strands of flesh and up the windpipe then given shape in the cavern
of the mouth.  I have deconstructed both the larynx and the brain and
examined them in some detail and I assure you that neither is capable of
transmitting anything like intention or meaning.

    "You know this, of course, and have wasted no effort in trying to
deflect me from my purpose, which, since you haven't already guessed, is to
cut out your liver and eat it before your eyes.

    "I will perform the operation with this kitchen knife, without benefit
of anesthetic, and your reactions should provide some novel pleasures
indeed.  If you are still conscious after I extract your liver, like a
floppy stillborn puppy from your side, I will chew it lovingly, savoring its
many juices.  Raw liver is a slippery sloppy thing, red and pungent with
bitter bile, a swallow of oyster.

    "But look at you: you already disappoint me.  As if a word or trope
could make one pale.  I expected more: an amusing pun, perhaps; a bit of
French drollery. For instance, a boring middle-aged man once told me that he

expected a long life, as he was from a family of long-livers; yet upon
cutting him open and examining the organ in question, I found it to be of no
more than average size.

     "Language is full of such pun-gent ironies, such nouvelle pleasures,
no?--a phrase you might have noted earlier had you not been so frantically
straining against your bonds.

    "In any case, after you are stiff and cold, a corrupted corpus, I will
anal-yze you further as I diddle your Derridean derriere.  Then, after
hacking you to pieces, I'll arrange your parts in ways hitherto unimagined:
a plate on a dish; a kidney under a pillow; an arm wrapped and frozen beside
a tin of summer strawberries.

    "Art lies in subtle differences such as these.

    "A month or two from now, your friends will say, `He was a man of many
parts . . . with such an ear for language . . . and yet I see he lacked a
certain presence . . . .'

    "How fortunate that they can't see you now, sweating and straining
against your ropes, as if you took me at my word, or had formed an image of
me from reading the papers.
     "We must guard against such logocentric views.  If not, mon frere, I'll
have many bones to pick with you over dinner."
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From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec 15 15:38:39 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 15:38:39 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
In-Reply-To: <s1c02ebb.032@mail.highland.edu>
References: <s1c02ebb.032@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <1677843.1103143119600.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

Kent, thanks for this. Your clarity here lets me try to say more clearly where our differences lie.
 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 02:24PM, Kent Johnson <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu> wrote:

>Mike said,
>
>>Kent, there ain't no gods to whisper and there ain't no metaphysical 
>status for any scansion. Iambs and trochees and the rest of the 
>menagerie only exist as they're defined by human use -- that's why a 
>Greek dactyl is not an English dactyl -- but, within the realm, or game
>
>if you prefer, in which people do use them, they're easily 
>distinguishable from each other in all but a very few cases -- not 
>unlike living things. Deliberately or lazily confusing them makes a 
>hash of a rich and still vital tradition. That's your  loss, not mine,
>
>and I'm working as hard as I know how to keep that pernicious confusion
>
>from robbing still more people of access to that  tradition.
>***
>
>Mike, there's considerable confusion in your comments above on my
>stance, no doubt partly brought about by my somewhat eye-rolling
>jousting with Marcus's tirades about the Evil Empire of Free Verse, from
>Leaves of Grass to Girls on the Run-- and Marcus's repeated, weird
>insistence that I had said one could never tell an iamb from a dactyl. 
>
>Like David Graham, I've grown sleepy with this nonsense too (though
>Marcus's last post, definitively defining the magic of Poetry for all of
>us, was quite an eye-opener)... So just one more time, quickly,
>repeating myself, for the most part, though slightly less fancifully
>this time, and then that will be all. And I do wish everyone a nice
>holiday:
>
>1) I have nothing at all against traditional forms, and I enjoy fooling
>around with scansion as much as anyone. And I like to compose in them,
>here and there, too: My last book, The Miseries of Poetry, with
>Alexandra Papaditsas, has a rather lovely, if strange, prefatory
>fragment, written in two quatrains of rhyming and faultless iambic
>tetrameter--and a number of the Traductions in the book are actually in
>classical meters.
>
>2) But accentual syllabic meter and rhyme is only one
>dimension/manifestation (isn't this obvious?) of the formal
>possibilities available to poetry.  
>
>3) And as I said, and as you yourself agree, it is an entirely
>artificial system--and one that, save the ideological insistences of its
>true believers, has no convincing claim to superiority over any other. 

Here we begin to disagree. Any particular meter is clearly artifice -- and just as clearly, the kind of artifice human beings naturally produce. Every culture recognizes and produces poetry -- a specialized class of utterance with more or less rigid rules for its rhythmic structure, related to but often separate from song. Saying that English accentual-syllabic meters are entirely artificial is almost like saying that using "d" to mark the past tense in regular verbs is entirely artificial -- it could have been any number of other things but that's the one we use to mark something built into our brains. In the same way, there are clearly many formal systems we could have used to mark an utterance as poetry, but from Middle-English on modern acccentual-syllabic meters have been the usual choice in our language. For almost everyone outside of university English classes, they still are. 

And I think it has a very convincing claim to superiority -- from their first use, they allowed poets in our language to produce a body of poetry which nothing else in English has come close to matching. It's not a matter of the length of time during which poets explored the tradition -- it's obvious from the very first.



>
>4) As I also said --and even though, yes, you can scan a dactyl and
>tell it apart from the spondee that apparently preceeds it, for
>example-- the "existence" of these feet is suspect, inasmuch as
>acephalous openings, anacrusis, catalexis, etc. can always be applied to
>the scansion of a line (as they very often are, particularly when the
>line is at all syncopated and resistant to the reading the prosodist
>wishes to impose): A hexameter of trochees not only bears no real
>rhythmic difference from a string of iambs (falling rhythm is a
>projection once you have more than a few syllables underway), it is also
>(that hexameter of trochees), *in its "reality," just as much a line of
>iambs with an acephalous foot (lots of those in the tradition!), or even
>a sequence of amphibrachs and amphimacers. With tri-syllabic patterning,
>the possibility of various readings becomes even greater. The very
>"rules" and formal constituents of meter allow one to do pretty much
>anything one wants in analysis. And let's not even talk about rhetorical
>stress and its vagaries... So, yes, you can mark the line, and you can
>say, aha! a pyrrhic! an anapest!, but in the end the whole point becomes
>rather fuzzy and decidedly unscientific, despite the epistemological
>claims made by some, including on this list. 


As long you confine your attention to single feet or arbitrary stretches of syllables excised from a line, it's possible to generate this kind of confusion. But poets don't compose in feet. They compose in lines, which in the accentual -syllabic tradition are defined by meter. An initial trochee or a feminine ending or an occasional anapest do not affect the meter of a line of iambic pentameter, and it is simply not true that "A hexameter of trochees not only bears no real 
rhythmic difference from a string of iambs (falling rhythm is a 
projection once you have more than a few syllables underway), it is also 
(that hexameter of trochees), *in its "reality," just as much a line of 
iambs with an acephalous foot." A trochaic _line_ is easily distinguishable from an iambic _line_, despite the fact that any variable-length sample from the interior of a line may consists merely of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.

>
>So bully for sonnets, sapphics, and all the rest, I say. And good on
>you and Marcus, too, for "keeping the tradition alive." But a long,
>luscious, ravishing line of Whitman or Hopkins is still long and
>luscious and ravishing, no matter what "feet" you or I may "see" in
>there. Thank goodness for that. Because that's where the metaphysics
>*really* starts to come in...
>

There are no more feet in most of Whitman or Hopkins than there are in Cormac McCarthy. And neither Whitman nor Hopkins, as fine a poet as they both sometimes were, has any successors who have come close to their acheivement. It seems to me Marcus is write to ask a tradition to be judged by its fruits. Despite the occasional plum, when compared to the accentual-syllabic tradition in English free verse (and Hopkins' sprung rhythm) is a barren tree. No metaphysics necessary.


Best,

Michael
-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec 15 15:48:58 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 15:48:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Petite poets in prose
In-Reply-To: <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>
References: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost> <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>
Message-ID: <3078677.1103143738281.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 10:29AM, Marcus Bales <marcus at designerglass.com> wrote:

>On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:11, David Graham wrote:
>> About prose poetry I always think of a remark reported by a friend who
>> was visiting Ireland, and discovered somebody talking about "the
>> little people" as if they were real.  "You don't actually believe in
>> leprechauns, do you?" he asked.
>> "Of course not," was the reply.  After a pause: "But they're there!"
>
>This reminds me of Lincoln's question: "How many legs does a dog have 
>if you call a tail a leg? Four -- calling a tail a leg doesn't make 
>it one."
>
>The "logic" that prose poems exist because there's a name for them is 
>like the "logic" that the Christian God exists because there's a name 
>for Him. It's hooey in either case. 
>
>On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:11, David Graham wrote:
>> The Practice
>> --Mary Fell.  *The Persistence of Memory*.  Random House, 1984.
>> 
>> We lived on Winter Street. Bricks escaped from factory walls,
>> distraught. Ours was a building with too many corners. Families got
>> lost and were never heard from again, small names gathering dust or
>> pinned to the wallpaper like religious medals, their blue ribbons
>> fading.
>> 
>> Every step shook plaster from the ceilings. We carried it into the
>> street on our shoulders. Whole rooms blew away by morning. Old aunts
>> went on shopping trips and never returned. Dishes vanished as we ate
>> breakfast. My own mother disappeared one day into her bedclothes,
>> thinking she was better off.
>> 
>> All my life it's been like this. I tell you, there's no sense
>> believing what you see. I learned early to practice not being fooled.
>
>What makes this a poem? What, for that matter, makes it prose? The 
>way it came lineated in email and the way it relineates in this reply 
>are different -- and I imagine both are different from the way it's 
>printed in the book, and perhaps even from the way you typed it in. 
>What's the justifying theory for prose poems, anyway? Is it just an 
>attempt to lie to the reader, to say "This is just a prose paragraph 
>or two, nothing fancy, nothing arcane, nothing demanding, certainly 
>nothing as high-falutin as poetry!"? 
>
>Marcus
>
>
That's almost exactly what James Tate said of his own prose poems:

"The prose poem has its own means of seduction. For one thing, the deceptively simple packaging: the paragraph. People generally do not run for cover when they are confronted with a paragraph or two. The paragraph says to them: I won't take much of your time, and, if you don't mind my saying so, I am not known to be arcane, obtuse, precious, or high-fallutin'. Come on in." 

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 15:52:50 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 15:52:50 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] San Miguel, etc.
References: <1d5.31d09a94.2ef19952@aol.com>
Message-ID: <016c01c4e2e8$0abbdaf0$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


{   Arrived in San Miguel de Allende few weeks ago and am settled now for a
{   while.  Working on a long poem (multum in multum)


  You dog. Here in New England poets have to write long poems 
  just to stay warm. Either that or chop wood. 22"F this morning.
  Finnegan 
  Florida's not much better: 34 degrees F this morning, and windy.  Better than summer heat, though.

  --Bob G.


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From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec 15 16:01:28 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:01:28 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Petite poets in prose
In-Reply-To: <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>
References: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost> <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>
Message-ID: <7526046.1103144488630.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 10:29AM, Marcus Bales <marcus at designerglass.com> wrote:

>On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:11, David Graham wrote:
>> About prose poetry I always think of a remark reported by a friend who
>> was visiting Ireland, and discovered somebody talking about "the
>> little people" as if they were real.  "You don't actually believe in
>> leprechauns, do you?" he asked.
>> "Of course not," was the reply.  After a pause: "But they're there!"
>
>This reminds me of Lincoln's question: "How many legs does a dog have 
>if you call a tail a leg? Four -- calling a tail a leg doesn't make 
>it one."
>
>The "logic" that prose poems exist because there's a name for them is 
>like the "logic" that the Christian God exists because there's a name 
>for Him. It's hooey in either case. 

Well, it's not quite like that.  When one person calls that tail a leg, it means nothing. But if there comes a time when a large proportion of the population calls it a leg, then "leg" it is -- but "leg" no longer means what it once did and the culture has lost a usful distinction until people start using another noise for the thing that used to be  "leg." Still, unlike gods, you can point to examples of the class of things you mean when you make that noise. And you can point to prose poems. Not that I like it much, and it _is_ a source of confusion.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 16:19:13 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:19:13 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost>
Message-ID: <017501c4e2eb$ba7d43e0$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> The unmetered text folk want to be known as poets,

It's far worse than that, Marcus.  I argue against friends who make works 
with text but not words and call it poetry.  I claim it is not.



> The unmetered text folk don't write poetry

What do they write, Marcus, as I asked once before and got no answer.  And 
what, by the way, are the Psalms?

snip

> But even more outrageously, now, here is a claim that it is those who
> advocate meter as the basis for poetry who are being unreasonable
> about the misappropriation of the magic word "poetry" by the
> unmetered text folks!

That's right, Marcus, and I say WHY they are being unreasonable.  I say free 
verse in a great deal more like poetry than it is like prose, so should be 
called poetry.  I also say that lineation is more likely the main historical 
basis of poetry than meter.

>> bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
>>     That they both be considered poetry seems to me simply more
>>     rational than one's being considered poetry, the other something
>>     else.<
>
> It's not more rational in the least. For thousands of years poetry
> has been distinguished from prose by meter, a very rational
> distinction in fact.

No, it hasn't been.  Meter was a main ingredient of what was known as 
poetry, but not the only one.  Free verse was unknown.  Once it became know, 
it was natural to try to decide which it should be called, prose or poetry. 
The latter was chosen because it made sense.  Free verse did everything 
regualr verse did except adhere to a metrical scheme.  It did pretty much 
nothing that prose did except use words.

For centuries painters made representational paintings.  Should calling 
impressionistic works in oil painting have been banned?

> Bob wants to say that he'll be "reasonable" and stop claiming that
> only unmetered text is poetry

I have NEVER claimed that only unmetered text is poetry.

SNIP of ridiculous characterization of my thinking.

>> bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
>> In the former case, one has verbal experession divided into
>>     prose and poetry, and the poetry divided into formal and free
>>     verse (or, as my taxonomy has it, "songmode" and "plaintext"
>>     poetry)<
>
> Again with the "taxonomy". I've demonstrated a couple times the
> bogusness of Bob's entire endeavor with regard to this "taxonomy",
> and I won't bore you by repeating it all here. Suffice it to say that
> Bob is doing with scientific-sounding words such as "taxonomy" just
> what he is trying to do with the magic word of "poetry":
> misappropriate it for his own use. Bob writes the most egregious
> kinds of texts, substituting mathematical operands for English
> grammar and pretending that there's meaning in it

Please provide some substantiation for your claim that I "pretend" rather 
than "believe" there's meaning in it.  (Why is it that Philistines almost 
always think those doing Art they can't understand are con men rather than 
merely sincere but mistaken?)

> He has been forced
> to recognize over his career just how egregious this notion is, and
> his solution is his "taxonomy" by which he means to level all kinds
> of text-making into goofily neologically named categories in his
> pseudo-scientific "taxonomy" in order to argue that since in a real
> scientific taxonomy no category is privileged over another, and all
> must be treated with equal care and attention, his texts in their
> category must be treated with care and attention equal to any anyone
> else's poetry gets. It's clever, but it's fatally flawed by the fact
> that he is merely, again, misappropriating a word for his own ends.



> On 14 Dec 2004 at 20:14, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
>> Mike, why don't you just add an adjective like 'traditional' or
>> 'formalist' to poetry and be content with that?<
>
> Unfortunately, this merely takes Bob's side in the dispute about
> whether to call his mathemaku "poetry". Bob's working hard to pretend
> to be reasonable with a political agenda in mind. I'm not sure
> whether JforJames is actually of the same view, or just trying to be
> a reasonable buffer in this dispute. But once again, it is simply not
> the case that in every dispute the middle is reasonable. In the
> dispute about whether to murder someone for failing to call you
> "Sir", or just beat them into quadraplegia, advocating just breaking
> their legs and letting it go at that is not the reasonable solution,
> however middling.

Beating them into quadraplegia would be the middling solution.

--Bob G.




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 16:24:22 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:24:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Petite poets in prose
References: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost> <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>
Message-ID: <018701c4e2ec$727d9ad0$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> What makes this a poem? What, for that matter, makes it prose? The
> way it came lineated in email and the way it relineates in this reply
> are different -- and I imagine both are different from the way it's
> printed in the book, and perhaps even from the way you typed it in.
> What's the justifying theory for prose poems, anyway? Is it just an
> attempt to lie to the reader, to say "This is just a prose paragraph
> or two, nothing fancy, nothing arcane, nothing demanding, certainly
> nothing as high-falutin as poetry!"?
>
> Marcus

You'll be happy to know that I call it "evocature," not poetry but a form of 
prose like the essay.

--Bob G. 




From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec 15 16:39:34 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:39:34 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost>
References: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost>
Message-ID: <10757194.1103146774821.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 08:58AM, Marcus Bales <marcus at designerglass.com> wrote:

>Michael Snider writes:
>> >  I wrote at my blog last week that poetry is just the collection of
>> >  things people have agreed to call poems, and I don't see a way
>> >  around that. But I could wish -- I do wish -- that free verse and
>> >  prose poems had been understood to be something different from
>> >  poetry. They're at least as different as judo and football.
> 
>> bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
>>     Why this need to keep the magic word, "poetry," for your kind of
>>     texts alone, Michael? As I see it, free verse is clearly
>>     distinguished from formal verse. Why does it matter that both are
>>     considered by most people as two kinds of poetry rather than as
>>     two kinds of literature.<
>
>Michael's view may be different from mine

Only in that I think it's too late to complain about non-metrical things being called "poetry," and that the real problem isn't the existence but the dominance of free verse. I also don't think the free verse camp is as cynical as you seem to think -- it is a lot easier to write apparently competent free verse than it is to write apparently competent metrical verse, but I don't think folks say to themselves "this is too hard: I'll write free verse instead." It's easy to attribute that difficulty not to a lack of work but rather to the commonly accepted (but still pernicious) notion that metrical verse is somehow "old-fashioned," inappropriate for current cultural conditions. 

The irony is that it's proven very much more difficult, to the point of near-impossibility (I think Whitman is the one that proves -- "tests" -- the rule), to write free verse as good as the best metrical verse.

Michael


-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec 15 17:02:35 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 17:02:35 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
In-Reply-To: <1677843.1103143119600.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
References: <s1c02ebb.032@mail.highland.edu>
	<1677843.1103143119600.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <9573775.1103148155566.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

Sorry for replying to myself --
 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 03:40PM, Mike Snider <mandolin at mac.com> wrote:
>
>As long you confine your attention to single feet or arbitrary stretches of syllables excised from a line, it's possible to generate this kind of confusion. But poets don't compose in feet. They compose in lines, which in the accentual -syllabic tradition are defined by meter. An initial trochee or a feminine ending or an occasional anapest do not affect the meter of a line of iambic pentameter, and it is simply not true that "A hexameter of trochees not only bears no real 
>rhythmic difference from a string of iambs (falling rhythm is a 
>projection once you have more than a few syllables underway), it is also 
>(that hexameter of trochees), *in its "reality," just as much a line of 
>iambs with an acephalous foot." A trochaic _line_ is easily distinguishable from an iambic _line_, despite the fact that any variable-length sample from the interior of a line may consists merely of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.
>

The above isn't quite right -- poets must have a sense of the poem as whole n mind when they write the lines, and in the context of an IP poem even a line which is both acephalous and feminine is still iambic and will feel iambic -- just don't do it often. The obverse is true in a trochaic poem.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From grahamd at ripon.edu  Wed Dec 15 17:06:45 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:06:45 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <10757194.1103146774821.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <BDE61195.DD86%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/15/04 3:39 PM, Mike Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:

> The irony is that it's proven very much more difficult, to the point of
> near-impossibility (I think Whitman is the one that proves -- "tests" -- the
> rule), to write free verse as good as the best metrical verse.
> 
> Michael

No one will catch me putting down metrical verse or dismissing conventional
forms as moribund.  Still, "near-impossibility"?  Can you possibly be
serious?

I find it bafflin' odd that anyone with decent ears can't *hear* the many
wonderful poems written in the Whitman tradition--or, hearing them, won't
agree that much of it *is* really as good as metrical stuff.  Different,
yes, but still excellent as verse.

A short list off the top of my head might begin with Roethke's "North
American Sequence" and Denise Levertov's *O Taste & See*, then perhaps Gary
Snyder's *Riprap*, Robert Duncan's *The Opening of the Field*, and Gerald
Stern's "Lucky Life."  Tip of a rather big iceberg. . . .

  

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 17:09:34 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 17:09:34 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:Petite poets in prose
In-Reply-To: <BDE5B80A.DC0F%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <41C011B1.15669.ADB18A@localhost>
Message-ID: <41C06FCE.16408.461DDF@localhost>

On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:44, David Graham wrote:
> The point being, in case anyone needs to be clubbed with it, that
> leprechauns don't need to exist in order to be entertaining.

Nor gods, but there does come a time when as the believing child dies 
of inoperable lymphoma and the believing earthly father prays in 
agonized bewilderment to the heavenly father, when you have to wonder 
just who is being entertained.

Marcus





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 17:35:38 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 17:35:38 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <41BFFC54.25720.5A3E66@localhost>
	<10757194.1103146774821.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <01e501c4e2f6$677e2910$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> The irony is that it's proven very much more difficult, to the point of 
> near-impossibility (I think Whitman is the one that proves -- "tests" --  
> the rule), to write free verse as good as the best metrical verse.
>
> Michael

All I can say to that is, "nonsense."  First off, there are poetic messages 
to be made that can't be made using meter: minimalist poems.  Some of them 
certainly as able to hit the heights for those able to appreciate them as 
the best metrical verse.  There's also the fact that a poet may not want a 
meter to distract from some other poetic device he's using--the way a 
photographer may deliberately eschew color.  Very complex subject.  It's 
mostly that each kind of poetry can do important things the other can't.

I would add that each is both too easy and too hard.  Once you have the 
knack, it's easy to do meter and rhyming--although good rhyming is almost 
impossible because all the effective rhymes have been done to death.  And 
free verse is easy--until you understand lineation, and also when you find 
out what it's like being in deep water with no rhyme or meter to guide you, 
or make up for any missing poetry.

--Bob G., in a kind of pre-Christmas daze which I suspect is showing. 




From grahamd at vbe.com  Wed Dec 15 18:02:21 2004
From: grahamd at vbe.com (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 17:02:21 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Petite poets in prose
In-Reply-To: <41C06FCE.16408.461DDF@localhost>
Message-ID: <BDE61E9D.3A7C%grahamd@vbe.com>

on 12/15/04 4:09 PM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote:

> On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:44, David Graham wrote:
>> The point being, in case anyone needs to be clubbed with it, that
>> leprechauns don't need to exist in order to be entertaining.
> 
> Nor gods, but there does come a time when as the believing child dies
> of inoperable lymphoma and the believing earthly father prays in
> agonized bewilderment to the heavenly father, when you have to wonder
> just who is being entertained.
> 
> Marcus


Wow.  


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at vbe.com
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================



From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec 15 18:13:01 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 18:13:01 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <149.3aeb3eb4.2ef21efd@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/15/2004 4:07:48 PM Central Standard Time, 
grahamd at ripon.edu writes: 
> 
> I find it bafflin' odd that anyone with decent ears can't *hear* the many
> wonderful poems written in the Whitman tradition--or, hearing them, won't
> agree that much of it *is* really as good as metrical stuff.  Different,
> yes, but still excellent as verse.

I agree, David.  A foolish consistency is . . . well, we all know what it is. 
 I don't have to put WW on some kind of Procrustean bed to get pleasure from 
his poetry.  For my money, no American poet has ever written anything as 
wonderful (and which I enjoy reading out loud) as section 6 of Song of Myself.
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From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec 15 18:18:47 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 18:18:47 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <BDE61195.DD86%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <BDE61195.DD86%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <AC0EE71C-4EEF-11D9-84B2-000393C29586@mac.com>


On Dec 15, 2004, at 5:06 PM, David Graham wrote:

> on 12/15/04 3:39 PM, Mike Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:
>
>> The irony is that it's proven very much more difficult, to the point 
>> of
>> near-impossibility (I think Whitman is the one that proves -- "tests" 
>> -- the
>> rule), to write free verse as good as the best metrical verse.
>>
>> Michael
>
> No one will catch me putting down metrical verse or dismissing 
> conventional
> forms as moribund.  Still, "near-impossibility"?  Can you possibly be
> serious?
>
> I find it bafflin' odd that anyone with decent ears can't *hear* the 
> many
> wonderful poems written in the Whitman tradition--or, hearing them, 
> won't
> agree that much of it *is* really as good as metrical stuff.  
> Different,
> yes, but still excellent as verse.
>
> A short list off the top of my head might begin with Roethke's "North
> American Sequence" and Denise Levertov's *O Taste & See*, then perhaps 
> Gary
> Snyder's *Riprap*, Robert Duncan's *The Opening of the Field*, and 
> Gerald
> Stern's "Lucky Life."  Tip of a rather big iceberg. . . .
>
>


Wonderful poems and poets all, David -- but can you seriously say any 
of  them are justly comparable to the best poetry in the metrical 
tradition? Froma Chaucer to Wyatt to Sidney to Donne to Dryden, Pope, 
Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Tennyson, Yeats, Frost? Leaving out 
Will entirely. And among the still-living, Richard Wilbur.



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 18:28:16 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 18:28:16 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Petite poets in prose
References: <BDE61E9D.3A7C%grahamd@vbe.com>
Message-ID: <022b01c4e2fd$c1edb1c0$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>



> on 12/15/04 4:09 PM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote:
> 
>> On 15 Dec 2004 at 9:44, David Graham wrote:
>>> The point being, in case anyone needs to be clubbed with it, that
>>> leprechauns don't need to exist in order to be entertaining.
>> 
>> Nor gods, but there does come a time when as the believing child dies
>> of inoperable lymphoma and the believing earthly father prays in
>> agonized bewilderment to the heavenly father, when you have to wonder
>> just who is being entertained.
>> 
>> Marcus

Me!  Me!

--Barbaric Bob



From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Wed Dec 15 18:34:18 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:34:18 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
References: <s1c02ebb.032@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <050301c4e2fe$9a655800$fd9c9951@Robin>

From: "Kent Johnson" <Kent.Johnson at highland.edu>

> 2) But accentual syllabic meter and rhyme is only one
> dimension/manifestation (isn't this obvious?) of the formal
> possibilities available to poetry.

        For once, I agree with Kent ...

There are {at least} count them -- *five* metrical +systems+ available to an
English-Language writer:

    1) Stress
    2) Syllable Accent
    3) Qualitative
    4) Free Verse
    5) Dipodic

                    <why do especially Americans bleach-out the Dipodic?>

... WITHIN syllable-accent metrics, there are four +metres+ available -- 
iambic, trochaic, anapestic and dactylic.

        ... much the commonest (stick a pin in any random pome in Norton) is
iambic pentameter, either unrhymed (mostly drama and Milton) or rhymed (Pope
et alia).

Why this is, why the unrhymed iambic pentameter seems to be the "natural"
metre of an English-Language writer, is probably more a question for a
linguist than a poet.

        Robin

[... and yes, I perfectly-well *know* that you can unfold any of 1-5
above -- as for instance, split AS strict alliterative from Beowulf through
Aelfric and Wulfstan via the Langland/Gawain split to Coleridge and what you
have in your hands is a bag of Kilkenny cats.]

        ... back to the teapot, me ...

                        :-(

Robin







From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 18:42:38 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 18:42:38 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <BDE61195.DD86%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <10757194.1103146774821.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <41C0859E.22223.9B4FFB@localhost>

> on 12/15/04 3:39 PM, Mike Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:
> > The irony is that it's proven very much more difficult, to the point
> > of near-impossibility (I think Whitman is the one that proves --
> > "tests" -- the rule), to write free verse as good as the best
> > metrical verse.

On 15 Dec 2004 at 16:06, David Graham wrote:
> No one will catch me putting down metrical verse or dismissing
> conventional forms as moribund.  Still, "near-impossibility"?  Can you
> possibly be serious?
> I find it bafflin' odd that anyone with decent ears can't *hear* the
> many wonderful poems written in the Whitman tradition--or, hearing
> them, won't agree that much of it *is* really as good as metrical
> stuff.  Different, yes, but still excellent as verse.

Is as good in what sense? Certainly not as poetry, since neither 
Whitman nor any of those who write in what you call his tradition are 
writing poetry -- there is no meter to it, nothing to distinguish it 
from prose. They write prose -- oddly lineated prose, prose that 
examines their personal lives and public things, big things and 
small, lots of subject matters, using metaphors and comparisons and 
all kind of literary techniques, but not the technique that 
distinguishes prose from poetry: meter.

> A short list off the top of my head might begin with Roethke's
> "North American Sequence" and Denise Levertov's *O Taste & See*,
> then perhaps Gary Snyder's *Riprap*, Robert Duncan's *The Opening
> of the Field*, and Gerald Stern's "Lucky Life."  Tip of a rather
> big iceberg. . . .

First, this claim is merely begging the question: assuming that the 
stuff is verse in order to conclude that it is verse. 

Second, it's not verse because meter is what the writers are NOT 
using -- these are prose relineated into ragged-right lines. 

These are "lineated prose diary entries" or "lineated 
JimBishopColumns" or "lineated epistolary effusions", and other kinds 
of personal prose reflection. There is no verse there at all; what 
might make any of it verse, meter, is exactly what the writers 
eschew.

Marcus




From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 18:44:44 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 18:44:44 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
In-Reply-To: <050301c4e2fe$9a655800$fd9c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <41C0861C.5501.9D3EFE@localhost>

On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:34, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> There are {at least} count them -- *five* metrical +systems+ available
> to an English-Language writer:
> 
>     1) Stress
>     2) Syllable Accent
>     3) Qualitative
>     4) Free Verse
>     5) Dipodic

Just so -- and what distinguishes poetry from prose is whether the 
writer employs meter.

Marcus






From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 19:12:52 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:12:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
In-Reply-To: <s1c02ebb.032@mail.highland.edu>
Message-ID: <41C08CB4.10668.B7006B@localhost>

On 15 Dec 2004 at 12:31, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ... my somewhat eye-rolling
> jousting with Marcus's tirades about the Evil Empire of Free Verse,
> from Leaves of Grass to Girls on the Run ...<<

Not evil, just not poetry -- prose, well-written, interesting, 
moving, informative, even excellent prose, but prose because the 
writers abandon meter which is the distinction between poetry and 
prose.

On 15 Dec 2004 at 12:31, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ... and Marcus's repeated,
> weird insistence that I had said one could never tell an iamb from a
> dactyl. <<

You, Kent, said the iamb haunted the dactyl in a context that made 
clear what you've said clearly since: that because of how any 
individual foot or line MAY be scanned because of acephalous 
openings, anacrusis, catalexis, etc., that the existence of these 
feet is suspect. If their existence is suspect, but the existence of 
the iamb is not (and you've said that it is not), then how do you 
tell the real iamb from the suspect dactyl? Your whole approach has 
been to try to cast doubt on the very existence of such things as 
dactyls, and if that ain't trying to make the whole thing iambic 
because no one can tell an iamb from a dactyl, what is it?

On 15 Dec 2004 at 12:31, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ... But accentual syllabic meter and rhyme is only one
> dimension/manifestation (isn't this obvious?) of the formal
> possibilities available to poetry.  <

Meter is the distinction between poetry and prose. Rhyme hasn't got 
much to do with it, but meter does. What's meterless is not 
unpleasant, and it's not even without rhythm. Prose has rhythm, and 
there are various prose rhythms to all the poems David Graham 
referred to, for example -- but no meter.

On 15 Dec 2004 at 12:31, Kent Johnson wrote:
> 3) And as I said, and as you yourself agree, it is an entirely
> artificial system--and one that, save the ideological insistences of
> its true believers, has no convincing claim to superiority over any
> other. 

That it's artificial is the point: that's what art is, after all: 
artificial. But that it has no convincing claim is wrong, unless 
you're really trying to say that only in the last hundred years have 
any really good poems been written, and they only in free verse. Is 
that your position?
 
On 15 Dec 2004 at 12:31, Kent Johnson wrote:
> ... A hexameter of trochees not only bears no
> real rhythmic difference from a string of iambs (falling rhythm is a
> projection once you have more than a few syllables underway), it is
> also (that hexameter of trochees), *in its "reality," just as much a
> line of iambs with an acephalous foot (lots of those in the
> tradition!), or even a sequence of amphibrachs and amphimacers.<

One of the interesting things about meter is, of course, that how you 
read it as meter depends on other lines, on the whole of the poem you 
find it in. To pretend that because you can read a line as trochees 
or iambs means that meter is a failure as a system of poetry, as you 
seem to be trying to argue, is to be blind to the very notion of 
meter. The meter of a poem is different than the meter of a line is 
different than the meter of a foot or two. You're deliberately trying 
to conflate them in order to argue that they don't make sense, when 
they make good sense in their places. You're using equivocation by 
conflating meanings instead of distinguishing meanings. 

> So bully for sonnets, sapphics, and all the rest, I say. And good on
> you and Marcus, too, for "keeping the tradition alive." But a long,
> luscious, ravishing line of Whitman or Hopkins is still long and
> luscious and ravishing, no matter what "feet" you or I may "see" in
> there. Thank goodness for that. Because that's where the metaphysics
> *really* starts to come in...<

Sure -- a long luscious and ravising line of prose.

Marcus






From mandolin at mac.com  Wed Dec 15 19:14:09 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:14:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <149.3aeb3eb4.2ef21efd@cs.com>
References: <149.3aeb3eb4.2ef21efd@cs.com>
Message-ID: <681A1947-4EF7-11D9-BA32-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 15, 2004, at 6:13 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:

> In a message dated 12/15/2004 4:07:48 PM Central Standard Time, 
> grahamd at ripon.edu writes:
>
>
>  I find it bafflin' odd that anyone with decent ears can't *hear* the 
> many
>  wonderful poems written in the Whitman tradition--or, hearing them, 
> won't
>  agree that much of it *is* really as good as metrical stuff.? 
> Different,
>  yes, but still excellent as verse.
>
>
>  I agree, David.? A foolish consistency is . . . well, we all know 
> what it is.? I don't have to put WW on some kind of Procrustean bed to 
> get pleasure from his poetry.? For my money, no American poet has ever 
> written anything as wonderful (and which I enjoy reading out loud) as 
> section 6 of Song of Myself.__


Sam, you'll get no argument from me about Whitman, unless you're going 
to say he established a tradition which rivals the metrical tradition. 
He's like Kilimanjaro, alone on the plain.




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Wed Dec 15 19:38:13 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 00:38:13 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
References: <41C0861C.5501.9D3EFE@localhost>
Message-ID: <052401c4e307$881f5ed0$fd9c9951@Robin>

From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>

> On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:34, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> > There are {at least} count them -- *five* metrical +systems+ available
> > to an English-Language writer:
> >
> >     1) Stress
> >     2) Syllable Accent
> >     3) Qualitative
> >     4) Free Verse
> >     5) Dipodic

        Marcus said:

> Just so -- and what distinguishes poetry from prose is whether the
> writer employs meter.

            (Tell that to Wulfstan.)

... check the last paragraph of EB's _Wuthering Heights_, and I think you
might be less sure of this.

                            R.

        {Metre is a Formal Construct -- Rhythm Is Forever}

<Oh boy, we're into the how-do-you-spell-it metre/meter US/UK, the
tomato/potato pronunciation argument.

   nah?  >

... even *I* amn't trivial enough to cite the initial paragraph of Dikoon's
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..."

                            Really, has anyone ever done a serious scansion
on this?

                [ADDENDUM:  looking at it (seriously), it's an anapest laced
with the Lesser Ionic Ascending Foot.

                        Makes you wonder, but.    ]

        I kinda always took it as read that this was default IambPent.

                        More fool, me.

                                    :-(

Da Thing




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Wed Dec 15 20:43:34 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:43:34 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <AC0EE71C-4EEF-11D9-84B2-000393C29586@mac.com>
Message-ID: <BDE64466.DDA5%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/15/04 5:18 PM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:

>> 
>> A short list off the top of my head might begin with Roethke's "North
>> American Sequence" and Denise Levertov's *O Taste & See*, then perhaps
>> Gary
>> Snyder's *Riprap*, Robert Duncan's *The Opening of the Field*, and
>> Gerald
>> Stern's "Lucky Life."  Tip of a rather big iceberg. . . .
>> 
>> 
> Wonderful poems and poets all, David -- but can you seriously say any
> of  them are justly comparable to the best poetry in the metrical
> tradition? Froma Chaucer to Wyatt to Sidney to Donne to Dryden, Pope,
> Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Tennyson, Yeats, Frost? Leaving out
> Will entirely. And among the still-living, Richard Wilbur.

Among the several apple-&-oranges problems here, I suppose, comes from
comparing 7+ centuries of verse to the century-and-a-half we've had since
the first edition of *Leaves of Grass*.  Naturally, we free versers haven't
quite had time to establish a Chaucer-to-Wilbur tradition (maybe that should
be Chilburia?) in all its richness, but even so, yes, I guess that I would
seriously say that the best free verse rivals the best of the metrical
tradition.

At least to mine own ears--and that's quite another apple or orange, I
realize.

Useful to have the fault lines defined more clearly, I think, Mike; and yet
we may have arrived at one of those agree-to-disagree points.  I really do
believe that Roethke's as good, musically, as Tennyson, yes indeed.  (Not
always in his metrical verse, though, which seems too slavishly Yeatsean,
often--just the Whitmanic stuff.)

Time as always will sift out the Tennysons and Longfellows from the hordes
of John Townsend Trowbridges and William Ellery Channings, and any
prediction I might make about recent poets is suspect.  Still, if I could
hope to be around to collect on the wager, I'd gladly put my nickel down now
on the best free verse of Pound, Eliot, Williams, Moore, Roethke, et al. as
20th century poets who will be valued by the future.

Not that I automatically *prefer* free verse.  For what it's worth, to my
ears the best 20th C. poets in English are Yeats, Frost and Williams.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 20:52:37 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:52:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <149.3aeb3eb4.2ef21efd@cs.com>
	<681A1947-4EF7-11D9-BA32-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <025001c4e311$ebd72070$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

What is an unmetrical lineated rhyme?  Doggerel?  And a whole class of 
literature unto itself?  Or is it rhymed prose?

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 21:24:51 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 21:24:51 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <BDE64466.DDA5%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <027c01c4e316$6cc08b00$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Anyone up to discussing what the main differences between poetry and 
(literary) prose are ASIDE from devices used?  To start with, it seems to 
me, a poem wants to be desired for what it is, a work of prose for what it 
is about.  Poetry is, prose tells.  Yes, of course, poetry also tells and 
prose is, but poetry emphasizes what it is--the sound of words, and the way 
they look on the page--to a much greater degree than prose does.

I may say more if there's any interest in this.

--Bob G.




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 15 21:32:05 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 21:32:05 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <149.3aeb3eb4.2ef21efd@cs.com>
	<681A1947-4EF7-11D9-BA32-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <028301c4e317$6fa42d80$2ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>>  I find it bafflin' odd that anyone with decent ears can't *hear* the 
>> many
>>  wonderful poems written in the Whitman tradition--or, hearing them, 
>> won't
>>  agree that much of it *is* really as good as metrical stuff. Different,
>>  yes, but still excellent as verse.
>>
>>
>>  I agree, David. A foolish consistency is . . . well, we all know what it 
>> is. I don't have to put WW on some kind of Procrustean bed to get 
>> pleasure from his poetry. For my money, no American poet has ever written 
>> anything as wonderful (and which I enjoy reading out loud) as section 6 
>> of Song of Myself.__
>
>
> Sam, you'll get no argument from me about Whitman, unless you're going to 
> say he established a tradition which rivals the metrical tradition. He's 
> like Kilimanjaro, alone on the plain.

Why this emphasis on how the stuff sounds?  I don't see how free verse can 
sound as good as formal verse, but why should it?  It's doing other things! 
(Not that it can't sound wonderful, at times.)

No comment on Whitman--except that, as I've said before--I don't consider 
his poetry free verse.

--Bob G. 




From tad at opus40.org  Wed Dec 15 21:34:39 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 21:34:39 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <BDE64466.DDA5%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <001a01c4e317$cd670410$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

Don't forget that the free verse tradition also includes Kit Smart and the 
King James translators of the Psalms and the Song of Songs.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 8:43 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands


> on 12/15/04 5:18 PM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:
>
>>>
>>> A short list off the top of my head might begin with Roethke's "North
>>> American Sequence" and Denise Levertov's *O Taste & See*, then perhaps
>>> Gary
>>> Snyder's *Riprap*, Robert Duncan's *The Opening of the Field*, and
>>> Gerald
>>> Stern's "Lucky Life."  Tip of a rather big iceberg. . . .
>>>
>>>
>> Wonderful poems and poets all, David -- but can you seriously say any
>> of  them are justly comparable to the best poetry in the metrical
>> tradition? Froma Chaucer to Wyatt to Sidney to Donne to Dryden, Pope,
>> Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Tennyson, Yeats, Frost? Leaving out
>> Will entirely. And among the still-living, Richard Wilbur.
>
> Among the several apple-&-oranges problems here, I suppose, comes from
> comparing 7+ centuries of verse to the century-and-a-half we've had since
> the first edition of *Leaves of Grass*.  Naturally, we free versers 
> haven't
> quite had time to establish a Chaucer-to-Wilbur tradition (maybe that 
> should
> be Chilburia?) in all its richness, but even so, yes, I guess that I would
> seriously say that the best free verse rivals the best of the metrical
> tradition.
>
> At least to mine own ears--and that's quite another apple or orange, I
> realize.
>
> Useful to have the fault lines defined more clearly, I think, Mike; and 
> yet
> we may have arrived at one of those agree-to-disagree points.  I really do
> believe that Roethke's as good, musically, as Tennyson, yes indeed.  (Not
> always in his metrical verse, though, which seems too slavishly Yeatsean,
> often--just the Whitmanic stuff.)
>
> Time as always will sift out the Tennysons and Longfellows from the hordes
> of John Townsend Trowbridges and William Ellery Channings, and any
> prediction I might make about recent poets is suspect.  Still, if I could
> hope to be around to collect on the wager, I'd gladly put my nickel down 
> now
> on the best free verse of Pound, Eliot, Williams, Moore, Roethke, et al. 
> as
> 20th century poets who will be valued by the future.
>
> Not that I automatically *prefer* free verse.  For what it's worth, to my
> ears the best 20th C. poets in English are Yeats, Frost and Williams.
>
>
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From Thom424 at aol.com  Wed Dec 15 21:44:52 2004
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 21:44:52 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <1d6.32577558.2ef250a4@aol.com>

In his manual of prosody, THE POEM'S HEARTBEAT (Story Line Press, 1997), 
Alfred Corn makes an makes the following distinction between metered verse and 
free verse:   he calls poetry written in meter "metered poetry," and for poetry 
not written in meter, he prefers the term "unmetered poetry" (rather than "free 
verse").   

Thom Tammaro
Moorhead, MN
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 22:19:32 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:19:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
In-Reply-To: <052401c4e307$881f5ed0$fd9c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <41C0B874.393.817214@localhost>

> > On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:34, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> > > There are {at least} count them -- *five* metrical +systems+
> > > available to an English-Language writer:
> > >     1) Stress
> > >     2) Syllable Accent
> > >     3) Qualitative
> > >     4) Free Verse
> > >     5) Dipodic
> 
> From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
> > Just so -- and what distinguishes poetry from prose is whether the
> > writer employs meter.
> 
On 16 Dec 2004 at 0:38, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>             (Tell that to Wulfstan.)
> ... check the last paragraph of EB's _Wuthering Heights_, and I think
> you might be less sure of this.
>         {Metre is a Formal Construct -- Rhythm Is Forever}

Well, that's the whole point, isn't it: meter is a formal construct, 
artificial. Poetry is an artful, not a natural, thing. The 
distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between meter 
and rhythm. 

Marcus




From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 15 22:28:40 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:28:40 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <1d6.32577558.2ef250a4@aol.com>
Message-ID: <41C0BA98.18215.89CE12@localhost>

On 15 Dec 2004 at 21:44, Thom424 at aol.com wrote:
> In his manual of prosody, THE POEM'S HEARTBEAT (Story Line Press,
> 1997), Alfred Corn makes an makes the following distinction between
> metered verse and free verse: he calls poetry written in meter
> "metered poetry," and for poetry not written in meter, he prefers the
> term "unmetered poetry" (rather than "free verse"). 

"Mathematicians are like the French," Goethe is said to have said. 
"No matter what you say they translate it into their own language and 
instantly it means some other thing." As far as I know, and I hope 
someone will correct me if I'm wrong, the translators of the KJV did 
not try to find an appropriate verse form contemporary to them into 
which to try to pour their translation of the original language. 
Instead they contented themselves with following more or less the 
original's form while rendering it in English according to the same 
broad guidelines they'd set themselves for the rest of the 
translation. In short, they weren't writing poetry, or even 
translating poetry -- they were, instead, providing an ingeniously 
toned and mannered work throughout the Bible that would resonate 
strongly in English. I think we should not call the KJV Psalms and 
Song of Solomon "poetry" after all -- nor even "verse".

What it is is magnificent prose intended to give the impression that 
if you happened to speak Aramaic or Hebrew or Greek and were reading 
poetry in one of those languages, this is something like the way 
you'd translate it if you weren't a poet. And what's wrong with that? 

We aren't diminished by saying the Psalms and the Song are 
magnificent prose: there the translations are, available to almost 
all. Does labeling them "poetry" make them better? Does labeling them 
"prose" make them worse?

Meter adds a level of difficulty to the endeavor; it requires of the 
writer a certain proficiency with language, something that reassures, 
it seems to me, any reader coming to it that here is a someone 
willing to craft the language to try to make art. It's remarkable how 
well even those unaccustomed to reading metered verse can distinguish 
the proficient from the less proficient use of verse. That jangly or 
clunky quality so often found in less well-crafted work is easy to 
notice, and it mars the quality of the whole and the credibility of 
the writer. And intuitionists, feelers, in the business of having 
feelings and intuitions, anything pretty difficult to do and pretty 
easy to judge is something they want to avoid. If they don't, they 
risk making their feelings and intuitions look ridiculous not because 
they are ridiculous (no one's are), but _look_ ridiculous through 
their ineptitude at handling meter. What they want, instead, is to 
make the claim that honesty, sincerity, intensity, and other things 
easy to do and difficult to judge are what is important, not some 
tired old rules. 

Marcus




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec 15 22:43:36 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:43:36 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <100.8e92086.2ef25e68@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/15/2004 6:14:33 PM Central Standard Time, 
mandolin at mac.com writes: 
> 
> 
> X-INFO: INVALID TO LINE
> 
> On Dec 15, 2004, at 6:13 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:
> 
> >In a message dated 12/15/2004 4:07:48 PM Central Standard Time, 
> >grahamd at ripon.edu writes:
> >
> >
> >  I find it bafflin' odd that anyone with decent ears can't *hear* the 
> >many
> >  wonderful poems written in the Whitman tradition--or, hearing them, 
> >won't
> >  agree that much of it *is* really as good as metrical stuff.  
> >Different,
> >  yes, but still excellent as verse.
> >
> >
> >  I agree, David.  A foolish consistency is . . . well, we all know 
> >what it is.  I don't have to put WW on some kind of Procrustean bed to 
> >get pleasure from his poetry.  For my money, no American poet has ever 
> >written anything as wonderful (and which I enjoy reading out loud) as 
> >section 6 of Song of Myself.__
> 
> 
> Sam, you'll get no argument from me about Whitman, unless you're going 
> to say he established a tradition which rivals the metrical tradition. 
> He's like Kilimanjaro, alone on the plain.

Mike, with all due respect, I don't think so.  There are all kinds of 
precedents--Wyatt, Donne, Skelton--that earlier argued against the predominance of 
the iamb (which is without saying that I, personally, find the iamb adequate for 
about 90% of what I want to say).
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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Wed Dec 15 22:49:15 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 03:49:15 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] one last dactyl
References: <41C0B874.393.817214@localhost>
Message-ID: <000d01c4e322$3798cad0$fd9c9951@Robin>

> Well, that's the whole point, isn't it: meter is a formal construct,
> artificial. Poetry is an artful, not a natural, thing. The
> distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between meter
> and rhythm.
>
> Marcus

                Well, yeah, that's close to the core of the argument,
Marcus.

... but I think we're on seriously different sides of a conceptual divide
here.

                                :-(

                    R.







From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Dec 15 23:40:19 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:40:19 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>


In a message dated 12/15/2004 10:29:16 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
marcus at designerglass.com writes:

> Meter adds a level of difficulty to the endeavor; it requires of the 
> writer a certain proficiency with language, something that reassures, 
> it seems to me, any reader coming to it that here is a someone 
> willing to craft the language to try to make art. It's remarkable how 
> well even those unaccustomed to reading metered verse can distinguish 
> the proficient from the less proficient use of verse. That jangly or 
> clunky quality so often found in less well-crafted work is easy to 
> notice, and it mars the quality of the whole and the credibility of 
> the writer. And 
Marcus (and you too Mike),
Does this all boil down to verse-craft as a bar on must get across?
Most of the free verse poets could clear that bar by several 
inches, without breaking a sweat. 

I was hoping you were going to stick to 'magic' or an ontological
argument that verse was inextricably tied to meter. Magic I like...
but it's metaphysical position, as I think Kent said, and so you win
outright. Arguing metaphysics is scholastism. There is no disputing 
'magic'. Either you believe in it or you don't.

An ontological argument for 'metrical verse = poetry' seems to me
most readily undercut by the shadow word: "English."? Does 'poetry'
not exist in languages and cultures where the English metric doesn't 
hold sway? Someone mentioned Chaucer....even within the English
tradition, am I to think that metrical poetry was the same for Chaucer 
as it is for Wilbur:? That was then, this is now.

Because I can't believe were having this argument, my last
comment is that from my 'pragmatic' view you have already lost.
The Norton Anthology and the poetry section at your local Barnes 
& Noble should be enuf evidence of that. The value of an idea
must always be tested against reality (a rough translation of 
CS Pierce).
Finnegan
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From elemenope at icubed.com  Wed Dec 15 12:43:47 2004
From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 01:43:47 +0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
Message-ID: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]>

What Is Poetry


The medievil town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That comes when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid

Ideas as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving

The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it,

As we believe it. In school
All the thought got combed out:

What was left was like a field,
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.

Now open them on a thin, verticle path,
It might give us - what? - some flowers soon?



				John Ashbery

				"What Is Poetry"
				from _Houseboat Days_
				p. 47
				circa 1975




-- 
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From mandolin at mac.com  Thu Dec 16 08:31:49 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:31:49 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>
References: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>
Message-ID: <6809182.1103203909761.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 11:40PM, <JforJames at aol.com> wrote:


In a message dated 12/15/2004 10:29:16 PM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes:


>>Meter adds a level of difficulty to the endeavor; it requires of the 
>>writer a certain proficiency with language, something that reassures, 
>>it seems to me, any reader coming to it that here is a someone 
>>willing to craft the language to try to make art. It's remarkable how 
>>well even those unaccustomed to reading metered verse can distinguish 
>>the proficient from the less proficient use of verse. That jangly or 
>>clunky quality so often found in less well-crafted work is easy to 
>>notice, and it mars the quality of the whole and the credibility of 
>>the writer. And 

>Marcus (and you too Mike),
>Does this all boil down to verse-craft as a bar on must get across?
>Most of the free verse poets could clear that bar by several 
>inches, without breaking a sweat. 

Care to name names on that one, James?  Certainly Pound and Williams couldn't do it -- their metrical verse is godawful. After Eliot, Lowell's probably your best shot, but after a couple of startlingly good free verse books, settled into the dreadful pseudo-sonnets of Notebook and The Dolphin -- and whoreads his early metrical poetry? Same with James Wright. Even Roethke's defenders (and I'm one) think his metrical poetry was inferior to his other work. Justice and Mezey returned to metrical poetry (and wrote their best poems) after long excursions into free verse. Ashbery wrote at least one bad sestina and a worse pantoum, but they aren't metrical.

Actually, I would like to put in a special plea for Hayden Carruth, who I think wrote excellent poetry of almost every kind (can't read his longer work, though). 

>I was hoping you were going to stick to 'magic' or an ontological
>argument that verse was inextricably tied to meter. Magic I like...
>but it's metaphysical position, as I think Kent said, and so you win
>outright. Arguing metaphysics is scholastism. There is no disputing 
>'magic'. Either you believe in it or you don't.

No magic involved, James. Put the best metrical verse in English next to the best non-metrical verse, and only Whitmnan remains.

>An ontological argument for 'metrical verse = poetry' seems to me
>most readily undercut by the shadow word: "English."  Does 'poetry'
>not exist in languages and cultures where the English metric doesn't 
>hold sway? Someone mentioned Chaucer....even within the English
>tradition, am I to think that metrical poetry was the same for Chaucer 
>as it is for Wilbur:? That was then, this is now.

Of course it was different. And Robin Hamilton rightly pointed pointed out that there are several metrical systems available to poets writing English today. Doesn't change a thing. Sam Gwynn noted Wyatt, Skelton, and Donne -- but while they didn't write IP, they wrote metrical poetry. Metrical verse, and in particular, as Robin noted, iambic pentameter, has proven over time to be peculiarly suited to English language poetry. 

>Because I can't believe were having this argument, my last
>comment is that from my 'pragmatic' view you have already lost.
>The Norton Anthology and the poetry section at your local Barnes 
>& Noble should be enuf evidence of that. The value of an idea
>must always be tested against reality (a rough translation of 
>CS Pierce).

Here's where MArcus and I differ. I agree that the battle to keep meter (of some kind, not necessarily accentual-syllabic) as the distinguishing feature of poetry was long ago lost, and I'll very nearly cheerfully call Gary Snyder's lovely work poetry. But I agree with Marcus that the loss of that battle is a significant, perhaps the most significant, factor in the decline of poetry's status.

Best,

Michael

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From mandolin at mac.com  Thu Dec 16 08:34:11 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:34:11 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Traveling
Message-ID: <6177907.1103204051198.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

Early this afternoon I het the road, and I won't be back till January. I'll have a laptoip with me, but net access will be dial-up and spotty, so I won't eb doing much here or at my blog for a while.

I wish everyone safe, happy, and productive holidays, and I look forward to hearing from all of you when I get back.

Peace,

Michael


-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From mandolin at mac.com  Thu Dec 16 08:41:33 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:41:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>
References: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>
Message-ID: <12181892.1103204493049.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 11:40PM, <JforJames at aol.com> wrote:


In a message dated 12/15/2004 10:29:16 PM Eastern Standard Time, marcus at designerglass.com writes:


>>Meter adds a level of difficulty to the endeavor; it requires of the 
>>writer a certain proficiency with language, something that reassures, 
>>it seems to me, any reader coming to it that here is a someone 
>>willing to craft the language to try to make art. It's remarkable how 
>>well even those unaccustomed to reading metered verse can distinguish 
>>the proficient from the less proficient use of verse. That jangly or 
>>clunky quality so often found in less well-crafted work is easy to 
>>notice, and it mars the quality of the whole and the credibility of 
>>the writer. And 

>Marcus (and you too Mike),
>Does this all boil down to verse-craft as a bar on must get across?
>Most of the free verse poets could clear that bar by several 
>inches, without breaking a sweat. 

Care to name names on that one, James?  Certainly Pound and Williams couldn't do it -- their metrical verse is godawful. After Eliot, Lowell's probably your best shot, but after a couple of startlingly good free verse books, settled into the dreadful pseudo-sonnets of Notebook and The Dolphin -- and whoreads his early metrical poetry? Same with James Wright. Even Roethke's defenders (and I'm one) think his metrical poetry was inferior to his other work. Justice and Mezey returned to metrical poetry (and wrote their best poems) after long excursions into free verse. Ashbery wrote at least one bad sestina and a worse pantoum, but they aren't metrical.

Actually, I would like to put in a special plea for Hayden Carruth, who I think wrote excellent poetry of almost every kind (can't read his longer work, though). 

>I was hoping you were going to stick to 'magic' or an ontological
>argument that verse was inextricably tied to meter. Magic I like...
>but it's metaphysical position, as I think Kent said, and so you win
>outright. Arguing metaphysics is scholastism. There is no disputing 
>'magic'. Either you believe in it or you don't.

No magic involved, James. Put the best metrical verse in English next to the best non-metrical verse, and only Whitmnan remains.

>An ontological argument for 'metrical verse = poetry' seems to me
>most readily undercut by the shadow word: "English."  Does 'poetry'
>not exist in languages and cultures where the English metric doesn't 
>hold sway? Someone mentioned Chaucer....even within the English
>tradition, am I to think that metrical poetry was the same for Chaucer 
>as it is for Wilbur:? That was then, this is now.

Of course it was different. And Robin Hamilton rightly pointed pointed out that there are several metrical systems available to poets writing English today. Doesn't change a thing. Sam Gwynn noted Wyatt, Skelton, and Donne -- but while they didn't write IP, they wrote metrical poetry. Metrical verse, and in particular, as Robin noted, iambic pentameter, has proven over time to be peculiarly suited to English language poetry. 

>Because I can't believe were having this argument, my last
>comment is that from my 'pragmatic' view you have already lost.
>The Norton Anthology and the poetry section at your local Barnes 
>& Noble should be enuf evidence of that. The value of an idea
>must always be tested against reality (a rough translation of 
>CS Pierce).

Here's where MArcus and I differ. I agree that the battle to keep meter (of some kind, not necessarily accentual-syllabic) as the distinguishing feature of poetry was long ago lost, and I'll very nearly cheerfully call Gary Snyder's lovely work poetry. But I agree with Marcus that the loss of that battle is a significant, perhaps the most significant, factor in the decline of poetry's status.

Best,

Michael

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 08:49:03 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:49:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]>
Message-ID: <003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyWhat Is Poetry




  The medievil town, with frieze
  Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow


  That comes when we wanted it to snow?
  Beautiful images? Trying to avoid


  Ideas as in this poem? But we
  Go back to them as to a wife, leaving


  The mistress we desire? Now they
  Will have to believe it,


  As we believe it. In school
  All the thought got combed out:


  What was left was like a field,
  Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.


  Now open them on a thin, vertical path,
  It might give us - what? - some flowers soon?


  This is a very nice poem (and, for me, "very nice" is intended as a large compliment).  It nicel illustrates the difference I see between poetry and prose.  Where prose would actually tell us what poetry is, this text--being poetry--uses the question of what poetry is to blossom us into unpredicted moments of beauty--without answering the question.

  --Bob G.
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From cc at opus0.com  Thu Dec 16 10:50:45 2004
From: cc at opus0.com (Crisman Cooley)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 07:50:45 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: San Miguel, etc
In-Reply-To: <200412151700.iBFH03Am023975@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHCEJKDBAA.cc@opus0.com>

Hal, 
I'd love to hear sometime what WD did/said that was over-the-toppish.  

Cr

> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:51:41 -0500
> From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
> Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] San Miguel, etc.
>     
> {    Arrived in San Miguel de Allende few weeks ago and am 
> settled now for a
> {    while.  Working on a long poem (multum in multum) and list lurking.
> {    
> {    Is anyone on the list currently in this part of MX?  CE?  
> Hal?  Others?  I
> {    hear WD Snodgrass is a part time resident.  Poetry section 
> in library is
> {    about the same size as the whole Clive Cussler collection.
> 
> Have fun, Crisman. Lynda and I returned to NY back in August. 
> Heard Snodgrass on Whitman there back in Feb. though. A bit
> over-the-toppish, but maybe that was just me.
> 
> Hal              "The only way to do it is to do it."
>                               --Merce Cunningham
> Halvard Johnson
> ===============
> email: halvard at earthlink.net
> website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
> blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/
> 


From mandolin at mac.com  Thu Dec 16 08:51:42 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:51:42 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>
References: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>
Message-ID: <8209523.1103205102179.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 11:40PM, <JforJames at aol.com> wrote:

>Does 'poetry' 
>not exist in languages and cultures where the English metric doesn't 
>hold sway?

James, you know that dog won't hunt. Other languages have other metrical systems -- syllabics in French and Japanese, hendecasyllables in Spanish, intricate systems involving tone as well as accent and syllable count in Chinese, accentual in Icelandic. Only in the last 100-150 years has any significant portion of the poetry in any language been non-metrical, Kit Smart notwithstanding. And if it does turn out that poetry in some Papuan langauge isn't metrical, that doesn't affect the Western poetic tradition for the last 3000 years at least.
-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 08:53:36 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:53:36 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]>
Message-ID: <004501c4e376$a46958b0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyThe discussion made me write the following in my head this morning while jogging.

Yet Another Poem About Poetry

It isn't difficult to build a line
or two in meter, such as these of mine;
it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them 
for which your readers will not you condemn.

Words, simply words, are what count
in the best poetry, though:
words that can slow up to domains
that heighten a reader's senses away
from the long-unhued 
one-layered, overrun surface
that received reality is.

--Bob Grumman


----- Original Message ----- 
From: ELEMENOPE Productions 
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 12:43 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery


What Is Poetry




The medievil town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow


That comes when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid


Ideas as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving


The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it,


As we believe it. In school
All the thought got combed out:


What was left was like a field,
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.


Now open them on a thin, verticle path,
It might give us - what? - some flowers soon?


                                


                                John Ashbery
                                
                                "What Is Poetry"
                                from _Houseboat Days_
                                p. 47
                                circa 1975








-- 




_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
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From cc at opus0.com  Thu Dec 16 11:00:53 2004
From: cc at opus0.com (Crisman Cooley)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:00:53 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: San Miguel, etc
In-Reply-To: <200412151700.iBFH03Am023975@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHMEJKDBAA.cc@opus0.com>

You have my sympathies of course, Mr. Finnegan and Lord knows how much the
weather may have helped to forge the stoic Pilgrim constitution.  Re whether
to chop wood or write verse, though:

"Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather..."

Cc

> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:42:42 EST
> From: JforJames at aol.com
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] San Miguel, etc.
>
> >
> > {   Arrived in San Miguel de Allende few weeks ago and am
> settled now for a
> > {   while.  Working on a long poem (multum in multum)
>
> You dog. Here in New England poets have to write long poems
> just to stay warm. Either that or chop wood. 22"F this morning.
> Finnegan
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>



From mandolin at mac.com  Thu Dec 16 09:08:24 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:08:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
In-Reply-To: <004501c4e376$a46958b0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]>
	<004501c4e376$a46958b0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <583029.1103206104822.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Thursday, December 16, 2004, at 08:54AM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:

>
><<Original Attached>>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>

Um, Bob, I think you should reconsider the claim in those first two lines, because the only meter here is syllabic (and that badly handled), and for good reason syllabics are not often used in English poetry.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium
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From cc at opus0.com  Thu Dec 16 11:14:17 2004
From: cc at opus0.com (Crisman Cooley)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:14:17 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: forwarding a mail (Re: Graves)
In-Reply-To: <200412151700.iBFH03Am023975@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHIEJLDBAA.cc@opus0.com>

Like most of us, I've grown up under the spectre of WWIII, not 
knowing what weapons would be used, but informed by Einstein 
that wars will be fought thereafter using sticks and stones.  



> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 09:06:08 -0500
> From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] RE: forwarding a mail (Re: Graves)
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;	Views"
> 	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Message-ID: <41BFFE80.27600.62BAEF at localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> On 15 Dec 2004 at 0:20, Crisman Cooley wrote:
> > ... Mac Low's use of chance on the content plane is another
> > example I can read, yes, but not carry on.  These are traditions to
> > end all traditions.  Art at the end of civilization. ...<
> 
> Very fine stuff after this on Graves, but what's this about the end 
> of civilization? 
> 
> Marcus



From halvard at earthlink.net  Thu Dec 16 09:30:35 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:30:35 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: San Miguel, etc
In-Reply-To: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHCEJKDBAA.cc@opus0.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEKLJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

    

{    Hal, 
{    I'd love to hear sometime what WD did/said that was over-the-toppish.  
{    
{    Cr

Oh, nothing much, Cr. It was just that I was primed to hear WD reading WD
rather than lecturing on WW and interpolating readings that were, let's say,
seemed to me rather operatic. But all that was way back in February, and
the memory's quickly fading.

Hal           "We are the zanies of sorrow." 
                               -- Oscar Wilde

Halvard Johnson
============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/





From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 16 10:34:30 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:34:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <1c5.21137628.2ef26bb3@aol.com>
Message-ID: <41C164B6.13700.6B81EB@localhost>

> marcus at designerglass.com writes:
> Meter adds a level of difficulty to the endeavor; it requiresof
> the writer a certain proficiency with language, something that
> reassures, it seems to me, any reader coming to it that here is a
> someone willing to craft the language to try to make art. It's
> remarkable how well even those unaccustomed to reading metered
> verse can distinguish the proficient from the less proficient use
> of verse. That jangly or clunky quality so often found in less
> well-crafted work is easy to notice, and it mars the quality of
> the whole and the credibility of the writer. ...
 
On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:16, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> Does this all boil down to verse-craft as a bar one must get
> across? Most of the free verse poets could clear that bar by
> several inches, without breaking a sweat. 

If they could and did wouldn't they cease to be free verse poets? 
Instead, they'd be poets writing poetry, instead of diarists, or 
journalists, or columnists writing prose and breaking it up into 
disingenuous lines. Free verse is, in my view, simply not poetry to 
begin with because it's not written in meter. It's written in prose 
and only called poetry. 

You, I suspect from the phrasing of the above, define "verse-craft" 
very differently than I do. It seems to me my distinction between 
poetry and prose (poetry is meter, prose is not) is sharp and easy to 
apply, while any hunt for what poetry means in terms of some 
collation of techniques aside from meter is bound to founder in the 
morass of the number of possible techniques.

There are people who call themselves poets, and their work poetry, 
who are unable to get over the bar of writing in meter without 
sounding jangly or clunky or otherwise inept; these I call the 
Special Olympics poets, because they just can?t do it. Then there are 
people whose interest is to blurt out their feelings rather than to 
make art out of language with easy access to the magic status-making 
claim that they?re poets; these I call the Welfare Cadillac poets, 
because they feel entitled to the benefits for doing nothing. Failing 
to distinguish between poetry and prose provides two important 
benefits for both groups? members (though there?s some overlap, 
they?re not the same): first, they get the magic status-making title 
of poet without having to bother with learning any craft, and, 
second, they are freed not only from the need for craft but also from 
the onerous requirements of prose to do the research and get their 
facts right. 

What may be most pernicious about failing to distinguish between 
poetry and prose is the encouragement it gives to the Cadillac 
Welfare poets: the people you say could clear the craft bar if they 
wanted to. Why should they want to? They get all the benefits without 
doing any of the work now -- what?s the point of learning one?s craft 
after one has achieved one?s reputation by merely claiming it? If I 
give you a pin that says you?ve won the New Poetry Email List Hundred 
Meter Dash right now just for the asking, are you going to go out and 
train for an event that will not be run because you?ve already been 
awarded the prize for winning it? 

This goes back to poetry-as-magic because, it seems to me, what the 
Special Olympics  blurters are seeking is validation for their blurt: 
they want to be known as poets by virtue of their blurt rather than 
by virtue of any craft they bring to their blurt to transform it into 
art. The Welfare Cadillac blurters are content to ride on the 
coattails of the Special Olympics blurters, happy to learn that they 
can gain a reputation without the dour necessity of earning one. 
Poetry, poem, poet, are all still terms of virtue and credibility in 
our culture; still terms the claiming of which makes the claimant 
appear to be a little special, out of the ordinary, uncommon. Just 
now people who want to make a claim to some virtue and credibility, 
to being something a little special, out of the ordinary, uncommon, 
but without having to do any work at all are in a pretty good 
position: after 100 years of free verse no one is paying much 
attention to who makes that claim, so anyone can make it without fear 
of having anyone looking over their shoulders checking their 
credentials or output. So long as these folks are allowed to call 
their product poetry and themselves poets they don't care much what 
you say about their product itself. It is enough for them that they 
are known as poets and referred to as poets. That?s the magic of 
simply claiming one is a poet because any word salad one tosses 
together is a poem because one claims it to be.

This Special Olympics/Welfare Cadillac contingent is enabled by the 
Used Car Seller group whose fundamental mode is the blue suede shoe 
shuffle; they?re always surprised, and a little hurt, to discover 
that people did indeed expect an engine in the car for that price, 
and a little sad to think you thought they ever promised it. Perhaps 
that?s just po biz, too -- since without a crowd of eager applicant 
students who want to get their ticket punched, validated as real 
poets, who?d pay the Used Car Seller?s salary? So the Used Car 
Sellers say that performing the event is not the point -- the point 
is trying, and trying is succeeding; and even if someone doesn?t try, 
well, hell, no one?s watching -- those who don?t try are poets, too.

Blurt is not enough. Art is different from, and is transformative of, 
blurt. To approach art the poet must restrain the  necessity to blurt 
by and in his or her craft, whether in poetry or prose. The craft of 
poetry is different from the craft of prose, and the difference is 
whether the work is in meter or not. My claim is that poetry is that 
which is written in meter; prose is that which is not written in 
meter. Whether that poetry or that prose is important, significant, 
or good are simply other matters. The first problem is to distinguish 
one from the other so that we can know within roughly zones what kind 
of demands the writer is making on our attentions. We read prose 
differently than we read poetry, and for good reason: poetry makes 
different claims on our attentions than prose makes.

It?s not a matter of magic, it?s a matter of different sorts of 
claims on our attentions. What the intuitionists, the blurters of 
feeling, whether Used Car Sellers, Welfare Cadillacs, or Special 
Olympics, want is to gain the validating, the legitimizing, 
approbations that go with being known as a poet without having to 
learn how to make poetry claims on our attentions. They want to cover 
all their mistakes and ineptitudes by appealing to prose standards 
when they?re criticized for poetry craft problems, and to poetry 
standards when they?re criticized for prose craft problems. 
 
On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:16, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> I was hoping you were going to stick to 'magic' or an ontological
> argument that verse was inextricably tied to meter. Magic I like...
> but it's metaphysical position, as I think Kent said, and so you
> win outright. Arguing metaphysics is scholastism. There is no
> disputing 'magic'. Either you believe in it or you don't.<

I strongly doubt that you?ve understood Kent?s throwing up of his 
hands and walking away from the discussion. What?s "magical" about 
the word "poetry", I said, is that it is used as a validating, a 
legitimizing, word for and by people who have misappropriated the 
word to try to make their prose seem more important or more 
significant, or both, than it is. The magic is in poetry?s reputation 
for importance and significance, and they want to get them some. 
Unfortunately, they merely claim it, taking advantage of that great 
liberal idea, tolerance for divergent opinion, to make a claim to 
which they are not entitled.

On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:16, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> An ontological argument for 'metrical verse = poetry' seems to me
> most readily undercut by the shadow word: "English." Does 'poetry'
> not exist in languages and cultures where the English metric
> doesn't hold sway? Someone mentioned Chaucer....even within the
> English tradition, am I to think that metrical poetry was the same
> for Chaucer as it is for Wilbur:? That was then, this is now.<

English isn?t the shadow word here; it?s the water we swim in; it?s 
what we?re talking about. It may be different in very different 
languages, but in English, in the tradition English has grown out of, 
meter is the dividing line between poetry and prose. Different ages, 
even different but broadly similar languages within the tradition may 
have embraced different meters as their central meters than the 
English iambic, but so what? It?s still meter. Even the objection 
that Chaucer?s metrics are different from ours is like saying that a 
cubit is different from a yard -- Chaucer?s poetry is still metrical 
for all that it?s a different metric, just as a cubit is still a 
measure of length even thought it?s a different measure of length 
than a yard is. 

On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:16, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> Because I can't believe were having this argument, my last
> comment is that from my 'pragmatic' view you have already lost.
> The Norton Anthology and the poetry section at your local Barnes &
> Noble should be enuf evidence of that. The value of an idea must
> always be tested against reality (a rough translation of CS
> Pierce).<<

I think it?s not lost. I think that there will be a Liberal backlash 
against the intuitionists, and their work will come to be classified 
as prose in the Pepys tradition rather than as poetry in the Chaucer 
tradition. Look at how we even now speak of the best poets of the 
20th century: even David Graham says it?s Yeats and Frost, not Pound 
and Stein, though he throws Williams in there as a sop to conscience. 
I?ll add Bishop and Hope to them, and Wilbur and Hecht, too. 

Still Life
Anthony Hecht

     Sleep-walking vapor, like a visitant ghost,
            Hovers above a lake
     Of Tennysonian calm just before dawn.
     Inverted trees and boulders waver and coast
     In polished darkness. Glints of silver break
     Among the liquid leafage, and then are gone.
              
     Everything's doused and diamonded with wet.
           A cobweb, woven taut
     On bending stanchion frames of tentpole grass,
     Sags like a trampoline or firemen's net
     With all the glitter and riches it has caught,
     Each drop a paperweight of Steuben glass.
              
     No birdsong yet, no cricket, nor does the trout
           Explode in water-scrolls
     For a skimming fly. All that is yet to come.
     Things are as still and motionless throughout
     The universe as ancient Chinese bowls,
     And nature is magnificently dumb.
              
     Why does this so much stir me, like a code
            Or muffled intimation
     Of purposes and preordained events?
     It knows me, and I recognize its mode
     Of cautionary, spring-tight hesitation,
     This silence so impacted and intense.
              
     As in a water-surface I behold
            The first, soft, peach decree
     Of light, its pale, inaudible commands.
     I stand beneath a pine-tree in the cold,
     Just before dawn, somewhere in Germany,
     A cold, wet, Garand rifle in my hands.








From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 16 10:43:30 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:43:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
In-Reply-To: <004501c4e376$a46958b0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C166D2.1471.73C069@localhost>

On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
> It isn't difficult to build a line
> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them 
> for which your readers will not you condemn.

If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who can 
write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look at that 
word-inversion to get to the rhyme. 

Marcus





From grahamd at ripon.edu  Thu Dec 16 10:45:26 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:45:26 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <41C164B6.13700.6B81EB@localhost>
Message-ID: <BDE709B6.DE00%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/16/04 9:34 AM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote:

> Look at how we even now speak of the best poets of the
> 20th century: even David Graham says it?s Yeats and Frost, not Pound
> and Stein, though he throws Williams in there as a sop to conscience.


Now you're mind-reading, Marcus:  wow again!  But always remember to use
your Powers for good, OK?




====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 09:30:27 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:30:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><004501c4e376$a46958b0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<583029.1103206104822.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <008e01c4e37b$c9b6a7d0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
On Thursday, December 16, 2004, at 08:54AM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>

Um, Bob, I think you should reconsider the claim in those first two lines, because the only meter here is syllabic (and that badly handled), and for good reason syllabics are not often used in English poetry.

I was pretty sure you or Marcus would say that, Michael.  But, to answer in the dogmatic way that seems your only way of answering, you're wrong.  
The first four lines of my poem are in perfect meter.  

--Bob G.



-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium



------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  The discussion made me write the following in my head this morning while jogging.

  Yet Another Poem About Poetry

  It isn't difficult to build a line
  or two in meter, such as these of mine;
  it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them 
  for which your readers will not you condemn.

  Words, simply words, are what count
  in the best poetry, though:
  words that can slow up to domains
  that heighten a reader's senses away
  from the long-unhued 
  one-layered, overrun surface
  that received reality is.

  --Bob Grumman


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ELEMENOPE Productions 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 12:43 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery


  What Is Poetry




  The medievil town, with frieze
  Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow


  That comes when we wanted it to snow?
  Beautiful images? Trying to avoid


  Ideas as in this poem? But we
  Go back to them as to a wife, leaving


  The mistress we desire? Now they
  Will have to believe it,


  As we believe it. In school
  All the thought got combed out:


  What was left was like a field,
  Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.


  Now open them on a thin, verticle path,
  It might give us - what? - some flowers soon?


                                  


                                  John Ashbery
                                  
                                  "What Is Poetry"
                                  from _Houseboat Days_
                                  p. 47
                                  circa 1975








  -- 




  _______________________________________________
  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 09:36:14 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:36:14 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><004501c4e376$a46958b0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<583029.1103206104822.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <00ce01c4e37c$98a2c330$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery

Um, Bob, I think you should reconsider the claim in those first two lines, because the only meter here is syllabic (and that badly handled), and for good reason syllabics are not often used in English poetry.

I would add that the arbitrary Byzantinism of the New-Formalists about the meter in their favored poems is as silly as that of those finding semantic meaning in various passages of Stein and Jorie Graham.  

--Bob G.
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From tad at opus40.org  Thu Dec 16 11:00:07 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:00:07 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]>
	<003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyWhat makes Ashbery work, at his best, is his music. It's the music that makes you care enough about his leaps and disconnects of sense to make you want to stay with them. Meter is one way of putting music into poems, and it's a wonderful way, but it's not guaranteed to work. Nor can we keep making the same kind of music over and over again. Energy starts bleeding out of it. You can't even appeal to the popularity of a style. Jazz lost its audience when Charlie Parker came on the scene, but it still had to happen. There wasn't enough new to be said in swing. So jazz split in two directions - Parker and Louis Jordan. One more difficult, one simpler. Metrical poetry did the same. Free verse, and popular song. In each case, both sides of the split yielded wonderful work, but on different levels of popularity. 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bob Grumman 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 8:49 AM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery


  What Is Poetry




    The medievil town, with frieze
    Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow


    That comes when we wanted it to snow?
    Beautiful images? Trying to avoid


    Ideas as in this poem? But we
    Go back to them as to a wife, leaving


    The mistress we desire? Now they
    Will have to believe it,


    As we believe it. In school
    All the thought got combed out:


    What was left was like a field,
    Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.


    Now open them on a thin, vertical path,
    It might give us - what? - some flowers soon?


    This is a very nice poem (and, for me, "very nice" is intended as a large compliment).  It nicel illustrates the difference I see between poetry and prose.  Where prose would actually tell us what poetry is, this text--being poetry--uses the question of what poetry is to blossom us into unpredicted moments of beauty--without answering the question.

    --Bob G.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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  New-Poetry mailing list
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 16 11:28:51 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:28:51 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
In-Reply-To: <00ce01c4e37c$98a2c330$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C17173.8167.9D45AE@localhost>

Mike Snider wrote:
> Um, Bob, I think you should reconsider the claim in those first two
> lines, because the only meter here is syllabic (and that badly
> handled), and for good reason syllabics are not often used in English
> poetry.
 
Bob Grumman wrote:
> I would add that the arbitrary Byzantinism of the New-Formalists about
> the meter in their favored poems is as silly as that of those finding
> semantic meaning in various passages of Stein and Jorie Graham. 

No, Bob -- you have employed meter and written poetry, just not very 
good poetry. This is the hard part, really, of the liberal 
philosophy: telling people that they are responsible for their own 
work, and holding them accountable for it. You're so used to being 
able to write anything at all and call it poetry that you simply 
haven't got an ear for meter yet, especially not for writing it. It's 
not like writing prose and then chopping it up into lines; it's not 
like writing a sentence and then substituting mathematical operands 
for English grammar connectives, prefixes, and suffixes; there's 
actually an aesthetic of meter that you must engage with and master 
before you can write well within its demands. You're just not used to 
any demands on your writing beyond your own whims and caprices.  Keep 
working at it and you may get it. Of course, you may not, too.

In any event, it's not the case that it's not difficult to write well 
in meter. It's damned hard, and the aesthetic part is whether it's 
good or not, not whether it's poetry or prose. If you write in meter 
you make a different kind of demand on the reader's attention than 
you make if you write in prose, and that's why it seems to you, who 
haven't developed the ear for it, that meter is Byzantine. 

Marcus




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 11:54:12 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:54:12 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <BDE709B6.DE00%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <00e701c4e38f$deef4df0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> Look at how we even now speak of the best poets of the
>> 20th century: even David Graham says it's Yeats and Frost, not Pound
>> and Stein, though he throws Williams in there as a sop to conscience.
>
>
> Now you're mind-reading, Marcus:  wow again!  But always remember to use
> your Powers for good, OK?

I love, too, the way he says "even" David Graham, as though you're some kind 
of foaming free verser, David.

Hey, what happened to Wally in all this?  He's mainly a free verse poet, 
isn't he?  But he did first-rate metrical stuff, too.  He, Roethke and 
Cummings are my favorite pre-1950 poets in English.  All did formal verse. 
I'm not big on that of Cummings, but I know formalists who admire some of 
his metrical poems, and there are at least a couple that I like.  Yeats and 
Frost make my top ten.  Whitman doesn't make my top one hundred.  Nor does 
Tennyson.  Housman does, though.  Swinburne, too--who may have been the 
greatest formal versifier in English.  (That's just an impression; I've 
never studied the matter.)

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 11:57:52 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:57:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
References: <41C17173.8167.9D45AE@localhost>
Message-ID: <00f201c4e390$623bab90$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> Um, Bob, I think you should reconsider the claim in those first two
>> lines, because the only meter here is syllabic (and that badly
>> handled), and for good reason syllabics are not often used in English
>> poetry.
>
> Bob Grumman wrote:

Correction added.

>> I would add that the arbitrary Byzantinism of SOME New-Formalists about
>> the meter in their favored poems is as silly as that of those finding
>> semantic meaning in various passages of Stein and Jorie Graham.
>
> No, Bob -- you have employed meter and written poetry, just not very
> good poetry.

What kind of meter did I employ, Marcus?  I'm curious if your ear is as 
refined as Michael's.

 This is the hard part, really, of the liberal
> philosophy: telling people that they are responsible for their own
> work, and holding them accountable for it. You're so used to being
> able to write anything at all and call it poetry that you simply
> haven't got an ear for meter yet, especially not for writing it. It's
> not like writing prose and then chopping it up into lines; it's not
> like writing a sentence and then substituting mathematical operands
> for English grammar connectives, prefixes, and suffixes; there's
> actually an aesthetic of meter that you must engage with and master
> before you can write well within its demands. You're just not used to
> any demands on your writing beyond your own whims and caprices.  Keep
> working at it and you may get it. Of course, you may not, too.

> In any event, it's not the case that it's not difficult to write well
> in meter. It's damned hard, and the aesthetic part is whether it's
> good or not, not whether it's poetry or prose. If you write in meter
> you make a different kind of demand on the reader's attention than
> you make if you write in prose, and that's why it seems to you, who
> haven't developed the ear for it, that meter is Byzantine.

> Marcus

I think my poem sums up my reply.

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 12:02:14 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:02:14 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyWhat makes Ashbery work, at his best, is his music. It's the music that makes you care enough about his leaps and disconnects of sense to make you want to stay with them. Meter is one way of putting music into poems, and it's a wonderful way, but it's not guaranteed to work. Nor can we keep making the same kind of music over and over again. Energy starts bleeding out of it. You can't even appeal to the popularity of a style. Jazz lost its audience when Charlie Parker came on the scene, but it still had to happen. There wasn't enough new to be said in swing. So jazz split in two directions - Parker and Louis Jordan. One more difficult, one simpler. Metrical poetry did the same. Free verse, and popular song. In each case, both sides of the split yielded wonderful work, but on different levels of popularity. 


Music is my favorite art, but I sure don't see how Ashbery's "music" is what's good about his effective poems.  To me it's his imagery, and the unexpected but emotionally logical way he springs it on us (mainly through the use of the jump-cut and elegantly slant language).  Like the work of almost all the best poets and many poorer poets, his work has music, but I would claim that anyone who considers the music of poetry not background for what's most important in poetry is rather dead in the head.

--Bob G.
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 12:23:48 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:23:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
References: <41C166D2.1471.73C069@localhost>
Message-ID: <014301c4e394$01b0b780$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Yet Another Poem About Poetry

>> It isn't difficult to build a line
>> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
>> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
>> for which your readers will not you condemn.

> If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who can
> write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look at that
> word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
>
> Marcus

Wow, Marcus, while I have a low opinion of your understanding of lyrical 
poetry (which is nothing against you, personally), I've enjoyed most of your 
pieces of light verse, and the ones by others you've posted.  Hence, I'm 
rather startled that you weren't amused by my last line.  But I suppose your 
need to consider me dishonest and inept prevented you from realizing that 
I'm bright enough to make more than two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter 
without needing a preposterous inversion to do so.  (e.g., "it's much more 
tricky getting them to rhyme,/ at least a fair proportion of the time.")

The poem was an example, in part, of how easy it is to write proper metrical 
verse, whether embarrassing or not.
I suppose I should have made the first one, "It isn't very hard to build a 
line," to make someone like Michael admit that it's an iambic pentameter; 
unless the possible weak beat of the third syllable in "difficult" is not 
what made him say my first four lines were in "syllabic" meter.

By the way, I don't say that formal poets are afraid to do free verse 
because they need mechanical rules to follow; I think that's true for a few 
of them, but I think most of them sincerely feel that foraml verse is the 
best road to effective poetry.  Why can't you say the same about those 
writing free free verse?  And why is it so hard for you to believe some of 
those writing my kind of . . . texts do so mainly to make the best art they 
can rather than win awards or make a splash.  Sure, I for one would like to 
get more recognition, but--unless I'm severely self-deluded--my main aim by 
far is to make poems that I enjoy and believe SOME others may, too.  I 
believe this is true of everyone posting at New-Poetry, too, although I 
wonder about you, considering that you rarely or never mention that as a 
motive.

 --Bob G.




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec 16 12:24:38 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 18:24:38 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Crisman
References: <IFEJKAJEJBEOJGHBHOCHIEIIDBAA.cc@opus0.com>
Message-ID: <009c01c4e394$201ddef0$55ee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

What can I say? Thank you for taking my mail in consideration.

And as Hal says somewhere, My memory is quickly fading away and I couldn't
even remember I sent in that message, there is so much or so little to
comment on what you are saying that I will just send this mail as it is,

and well, we are waiting for Christmas up here, cold but less than
yesterday, which makes things easier.

Take care, anny

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

From: "Crisman Cooley" <cc at opus0.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 9:20 AM


> Anny,
> Two books have influenced me tremendously in my life (past & recent) and
> these correspond to what the structuralists called the expression plane
and
> content plane of language: 1. Silence, by John Cage and 2. The White
> Goddess, by Robert Graves.  As a musician, Cage's use of chance plays on
the
> expression plane, where music lives.  One of the difficulties of the
'limit
> cases' of 20C art-- such as Jarry's Ubu, Duchamp's Large Glass, Cage's
> 4'33", William's Paterson, Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, Beckett's Three
Novels,
> Stein's Making of the Americans (I don't think Ashbery belongs on the list
> of limit cases), others-- is that they do not encourage (purposely
perhaps)
> further experimentation in the same direction.  (Duchamp said, 'I am not a
> role model.')  Mac Low's use of chance on the content plane is another
> example I can read, yes, but not carry on.  These are traditions to end
all
> traditions.  Art at the end of civilization.  Terribly interesting, but
not
> at all encouraging.  However, there are many ways to use chance techniques
> and langpo-etics on the expression plane of language.  This leaves the
> question unanswered, so far as I know, by Ron Silliman and language
> poetics-- bless them and you Ron...I have been quite interested in your
> blog-- that is: what to do on the content plane, at the end of
civilization?
> Shall we blabber meaninglessly under the shadow of doom?  (I'm not making
> any predictions, by the way.  Just noting that we've thought the
> unthinkable.)  What do we do now that we know that every speech act is
> meaningless outside of the context of interpretation?    Enter Graves.
This
> thesis is hastily sketched.  (Haha.)  What is hollow and meaningless is
the
> patriarchy.  The patriarchal institutions.  Those
> political/religious/economic/military structures set up in the change from
a
> horticultural society to an agricultural one when men took control of the
> institutions (and I agree with Ken Wilbur, that women necessarily went
along
> with the change and that men did not like having to stay home from the
hunt
> to plow the field).  What is no longer meaningful is the cultural
> superstratum that lives on top of language, specifically those iconotropic
> (Graves' word) reinterpretations of Goddess mythology to serve the new
male
> cultural dominance-- immortalized in Judaic and Christian texts.  The
> suppression of the muse must have an impact on the production of texts she
> inspires.  What's weird is that we don't have any written text from before
> the patriarchal era.  (Do you know of one?  Maybe Sappho is outside its
> influence?  But that's a tatters.)  If you start with Homer, patriarchal
> institutions and glorification of war has already been going on for over
> 2,000 years.  So you have to look at the artifacts from 25,000 BCE to
3,000
> BCE collected by archaeologists like Gimbutas (dead now)...or you have to
> read between the lines of ancient texts, the way Graves does--well, did-- 
in
> The White Goddess.  His methods are decried even in the introduction to
his
> work in the Norton Anthology.  But personally, I think Graves is doing
> exactly the right thing, and a sorta revolutionary thing.  And Graves
comes
> right at a time in history when women can do the same heavy lifting as men
> because information is practically weightless.  Graves says poetry has a
> single Theme: 'Life and Death and what remains of the beloved'.  You have
to
> look at that several times before you can see it as a single theme.
> Revivification of the Muse-- outside of the ways sanctioned today for her
> worship (basically, slavering over ad copy)-- is an interesting approach
to
> ridding poetry of the effects of attempts by Puritan forebears and
offspring
> to rub her out of the world.  BTW, Mexico worships the Muse under guise of
> Catholicism in Our Lady of Guadalupe.  There is no such worship in
> Protestantism.  You have to go to Hooters.
>
> Disagree with Malo's reading of Graves: '...poetry is often a trance, a
> spontaneous pouring forth, an automatic writing if you will...'  Graves
> specifically disdains automatic writing.  And nowhere advocates trance
> states.  He does say that when the Gods ate ambrosia, they were eating
> psilocybin mushrooms.
>
> Enough, too much, for now.
>
> Crisman
>
>
> > Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:32:08 +0200
> > From: "Anny Ballardini" <anny.ballardini at tin.it>
> > Subject: [New-Poetry]
> >
> > I find this mail sent by Mary Jo Malo to the Buffalo list quite
> > interesting, :
> >
> > Poetry was originally both prophetic and eerie and has been elucidated
as
> > such by Robert Graves in his controversial tome, The White
> > Goddess. The ancient
> > Hebrew prophets and psalmists were poets in this tradition, and
> > even Thomas
> > Paine tried to explain this to a fledgling but Puritan America.
> > Epic warrior and
> > religious poetry in many cultures was often prophetic, and later
> > converted to
> > the romance cycle or perverted into secular law. I'm particularly
> > prejudiced
> > to Grave's work regarding the ancient oracle traditions, but I'm
> > completely
> > sympathetic with his recognition of the poet's (druid or
> > whatever) indebtedness
> > to a woman's dreams and intuition in their unconscious environment. In
the
> > finest Celtic tradition of the 'hywl', poetry is often a trance,
> > a spontaneous
> > pouring forth, an automatic writing if you will. Poets teach
> > themselves and by
> > extension anyone else who wants to know. Yes, we can craft and
> > perfect, but the
> > content is 'inspired' and most often reflects the poetic theme:
> > life, death
> > and what remains of the beloved. Poets make connections, and that they
can
> > transcend time shouldn't surprise us.
> > ___________________________________________
> >
> > Anny Ballardini
> > http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
> > http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> > The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to
> > gather admirers.
> > Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
> >
> > -------------- next part --------------
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> > URL:
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20041021/d
> b26ab10/attachment.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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>
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> *****************************************
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From tad at opus40.org  Thu Dec 16 12:28:27 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:28:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <003901c4e394$ab2bdce0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyBob - this is purely personal. To me, Ashbery swings, Jorie Graham doesn't. And that's what pulls me into his work.


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bob Grumman 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 12:02 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery


  What makes Ashbery work, at his best, is his music. It's the music that makes you care enough about his leaps and disconnects of sense to make you want to stay with them. Meter is one way of putting music into poems, and it's a wonderful way, but it's not guaranteed to work. Nor can we keep making the same kind of music over and over again. Energy starts bleeding out of it. You can't even appeal to the popularity of a style. Jazz lost its audience when Charlie Parker came on the scene, but it still had to happen. There wasn't enough new to be said in swing. So jazz split in two directions - Parker and Louis Jordan. One more difficult, one simpler. Metrical poetry did the same. Free verse, and popular song. In each case, both sides of the split yielded wonderful work, but on different levels of popularity. 


  Music is my favorite art, but I sure don't see how Ashbery's "music" is what's good about his effective poems.  To me it's his imagery, and the unexpected but emotionally logical way he springs it on us (mainly through the use of the jump-cut and elegantly slant language).  Like the work of almost all the best poets and many poorer poets, his work has music, but I would claim that anyone who considers the music of poetry not background for what's most important in poetry is rather dead in the head.

  --Bob G.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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From grahamd at ripon.edu  Thu Dec 16 12:34:11 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:34:11 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
In-Reply-To: <005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <BDE72333.DE0C%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/16/04 10:00 AM, The Old Mole at tad at opus40.org wrote:

What makes Ashbery work, at his best, is his music. It's the music that
makes you care enough about his leaps and disconnects of sense to make you
want to stay with them. Meter is one way of putting music into poems, and
it's a wonderful way, but it's not guaranteed to work. Nor can we keep
making the same kind of music over and over again. Energy starts bleeding
out of it. You can't even appeal to the popularity of a style. Jazz lost its
audience when Charlie Parker came on the scene, but it still had to happen.
There wasn't enough new to be said in swing. So jazz split in two directions
- Parker and Louis Jordan. One more difficult, one simpler. Metrical poetry
did the same. Free verse, and popular song. In each case, both sides of the
split yielded wonderful work, but on different levels of popularity.
==========

Absolutely, Tad, and well put.

I'd add to the musical analogy one more thought--not in disagreement, just
amplification.  Evolution is never just an arrow pointing one way.  Seems to
me that the process of artistic development *always* works recursively.
Musicians and poets are always returning to the past for ideas on which to
build, constructing fresh combinations from the "same" old materials.
Ashbery, for instance, is always poaching from the past in various ways.

Meanwhile, while it's inevitable that styles change over time, individual
artists, through their own skill and imagination, can keep on keeping on
even when out of step with fashion.

So, while it was arguably necessary for bop to shake up the world of swing,
and inevitable in any case, given the way things work, many players (e.g.
Ben Webster) could & did sail right on making wonderful music in the "old"
idiom, just as later musicians would find ways of reviving and making new
older styles.  

No reason to be forced to choose between W. C. Williams and Robert Frost,
I've always thought, and even if Richard Wilbur is akin to Ben Webster in
1958, well, that's just fine with me.  We should all be so blessed.

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 12:35:06 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:35:06 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<003901c4e394$ab2bdce0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <015c01c4e395$95d8eb70$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyBob - this is purely personal. To me, Ashbery swings, Jorie Graham doesn't. And that's what pulls me into his work.

I have no problem with that, but you sounded like you were saying that its music is its prime value.  That I can't understand.  Sort of like listening to opera for its verbal content.

--Bob G.
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From tad at opus40.org  Thu Dec 16 12:38:19 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:38:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Keep the Meter Running
References: <41C166D2.1471.73C069@localhost>
	<014301c4e394$01b0b780$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <001a01c4e396$0c547e40$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

I wonder - does anyone here except me write extensively in both meter and 
free verse, and if so, might it be fruitful to discuss why? What makes a 
poem go one way or the other? How do you decide? How do you approach them 
differently?

I'm actually doing something at the moment that I've never done before. I 
was looking over an old poem of mine, originally written in a nonmetrical 
form, that I sorta liked, but nowhere near enough. I started playing around 
with putting it into rhyme and meter. I've done that before. But I wasn't 
liking it any better. Then - and this is the new part - I decided to try 
taking it in completely the opposite direction, and making it prose - a 
short story. I'm liking it better this way, and am going to continue with 
it. 




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec 16 12:45:12 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 18:45:12 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] From PoemHunter
Message-ID: <00cd01c4e396$fec59e20$55ee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

1914 

War broke: and now the Winter of the world 
With perishing great darkness closes in. 
The foul tornado, centred at Berlin, 
Is over all the width of Europe whirled, 
Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled 
Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin 
Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin. 
The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled. 

For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece, 
And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome, 
An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home, 
A slow grand age, and rich with all increase. 
But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need 
Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed. 

Wilfred Owen 



Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From tad at opus40.org  Thu Dec 16 12:47:52 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:47:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><003901c4e394$ab2bdce0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<015c01c4e395$95d8eb70$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <004601c4e397$5fd7edd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyA friend and mentor of mine, when I was very young, told me that she loved the blues, but she never listened to the words. I said, "That's like loving Rubens, but not noticing the nudes." She said, "I do that too."


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bob Grumman 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 12:35 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery


  Bob - this is purely personal. To me, Ashbery swings, Jorie Graham doesn't. And that's what pulls me into his work.

  I have no problem with that, but you sounded like you were saying that its music is its prime value.  That I can't understand.  Sort of like listening to opera for its verbal content.

  --Bob G.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 13:00:53 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 13:00:53 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><003901c4e394$ab2bdce0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><015c01c4e395$95d8eb70$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<004601c4e397$5fd7edd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <019701c4e399$2ffa49d0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyA friend and mentor of mine, when I was very young, told me that she loved the blues, but she never listened to the words. I said, "That's like loving Rubens, but not noticing the nudes." She said, "I do that too."
  But you sounded like you were saying, in effect,  that you loved the blues but ONLY listened to the words, Mole.  (I don't listen to the words in opera, by the way.)

  --Bob 
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From tad at opus40.org  Thu Dec 16 13:21:12 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 13:21:12 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><003901c4e394$ab2bdce0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><015c01c4e395$95d8eb70$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><004601c4e397$5fd7edd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<019701c4e399$2ffa49d0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <001a01c4e39c$07e15df0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyIf I sounded that way, it was inadvertent, and no doubt my failure to communicate. I meant to say that the music was what drew me in to Ashbery.

And as for my friend and mentor, Noelle Gillmor, long dead and as profoundly admired by me today as back then, I wasn't putting her down either. I didn't take her literally, but I remember her words fondly. They let me know that we do all perceive things differently.

Any verbal art, from poetry to singing to novels to theater, is linear. Visual arts are not, in the same way. Brion Gysin aside, there's really only one way to read a poem. You start with the first word, and then you read the second, and so on until you come to the end of a line. Then you make a little mental check (how little or how great varies with the intent of the poet and the sensibility of the reader) and you go on to the next line. Everyone who reads the second line of a poem has one thing in common - they're all people who have read the first line. And when you read the second line of a poem, you come to it as a slightly different person than you were a few minutes ago - you are now a person who has read, and reacted to, the first line of a poem. With a painting, it's different. Some will see the splashes of color first, some will see the trees in the foreground, some will see the naked chick under the tree.

So if you're a literary person, and accustomed to a certain linearity of perception, it's good to be reminded from time that there are other perceptions.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bob Grumman 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 1:00 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery


  A friend and mentor of mine, when I was very young, told me that she loved the blues, but she never listened to the words. I said, "That's like loving Rubens, but not noticing the nudes." She said, "I do that too."
    But you sounded like you were saying, in effect,  that you loved the blues but ONLY listened to the words, Mole.  (I don't listen to the words in opera, by the way.)

    --Bob 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 14:01:06 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 14:01:06 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><003901c4e394$ab2bdce0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><015c01c4e395$95d8eb70$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><004601c4e397$5fd7edd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><019701c4e399$2ffa49d0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<001a01c4e39c$07e15df0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <01d201c4e3a1$996db480$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyIf I sounded that way, it was inadvertent, and no doubt my failure to communicate. I meant to say that the music was what drew me in to Ashbery.

And as for my friend and mentor, Noelle Gillmor, long dead and as profoundly admired by me today as back then, I wasn't putting her down either. I didn't take her literally, but I remember her words fondly. They let me know that we do all perceive things differently.

Any verbal art, from poetry to singing to novels to theater, is linear. Visual arts are not, in the same way. Brion Gysin aside, 

Actually, Mole, it's a lot more than Brion Gysin who are aside here, for you're forgetting visual poetry.


there's really only one way to read a poem. You start with the first word, and then you read the second, and so on until you come to the end of a line. Then you make a little mental check (how little or how great varies with the intent of the poet and the sensibility of the reader) and you go on to the next line. Everyone who reads the second line of a poem has one thing in common - they're all people who have read the first line. And when you read the second line of a poem, you come to it as a slightly different person than you were a few minutes ago - you are now a person who has read, and reacted to, the first line of a poem. With a painting, it's different. Some will see the splashes of color first, some will see the trees in the foreground, some will see the naked chick under the tree.

So if you're a literary person, and accustomed to a certain linearity of perception, it's good to be reminded from time that there are other perceptions.

You make good points, but are probably not entirely accurate (though close enough for practical purposes).  I, for instance, don't necessarily read anything, even prose, one word after another, but stop at times, and sometimes retreat.  But, basically, yes, it's the words in order, one after another.

--Bob G.
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec 16 14:19:45 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:19:45 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
References: <a05100300bde625c905a9@[204.215.202.34]><003b01c4e376$0177a1c0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005501c4e388$529720f0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><010101c4e390$fed82370$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><003901c4e394$ab2bdce0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><015c01c4e395$95d8eb70$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><004601c4e397$5fd7edd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><019701c4e399$2ffa49d0$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<001a01c4e39c$07e15df0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <006801c4e3a4$343a3c70$55ee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyIf I may continue Tad, 

the more paintings you have seen, the more interested you are in painting,

the more details you can see, and it becomes more complex, and new images open up to what is already a fanciful imagery,

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: The Old Mole 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 7:21 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery


  If I sounded that way, it was inadvertent, and no doubt my failure to communicate. I meant to say that the music was what drew me in to Ashbery.

  And as for my friend and mentor, Noelle Gillmor, long dead and as profoundly admired by me today as back then, I wasn't putting her down either. I didn't take her literally, but I remember her words fondly. They let me know that we do all perceive things differently.

  Any verbal art, from poetry to singing to novels to theater, is linear. Visual arts are not, in the same way. Brion Gysin aside, there's really only one way to read a poem. You start with the first word, and then you read the second, and so on until you come to the end of a line. Then you make a little mental check (how little or how great varies with the intent of the poet and the sensibility of the reader) and you go on to the next line. Everyone who reads the second line of a poem has one thing in common - they're all people who have read the first line. And when you read the second line of a poem, you come to it as a slightly different person than you were a few minutes ago - you are now a person who has read, and reacted to, the first line of a poem. With a painting, it's different. Some will see the splashes of color first, some will see the trees in the foreground, some will see the naked chick under the tree.

  So if you're a literary person, and accustomed to a certain linearity of perception, it's good to be reminded from time that there are other perceptions.
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Thu Dec 16 13:43:24 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 13:43:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery
In-Reply-To: <001a01c4e39c$07e15df0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyTad, I think that in a recent issue of the
New Yorker there's a Robert Pinsky
poem (now there's a radical for you) written so that the lines can be read
in
any order at all.

Hal
  Any verbal art, from poetry to singing to novels to theater, is linear.
Visual arts are not, in the same way. Brion Gysin aside, there's really only
one way to read a poem. You start with the first word, and then you read the
second, and so on until you come to the end of a line. Then you make a
little mental check (how little or how great varies with the intent of the
poet and the sensibility of the reader) and you go on to the next line.
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 16 15:08:52 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:08:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
In-Reply-To: <014301c4e394$01b0b780$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C1A504.9658.4CB588@localhost>

> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
> 
Marcus wrote:
> > If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who can
> > write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look at
> > that word-inversion to get to the rhyme.

On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
> ... I've
> enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the ones by others
> you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that you weren't amused 
by
> my last line.<

There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to 
nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more 
amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and 
doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being amusing; 
it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work. 

Only if you were going to be trying for the Julia A. Moore Award for 
worst metrical poetry would the notion of word inversions to get a 
rhyme be possibly funny -- and then only if you could show that you 
had no idea why it was wrong. Now THAT would be funny!

But I suppose that your notion that word inversion to get a rhyme is 
funny might be evidence that shows that you don't know why word in 
version to get a rhyme is bad work. Perhaps I could be persuaded that 
it was funny after all, if I could come to believe that you really 
think that word inversion to get a rhyme is really "perfect meter".

On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>... I'm bright enough to make more
> than two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter without needing a
> preposterous inversion to do so.<

Oh, okay, then, not funny after all. 

On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
> The poem was an example, in part, of how easy it is to write proper
> metrical verse, whether embarrassing or not.<

The issue has never been how hard it is to write "metrical verse 
whether embarrassing or not", Bob. The issue is how hard it is to 
write metrical verse that's not embarrassing. It's as easy to write 
bad metrical as bad free verse -- it's just easier to tell when bad 
metrical verse is bad. We didn't really need another example of bad 
metrical verse -- there are plenty of them, which is why your bad 
example wasn't funny.

On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
> By the way, I don't say that formal poets are afraid to do free 
> verse because they need mechanical rules to follow; I think that's
> true for a few of them, but I think most of them sincerely feel
> that formal verse is the best road to effective poetry.  Why can't
> you say the same about those writing free free verse?<

Because I think it's not true. Most of those writing free verse have 
the same kinds of problems you have demonstrated in your unfunny bad 
example for meter, and they either know it or suspect it, so they 
avoid meter and thus poetry in favor of free verse. Who can blame 
them? 

On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
> And why is it so hard for
> you to believe some of those writing my kind of . . . texts do so
> mainly to make the best art they can rather than win awards or make
> a splash.<

I have no objection to you writing your kind of texts, or any of 
those other folks writing their kinds of prose. But why fight to call 
it "poetry" when it's clearly nothing of the kind? It's not in meter, 
so it's not poetry. It may be startling, it may be excellent art 
indeed, but it's not poetry -- what's the big deal about that? Well, 
the big deal is, of course, that calling it poetry legitimizes it in 
a way that calling it "texts" or "prose" or "diary entries" or 
"newspaper column anecdotes" doesn't, that's why. Calling it poetry 
is the same kind of political tactic to legitimize bad work as 
calling a bill to gut environmental standards "The Clean Air Act" is.

> Sure, I for one would like to get more recognition,
> but--unless I'm severely self-deluded--my main aim by far is to
> make poems that I enjoy and believe SOME others may, too. <

Again, why call your texts "poems"? You're the neologism man, Bob -- 
come up with a new name that takes into account that poems are in 
meter and everything else is not poetry. As long as you and others 
continue to insist you write poems without writing in meter I'll 
continue to suspect you, and everyone else who claims to write poems 
but who doesn't write in meter, of only wanting to call what you, or 
they, do "poetry" in an effort to make your work appear to be more 
important or more significant than it would appear if it were called 
by its right name.

Marcus








From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec 16 16:36:24 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:36:24 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Michael Rothenberg
Message-ID: <010301c4e3b7$4ad6fbe0$55ee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

For those who do not know yet, Michael Rothenberg is going through a major disaster, Vernon Frazer is keeping the Buffalo List updated on what is happening, if anybody wants to help financially they can contact Suzi Winson at:

mailto:fishdrum at earthlink.net

or if there are any personal messages one can send them directly to Vernon Frazer at:

frazerv at bellsouth.net

Mairead Byrne suggested one should send books to Michael, some other one that we should wait until he has a place where to put them. I think Mairead is wonderful. 
_____________________________________
Shelldance Nursery owners' home destroyed

By Elaine Larsen

A lifetime of original and collected artwook, rare books, poetry and
manuscripts literally went up in smoke when fire broke out late Friday
afternoon at the home of Nancy Davis and Michael Rothenberg - longtime
owners and operators of Shelldance Nursery at the base of Sweeney Ridge in
Vallemar.
The sight of the giant plume of thick black smoke rising high above the
highway on the landmark hill startled many commuters who immediately
realized it was coming from the couple's home, nestled in the trees below
the brightly colored, more visible greenhouses.
Firefighters and Police began getting emergency calls about the giant
structure fire at about 4:05 p.m. The phones at the Police Department were
literally ringing off the hook with callers trying to report the blaze.

Although six fire trucks from Pacifica, Daly City and San Bruno raced to the
scene as fast as they could, thick after-school traffic clogged the highway
and slowed them down. Police completely stopped northbound traffic so
emergency vehicles could cross over before the divider to reach the
Shelldance driveway, normally only accessible from the northbound lanes.
Other fire trucks came in from the south, with firefighters laying on the
horn to move aside the path of backed-up cars.
Once on the scene, firefighters faced the problem of getting their hoses up
the steep, twisting driveway. While there are some low-pressure water pipes
at the upper greenhouses, there is no hydrant on the grounds.
"One of the problems we had was that the closest fire hydrant is in front of
the police station. We emptied two complete fire truck hose beds, laying out
1,800 total feet of hose from the hydrant to the house," said Pacifica Fire
Marshal Steve Brandvold. "The remoteness of the house and the time it took
to lay that amount of hose made this a tough fire to battle. And the timing
was unbelievable. It couldn't have been worse. By the time we got on scene,
the house was fully involved."
By the time the 29 firefighters could assemble their hoses and gear, the
fire had already done major damage to the house. It took more than 20
minutes before they could get the fire contained and extinguished.
The flames were largely confined to one of the bedrooms, burning off the
roof and down through the floor. However, thick, black, intensely hot smoke
poured through the enclosed house, charring everything in its path and
leaving grimy black residue on the walls, surfaces and windows. Whole
shelves full of books were burned black on the outside, their pages
crumbling with a touch.
The couple's son, Cosmos, 13, and two high school-age buddies had just come
home from school and discovered the fire. Both the youngsters and Cosmos'
two 12-week-old German Shepherd littermate puppies, Blaze and Layla, were
outside when firefighters arrived.
"We pretty much lost everything," said Nancy Davis, stunned by the enormous
loss. The family is staying at the Holiday Inn Express in Rockaway Beach
while sorting out insurance paperwork and conferring with the National Park
Service, which owns the entire property and buildings and leases to the
couple. A close friend has lent them an RV to park on the grounds to give
them a retreat during the day.
"The Park Service extends its sympathy to Nancy and Michael," said Christine
Powell, spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Service. "Our
staff is extending our sympathy and support. We want to extend any
assistance we can."
An internal Park Service investigation is underway this week, and Powell
said more information was needed "to determine how best to move forward." A
comprehensive General Management Plan for the GGNRA has already begun, and
it will eventually include a long-term determination for the future of
Shelldance Nursery. "We will look at the future of Shelldance," said Powell.
"But right now, we are concerned for the welfare of Nancy and her family and
how best we can care for them."
"Right now, I'm just trying to get my feet stable," said Davis. "I've had a
devastation, but I have a lot of love around me. People have been so
courteous and thoughtful and that has been the most wonderful thing. It's
really helped keep me together."
Davis and Michael Rothenberg have lived in Pacifica for more than 25 years,
taking over the 1940s greenhouses and cultivating it into Shelldance
Nursery. In their early years, they focused on bromeliads and created what
was once the largest private collection in the United States. in 1995, about
a third of the collection - some 30,000 plants - were purchased by the
government of Singapore to form the core of The Royal Botanic Gardens of
Singapore.
Since then, Shelldance has shifted solely to orchids, although it has been
greatly expanded as both an art gallery and rainforest exhibit that draws
visitors every weekend. Davis frequently hosts school tours and
environmental outreach programs. The National Park Service's Mori Ridge
Trailhead leading up to Sweeney Ridge is at the base of the hill next to the
greenhouses which draw people up the Shelldance driveway by car, foot and
bicycle.
Locally, Rothenberg and Davis are known not only for their work at
Shelldance, but also for their environmental activism as core members of
Pacificans For Mori Point, the grassroots group that pushed for the
protection of Mori Point, the coastal hill directly across from Shelldance.
"They were very key players in Mori Point eventually becoming acquired by
the GGNRA," said former Mayor and close friend, Peter Loeb. "What started
the revolution in this community was a plan for 280 condos on Mori Point.
That lead to a referendum, election of a new majority of the City Council
and the grassroots, Pacificans For Mori Point. Michael and Nancy have
certainly been a focal point for the work to expand GGNRA's boundaries to
include Mori Point. And that nursery is a magical place that draws a lot of
visitors."
Likewise, the couple's home reflected their artistic and environmental
sensibilities. The walls of the spacious living room were literally "a
canvas" for their collective artwork - Davis' paintings and Rothenberg's
poetry and other writings. Cosmos lost his treasured bass guitar, video
games and a prized collection of Buddhas, crosses and other religious
artifacts from his travels, including a memento from a trip to Ireland's St.
Patrick's Cathedral.
"I lost early drafts, manuscripts, whole collections of books," said
Rothenberg, who was away at a poetry reading event in New York when he heard
the devastating news. "The whole house was like a canvas - of my words and
Nancy's pictures. This whole thing is surreal, like being in a dream. Losing
your sense of home and place in the world is a real trauma on a primal
subconscious level. I find myself stopping strangers on the street and
telling them 'my house burned down. Can you believe it?' The only thing
that's keeping us going is the response of our friends. I'm grateful to
everyone for being so supportive."
"This just isn't fair. It's a severe blow and they don't deserve it," said
John Curtis, a longtime friend of the couple who works at the nursery on
weekends. "Nancy and Michael have contributed so much to Pacifica over the
years. I hope the community rallies behind them. They will need all the
support they can get to rebuild and maintain Shelldance as the vital and
human face of the National Park to Pacificans and visitors.
"Nancy has created a warm and welcoming environment of rainforest plants and
orchids. She gives tours to elementary classes, senior groups and orchid
clubs. She even built a stage in the events center to host weddings,
birthday parties and special events. Nancy also created an art gallery to
feature local artists that has been a big success. We get visitors from
every state and from countries around the world."
In fact, what happens next is uncertain since the property - including the
house - is owned by the National Park Service. The property's ownership was
transferred many years ago from Caltrans, which had once intended it for an
expansion of Highway 380, to the National Park Service, a complicated
process that took the intervention of state politicians. Rothenberg and
Davis were able to negotiate a lease agreement with the Park Service that
has been in effect since.
"There is a lot of concern that the Park Service do right by these tenants
and not jeopardize their ability to stay in business, both at Shelldance
Nursery and in their stewardship role as well," said good friend, Ann
Edminster. "Everyone feels the same - we need them to stay there. That land
is a real asset to the Park Service and the fact it has not been vandalized
or dumped on unlike Milagra Ridge is because Nancy is there 24/7 as a
caretakers," she said.
"These aren't just your average citizens losing their average home. They
been stewards of a public resource for a long time and have done a
phenomenal job. There's a mutual benefit relationship between the Park
Service, Shelldance and the community."
Edminster said she and others have already begun talking about ways people
can help. Fire Marshal Brandvold estimates a $400,000 loss of building and
another $100,000 property loss.
"We've had a lot of emails from people willing to lend their help and
skills. But even if their insurance covers the contents of the house, how do
you put a dollar amount of rare book, manuscripts, works of art and
collections of a lifetime. All the living creatures are safe, thank God. But
losing a home is like a sudden and unexpected death. Fortunately, people are
very compassionate. That's the good part."
As for Nancy, Michael and Cosmos, Davis said they're all just trying to keep
it simple for now.
"The first thing that ran through my mind is 'Is my son OK?'" she said. "The
most important thing is we all survived. All this outpouring of support is
giving me inspiration and energy. I look down at my hands and think, I'm
still here. I can do another painting. Like the Phoenix, there is life after
the ashes."
Shelldance Nursery continues to remain open for visitors and customers every
weekend. Ann Edminster has offered to match helpers with needs as the family
identifies them. Email Edminster at avedminster at earthlink.net for more
information. Please do not call.

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 16 16:50:35 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:50:35 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
Message-ID: <41C1BCDB.16445.A9D3C1@localhost>

> >> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
> >> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
> >> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
> >> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
> >> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
> >>
> > Marcus wrote:
>>>> If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who 
>>>>can write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look
>>>> at that word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
> >
> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> ... I've enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the
>>> ones by others you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that
>>> you weren't amused by my last line.<
> >
> > There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to
> > nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more
> > amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and
> > doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being
> > amusing; it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work.

On 16 Dec 2004 at 16:21, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Of course, it's perfect meter in this case: meter has to do with
> strong and weak accents.  The content is irrelevant.<

If content were irrelevant in your example, then your example should 
have been along the lines of:

Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard,

but you didn't write something like that where the argument that 
content was irrelevant might be believable. Instead you tried to 
follow the rules of English grammar and sense right up to where you 
inverted the ordinary order of words to get a rhyme, and when you 
were caught at it, you tried to pretend that you didn't mean to make 
sense in the first place -- as if all those other words in that 
meter, with those rhymes, and that sentence structure, were merely a 
random manifestation that came to you out of nowhere. It beggars 
belief. 

The claim that perfect meter is easy to write if content is 
meaningless is a claim no one will dispute -- because there is a very 
large number indeed of ways to indicate basic iambic meter without 
worrying about content. The essence of the thing, of course, about 
poetry is that the content is not irrelevant. Meter is necessary but 
not sufficient, as Michael has already pointed out. 

> You're repeating yourself.  I've told you why I call it poetry:
> it's because it seems logical to call it that.  I think there may
> be an iota of merit in calling it not poetry, but it is insane to
> say that it is therefore prose.

You're the neologism man, Bob -- call it something else, just don't 
call it poetry, because it's not.
 
> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
> I call it poetry because I think it is.  Why should I let you
> determine what I call it?  But don't worry: in any book I write on
> poetry, I'll let the reader know that when I use the term, I'm
> using my definition of it, which I will give.

But Bob by your flow-breaks definition any address on an envelope, 
any business letter, all this email we've been sending back and 
forth, is poetry because it's ragged-right, and what is a flow-break 
but ragged-right typography? Once you're willing to let your 
definition become meaningless by a built-in absurdity, you've 
abandoned reasonableness with regard to your definition. Your 
definition of poetry is absurd. Mine has the virtues of clarity and 
ease of use. 

Marcus





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 17:12:04 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:12:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
References: <41C1BCDB.16445.A9D3C1@localhost>
Message-ID: <023d01c4e3bc$46a63130$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Marcus, check your computer: you're double-sending messages.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 4:50 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem


>> >> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> >> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
>> >> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
>> >> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
>> >> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
>> >> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
>> >>
>> > Marcus wrote:
>>>>> If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who 
>>>>>can write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look
>>>>> at that word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
>> >
>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>> ... I've enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the
>>>> ones by others you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that
>>>> you weren't amused by my last line.<
>> >
>> > There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to
>> > nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more
>> > amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and
>> > doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being
>> > amusing; it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work.
> 
> On 16 Dec 2004 at 16:21, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Of course, it's perfect meter in this case: meter has to do with
>> strong and weak accents.  The content is irrelevant.<
> 
> If content were irrelevant in your example, then your example should 
> have been along the lines of:
> 
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard,
> 
> but you didn't write something like that where the argument that 
> content was irrelevant might be believable. Instead you tried to 
> follow the rules of English grammar and sense right up to where you 
> inverted the ordinary order of words to get a rhyme, and when you 
> were caught at it, you tried to pretend that you didn't mean to make 
> sense in the first place -- as if all those other words in that 
> meter, with those rhymes, and that sentence structure, were merely a 
> random manifestation that came to you out of nowhere. It beggars 
> belief. 
> 
> The claim that perfect meter is easy to write if content is 
> meaningless is a claim no one will dispute -- because there is a very 
> large number indeed of ways to indicate basic iambic meter without 
> worrying about content. The essence of the thing, of course, about 
> poetry is that the content is not irrelevant. Meter is necessary but 
> not sufficient, as Michael has already pointed out. 
> 
>> You're repeating yourself.  I've told you why I call it poetry:
>> it's because it seems logical to call it that.  I think there may
>> be an iota of merit in calling it not poetry, but it is insane to
>> say that it is therefore prose.
> 
> You're the neologism man, Bob -- call it something else, just don't 
> call it poetry, because it's not.
> 
>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> I call it poetry because I think it is.  Why should I let you
>> determine what I call it?  But don't worry: in any book I write on
>> poetry, I'll let the reader know that when I use the term, I'm
>> using my definition of it, which I will give.
> 
> But Bob by your flow-breaks definition any address on an envelope, 
> any business letter, all this email we've been sending back and 
> forth, is poetry because it's ragged-right, and what is a flow-break 
> but ragged-right typography? Once you're willing to let your 
> definition become meaningless by a built-in absurdity, you've 
> abandoned reasonableness with regard to your definition. Your 
> definition of poetry is absurd. Mine has the virtues of clarity and 
> ease of use. 
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 16 17:26:44 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:26:44 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
In-Reply-To: <023d01c4e3bc$46a63130$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C1C554.13135.CAECF4@localhost>

I mistakenly sent one to you alone, and then re-sent it to the list.
M


On 16 Dec 2004 at 17:12, Bob Grumman wrote:

> Marcus, check your computer: you're double-sending messages.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
> To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 4:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
> 
> 
> >> >> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> >> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
> >> >> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
> >> >> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
> >> >> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
> >> >> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
> >> >>
> >> > Marcus wrote:
> >>>>> If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who 
> >>>>>can write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look
> >>>>> at that word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
> >> >
> >> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >>>> ... I've enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the ones
> >>>> by others you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that you
> >>>> weren't amused by my last line.<
> >> >
> >> > There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to
> >> > nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more
> >> > amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and
> >> > doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being
> >> > amusing; it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work.
> > 
> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 16:21, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> Of course, it's perfect meter in this case: meter has to do with
> >> strong and weak accents.  The content is irrelevant.<
> > 
> > If content were irrelevant in your example, then your example should
> > have been along the lines of:
> > 
> > Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> > Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> > Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> > Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard,
> > 
> > but you didn't write something like that where the argument that
> > content was irrelevant might be believable. Instead you tried to
> > follow the rules of English grammar and sense right up to where you
> > inverted the ordinary order of words to get a rhyme, and when you
> > were caught at it, you tried to pretend that you didn't mean to make
> > sense in the first place -- as if all those other words in that
> > meter, with those rhymes, and that sentence structure, were merely a
> > random manifestation that came to you out of nowhere. It beggars
> > belief. 
> > 
> > The claim that perfect meter is easy to write if content is 
> > meaningless is a claim no one will dispute -- because there is a
> > very large number indeed of ways to indicate basic iambic meter
> > without worrying about content. The essence of the thing, of course,
> > about poetry is that the content is not irrelevant. Meter is
> > necessary but not sufficient, as Michael has already pointed out. 
> > 
> >> You're repeating yourself.  I've told you why I call it poetry:
> >> it's because it seems logical to call it that.  I think there may
> >> be an iota of merit in calling it not poetry, but it is insane to
> >> say that it is therefore prose.
> > 
> > You're the neologism man, Bob -- call it something else, just don't
> > call it poetry, because it's not.
> > 
> >> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> I call it poetry because I think it is.  Why should I let you
> >> determine what I call it?  But don't worry: in any book I write on
> >> poetry, I'll let the reader know that when I use the term, I'm
> >> using my definition of it, which I will give.
> > 
> > But Bob by your flow-breaks definition any address on an envelope,
> > any business letter, all this email we've been sending back and
> > forth, is poetry because it's ragged-right, and what is a flow-break
> > but ragged-right typography? Once you're willing to let your
> > definition become meaningless by a built-in absurdity, you've
> > abandoned reasonableness with regard to your definition. Your
> > definition of poetry is absurd. Mine has the virtues of clarity and
> > ease of use. 
> > 
> > Marcus
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 





From lesrho at fullnet.net  Thu Dec 16 21:36:12 2004
From: lesrho at fullnet.net (LesRho)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:36:12 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] LUVUBYE as a parting Greeting
Message-ID: <002901c4e3e1$3ce083b0$3019e2d8@retiredud69srz>

       Abbreviating Goodbye                                         

Goodbyes are what is said
To those we love alive or dead

I recently heard someone say
That goodbye meant "have a good day"

Precisely; go in peace in God's name
Or some such phrase that meant the same

But lately God has been left out
Of exit greetings;sometimes shout

Computerese greetings seem like a lie
When all we close with is "luvubye'

It's doubtful God ,really gives a care
That our goodbyes aren't real or fair

What I thought I first heard I wondered why
Anyone would close memos with a lullaby

Do we mix good words from lack of time
>From laziness or to find words thar rhyme?

We've adjusted to pc's and what they've done
Has such as luvubyes for endings, just begun?
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 16 21:42:07 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:42:07 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem, Improved--I Think
References: <41C1BCDB.16445.A9D3C1@localhost>
	<023d01c4e3bc$46a63130$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
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Yet Another Poem About Poetry

It isn't very hard to build a line
or two in meter, such as these of mine;
it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them 
for which your readers will not you condemn.

But none of the height
of poems at their best
has anything to do with rhyme or meter.
It results from wheres,
wheres rich and wrong enough
to slow one's senses worlds away
from the long-sung-inert, flat layer
that received reality 
so dismally is.




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 06:09:42 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 06:09:42 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
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Message-ID: <00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyMy impression is that poetry in English was for centuries what I call "repenemical," or having rhyme of some sort, if we loosely consider (for the sake of this discussion only) alliteration and the like to be rhyming.  So, using stasguard reasoning, according to which tradition rules, however stultified and illogical, poetry ought to consist only of metered texts which also possess rhyme or the equivalent.  Blank verse should not count, because it didn't come into English until 1540, according to the Princeton Dictionary.

Also, while meter is natural (I'm almost certain we're wired to speak rhythmically), repenemicry is not, so mere meter is more prose-related than rhymes and the equivalent.  Certainly, blank verse is a step toward free 
verse.

While on the subject, I think it might shed light on why poets use free verse to consider why blank verse came into use.  The Princeton says Surrey introduced it with a translation of the Aeneid.  It would seem to me that he 
did so mainly because it was, as the stasguards contend, easier.  Rhyming is hard in English, fresh rhymes near-impossible to find for poems of any length, at all, or became so once a semi-substantial body of rhymed work existed in English.

I believe, however, that blank verse had its real  beginning, its formidable beginning, in English Drama, and I think it took over there not only because it was easier than rhymed verse but because rhymes muffled drama.  A spectator could flow with a playwright's meter AND focusedly empathize with his characters' plights but rhymes would distract him from the latter--at least after a while.  So, a main reason for blank verse, and--later--for 
free verse, is to unmuffle other effects.  To feel unornamented.  This is a strong motive behind the use of free verse, as well.  I believe a poet needs to tell the members of his audience that they are in a poem.  The question is, how emphatically should he tell them?  If you only have rhymed metrical verse, you will eventually tell them too overtly, so you drop rhyme; if you only have metrical verse, you will eventually tell them too overtly, so will drop meter.

The advantage is that once a text can declare that it is a poem without meter, its having meter will again become fresh.

--Bob G.

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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 06:25:04 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 06:25:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Differences Between Prose and Poetry
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"What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery1.  for me, the biggest difference between what I call poetry and prose is that poetry uses (and emphasizes) figurative language to evoke physical and emotional ambiences whereas prose mostly uses figurative language to explain, and uses it for any reason less than poetry does.

2.  lineation (and the equivalent "flow-breaks," I speak of in my taxonomy) which poetry has, prose doesn't

3. meter, which SOME poetry has, but prose doesn't (to any significant extent).

4. repenemicry, or alliteration, rhyme, assonance, etc., which poetry has to a much greater extent than prose

5. narrativeness, which seems to me ALL literary prose (which, for me, excludes essays) has (am I wrong?), but poetry needn't have, and less and less commonly does have.

6. the use of slant language, which poetry has to a greater degree than prose--or intentional unclarity for aesthetic effect

7. poetry emphasizes sensual pleasure (via imagery), prose what I call anthroceptual pleasure--psychological/social/people-oriented pleasure. 

8.  Ideas are more important in literary prose than in poetry (though I consider them necessarily secondary in both).

9. much more important for a poem than what it says is what it is, but the principle importance of prose is not what it is but what it says.

10. the connotation/denotation ratio is much greater in poetry than in prose.

11. I'm sure there are more.  Anyone willing to add to the list?  Or combine items on the list so far that say about the same thing, and my impression is that some may be there.

--Bob G.
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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 07:47:54 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:47:54 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
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"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyBob:

<<
While on the subject, I think it might shed light on why poets use free verse to consider why blank verse came into use.  The Princeton says Surrey introduced it with a translation of the Aeneid.  
>>

While this is true, it's also slightly incomplete.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey's (English) translation of the Aeneid was pretty-much a straight rip-off from Gavin Douglas's earlier rhymed (Scots) couplet version -- Surrey "invented" blank verse simply by knocking the rhymes off the Good Bish.

        Bloody hell, if that's all it takes to get famous ...

                    :-(

Dates:

Surrey (and if there was ever an over-rated second-rater, he was one) was writing in England in the (roughly) 1530s.

Gavin Douglas was writing in (sorry, I'm not checking my dates here) the 1450s.

The earliest accentual-syllabic poem in English (12th century) is _The Owl and the Nightingale_, and that was written in *octosyllabic* rhyming couplets.

            <sigh>

                    ... bite it and see ...

Basically, joking aside, rhymed iambic pentameter arrived with Chaucer in the 1380s, unrhymed iambic pentameter arrived with the early Elizabethan plays, and most of this locks-back to (not to be honest, one of my favourite writers) Philip Sidney in the 1590s.

            End/If

Robin





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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 08:14:11 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:14:11 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
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"What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyFrom: Bob Grumman

<<
The Princeton says
>>

A Pedant screams.

The shorthand way of referring to _The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry
and Poetics_ is NPEPP.

It's also worth mentioning, especially if you're referring to articles on
metrics, which edition you're using, as Tim Brogan revised virtually every
article on metrics for the latest (1993?) edition.

I have both NPEPP3 and NPEPP4 on my shelves, and I have to say that not just
for reasons of pedantry, I'm bloody careful to point-out which edition I'm
referring to.

        {It was worth upgrading from NPEPP3 to NPEPP4 simply for the TVFB
rewrites of the metrics articles.}

R.








From Thom424 at aol.com  Fri Dec 17 09:38:20 2004
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:38:20 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Difference Between Poetry and Prose
Message-ID: <1ec.307e48fc.2ef4495c@aol.com>

Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
>From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

?Howard Nemerov





Thom Tammaro
Moorhead, MN
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 09:53:18 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:53:18 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
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Message-ID: <011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>



> "What Is Poetry?" by John AshberyFrom: Bob Grumman
>
> <<
> The Princeton says
>>>
>
> A Pedant screams.
>
> The shorthand way of referring to _The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of 
> Poetry
> and Poetics_ is NPEPP.
>
> It's also worth mentioning, especially if you're referring to articles on
> metrics, which edition you're using, as Tim Brogan revised virtually every
> article on metrics for the latest (1993?) edition.

Chee, Roblink, I was hoping you, especially, would say something worthwhile 
on this topic.  "Princeton," no edition specified, is quite adequate for an 
Internet note not intended as a scholarly monograph.  The datum, that Surrey 
started blank verse in English, is all that's needed for my purposes.  Oh, 
well, at least you didn't ask for footnotes.  (And you were aware you were 
being pedantical, although not as aware as you might have been how 
inappropriately so.)

I was referring to the #2 Tigerbook, but have #3.  Didn't know a fourth 
edition has come out since then!  Does it have anything intelligent about 
the many kinds of poetry its previous editions ignored or only briefly 
mentioned?

Ah, I suspect not, because you got your numbers wrong, I'm pretty sure. 
Take that, pedant!

--Roblurt







> I have both NPEPP3 and NPEPP4 on my shelves, and I have to say that not 
> just
> for reasons of pedantry, I'm bloody careful to point-out which edition I'm
> referring to.
>
>        {It was worth upgrading from NPEPP3 to NPEPP4 simply for the TVFB
> rewrites of the metrics articles.}
>
> R.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 09:58:08 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:58:08 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Another What is Poetry Poem
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin>
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>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 17:11, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> >> You're calling me a liar.  I'm not.
>> >
> Marcus wrote:
>> > I'm saying you contradict yourself, Bob.
>
> On 16 Dec 2004 at 18:55, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Look, Marcus, I don't care what you call me,  but you DID call me a
>> liar....<
>
> Then the discussion is over if you don't care.  Of course if you do
> care but you say you don't care then you contradict yourself, again.

"don't care" is a colloquialism meaning "it doesn't particularly matter to 
me on any personal level."

> Marcus wrote:
>> . . . you tried to follow the rules of English
>> grammar and sense right up to where you inverted the ordinary order of
>> words to get a rhyme, and when you were caught at it, you tried to
>> pretend that you didn't mean to make sense in the first place -- as if
>> all those other words in that meter, with those rhymes, and that
>> sentence structure, were merely a random manifestation that came to
>> you out of nowhere. It beggars belief.<<
>
> Bob Grumman wrote:
>> I did not "pretend" that I didn't want to make sense.  I said that I
>> inverted word order to make the rhyme as an attempt at a joke.<
>
> You did indeed try to pretend that you didn't want to make sense: you
> said that content was irrelevant. If content is irrelevant, then you
> can't want to make sense! And you only invented the "content is
> irrelevant defense" after the "joke defense" failed.
>
> Marcus wrote:
>> > The claim that perfect
>> > meter is easy to write if content is meaningless is a claim no one
>> > will dispute,
>
> Bob Grumman wrote:
>> And I never made.  I stated that in determining whether a line is
>> metrical or not, content is irrelevant.  You simply misrepresent me<<
>
> Of course you made the claim that perfect meter is easy to write if
> content is meaningless, Bob -- what else is your "content is
> irrelevant" defense FOR if not to defend your bad metrical practice
> in inverting words to get a rhyme? I don't misrepresent you, Bob, you
> don't think things through; you don't realize the implications and
> consequences of your first reactions, and it gets you in a lot of
> trouble.
>
> Marcus

Nice to know you're still in form, Marcus. 




From kpaul at mallasch.com  Fri Dec 17 09:58:43 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:58:43 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem...
In-Reply-To: <028b01c4e3e2$00746a80$3ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
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Message-ID: <20041217095800.G64696@kpaul.spinweb.net>

what is poetry (b)

two point oh,
the next generation,
the next version,
the next next
in lines in
time oh my
the two-
point
hook
shot.

score.

what is poetry? i still
don't know for certain
and the poet is supposed
to have the answer and
i don't so maybe the
word poet doesn't
apply to me or
maybe poetry
broken-down
is really
just me
in dis-
guise.

what is poetry?
if you don't know
by now i'm certainly
not going to be the one
who tells you. or maybe i
am as bombs fall still in
afghanistan and children
cry and go hungry and
buckle up and go
scrounging for
sheet metal
to sell so
others can
make more
bullets.

words as ammunition.
a peaceful revolution.
the planets, the stars,
the heavens revolve a-
round in their circuits
and down here we look up
and make note and jot it
down or tell a friend on
-line or in real life;
poetry
helps
w/hope.





-k. paul mallasch
Poem Submitted on: 2003-10-02


On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:

> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
>
> It isn't very hard to build a line
> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them for which your readers will not 
> you condemn.
>
> But none of the height
> of poems at their best
> has anything to do with rhyme or meter.
> It results from wheres,
> wheres rich and wrong enough
> to slow one's senses worlds away
> from the long-sung-inert, flat layer
> that received reality so dismally is.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 10:00:29 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:00:29 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <013f01c4e449$2696f770$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Marcus started sending me the same messages he was posting to New-Poetry 
with his return address on them, so I inadvertantly replied to him, not to 
New-Poetry.

Here are three messages I meant to post, but failed to because of the above. 
They're all in this one post, so easy to skip for those of you intolerant of 
Bob-versus-Marcus.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: <marcus at designerglass.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 4:21 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem


>>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
>>> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
>>> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
>>> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
>>> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
>>>
>> Marcus wrote:
>>> > If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who can
>>> > write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look at that
>>> > word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
>>
>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> ... I've
>>> enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the ones by others
>>> you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that you weren't amused by
>>> my last line.<
>>
>> There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to
>> nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more
>> amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and
>> doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being amusing;
>> it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work.
>>
>> Only if you were going to be trying for the Julia A. Moore Award for
>> worst metrical poetry would the notion of word inversions to get a
>> rhyme be possibly funny -- and then only if you could show that you
>> had no idea why it was wrong. Now THAT would be funny!
>>
>> But I suppose that your notion that word inversion to get a rhyme is
>> funny might be evidence that shows that you don't know why word in
>> version to get a rhyme is bad work. Perhaps I could be persuaded that
>> it was funny after all, if I could come to believe that you really
>> think that word inversion to get a rhyme is really "perfect meter".
>
> Of course, it's perfect meter in this case: meter has to do with strong
> and weak accents.  The content is irrelevant.
>
>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>... I'm bright enough to make more
>>> than two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter without needing a
>>> preposterous inversion to do so.<
>>
>> Oh, okay, then, not funny after all.
>>
>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> The poem was an example, in part, of how easy it is to write proper
>>> metrical verse, whether embarrassing or not.<
>>
>> The issue has never been how hard it is to write "metrical verse
>> whether embarrassing or not", Bob. The issue is how hard it is to
>> write metrical verse that's not embarrassing. It's as easy to write
>> bad metrical as bad free verse -- it's just easier to tell when bad
>> metrical verse is bad. We didn't really need another example of bad
>> metrical verse -- there are plenty of them, which is why your bad
>> example wasn't funny.
>
>
>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> By the way, I don't say that formal poets are afraid to do free verse
>>> because they need mechanical rules to follow; I think that's true for
>>> a few of them, but I think most of them sincerely feel that formal
>>> verse is the best road to effective poetry.  Why can't you say the
>>> same about those writing free free verse?<
>>
>> Because I think it's not true. Most of those writing free verse have
>> the same kinds of problems you have demonstrated in your unfunny bad
>> example for meter, and they either know it or suspect it, so they
>> avoid meter and thus poetry in favor of free verse. Who can blame
>> them?
>>
>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> And why is it so hard for
>>> you to believe some of those writing my kind of . . . texts do so
>>> mainly to make the best art they can rather than win awards or make a
>>> splash.<
>>
>> I have no objection to you writing your kind of texts, or any of
>> those other folks writing their kinds of prose. But why fight to call
>> it "poetry" when it's clearly nothing of the kind? It's not in meter,
>> so it's not poetry. It may be startling, it may be excellent art
>> indeed, but it's not poetry -- what's the big deal about that? Well,
>> the big deal is, of course, that calling it poetry legitimizes it in
>> a way that calling it "texts" or "prose" or "diary entries" or
>> "newspaper column anecdotes" doesn't, that's why. Calling it poetry
>> is the same kind of political tactic to legitimize bad work as
>> calling a bill to gut environmental standards "The Clean Air Act" is.
>
> You're repeating yourself.  I've told you why I call it poetry: it's
> because it seems logical to call it that.  I think there may be an iota of
> merit in calling it not poetry, but it is insane to say that it is
> therefore prose.
>
>>> Sure, I for one would like to get more recognition,
>>> but--unless I'm severely self-deluded--my main aim by far is to make
>>> poems that I enjoy and believe SOME others may, too. <
>>
>> Again, why call your texts "poems"? You're the neologism man, Bob -- 
>> come up with a new name that takes into account that poems are in
>> meter and everything else is not poetry. As long as you and others
>> continue to insist you write poems without writing in meter I'll
>> continue to suspect you, and everyone else who claims to write poems
>> but who doesn't write in meter, of only wanting to call what you, or
>> they, do "poetry" in an effort to make your work appear to be more
>> important or more significant than it would appear if it were called
>> by its right name.
>>
>> Marcus
>
> I call it poetry because I think it is.  Why should I let you determine
> what I call it?  But don't worry: in any book I write on poetry, I'll let
> the reader know that when I use the term, I'm using my definition of it,
> which I will give.
>
> --Bob G.


>> >> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> >> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
>> >> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
>> >> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
>> >> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
>> >> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
>> >>
>> > Marcus wrote:
>> >> > If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who can
>> >> > write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look at
>> >> > that word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
>> >
>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> >> ... I've
>> >> enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the ones by others
>> >> you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that you weren't amused
>> >> by my last line.<
>> >
>> > There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to
>> > nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more
>> > amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and
>> > doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being amusing;
>> > it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work.
>
> On 16 Dec 2004 at 16:21, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Of course, it's perfect meter in this case: meter has to do with
>> strong and weak accents.  The content is irrelevant.<
>
> If content were irrelevant in your example, then your example should
> have been along the lines of:
>
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard,



> but you didn't write something like that where the argument that
> content was irrelevant might be believable. Instead you tried to
> follow the rules of English grammar and sense right up to where you
> inverted the ordinary order of words to get a rhyme, and when you
> were caught at it, you tried to pretend that you didn't mean to make
> sense in the first place

You're calling me a liar.  I'm not.

> -- as if all those other words in that
> meter, with those rhymes, and that sentence structure, were merely a
> random manifestation that came to you out of nowhere. It beggars
> belief.
>
> The claim that perfect meter is easy to write if content is
> meaningless is a claim no one will dispute -- because there is a very
> large number indeed of ways to indicate basic iambic meter without
> worrying about content. The essence of the thing, of course, about
> poetry is that the content is not irrelevant. Meter is necessary but
> not sufficient, as Michael has already pointed out.
>
>> You're repeating yourself.  I've told you why I call it poetry: it's
>> because it seems logical to call it that.  I think there may be an
>> iota of merit in calling it not poetry, but it is insane to say that
>> it is therefore prose.
>
> You're the neologism man, Bob -- call it something else, just don't
> call it poetry, because it's not.
>
>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> I call it poetry because I think it is.  Why should I let you
>> determine what I call it?  But don't worry: in any book I write on
>> poetry, I'll let the reader know that when I use the term, I'm using
>> my definition of it, which I will give.
>
> But Bob by your flow-breaks definition any address on an envelope,
> any business letter, all this email we've been sending back and
> forth, is poetry because it's ragged-right, and what is a flow-break
> but ragged-right typography? Once you're willing to let your
> definition become meaningless by a built-in absurdity, you've
> abandoned reasonableness with regard to your definition. Your
> definition of poetry is absurd. Mine has the virtues of clarity and
> ease of use.
>
> Marcus

I did want to thank you for finally telling us your definition of poetry: 
text that uses meter.  But what about any address on an envelope that 
happens to have a regular meter?  Not to get heavily into this with you 
again, but my definition excludes "informrature," which is what I call
verbal expression whose main purpose (to any group of rational observers) is 
conveying information, so it excludes addresses on envelopes.

--Bob G.

> On 16 Dec 2004 at 17:11, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> You're calling me a liar.  I'm not.
>
> I'm saying you contradict yourself, Bob.

Look, Marcus, I don't care what you call me, but you DID call me a liar. You 
said, ". . . you tried to follow the rules of English grammar and sense 
right up to where you inverted the ordinary order of words to get a rhyme,
and when you were caught at it, you tried to pretend that you didn't mean to 
make sense in the first place -- as if all those other words in that meter, 
with those rhymes, and that sentence structure, were merely a random
manifestation that came to you out of nowhere. It beggars belief."

I did not "pretend" that I didn't want to make sense.  I said that I 
inverted word order to make the rhyme as an attempt at a joke."

> The claim that perfect
> meter is easy to write if content is meaningless is a claim no one
> will dispute,

And I never made.  I stated that in determining whether a line is metrical 
or not, content is irrelevant.  You simply misrepresent me, apparently to 
get me to waste my time trying to clarify what I said. and to avoid arguing
my obvious points--which is the hallmark of a verosopath.

--Bob G.






From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 10:04:37 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:04:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<09c601c4e436$a0d33660$fd9c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <014e01c4e449$ba4758c0$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

"What Is Poetry?" by John Ashbery

  Bob:

  <<
  While on the subject, I think it might shed light on why poets use free verse to consider why blank verse came into use.  The Princeton says Surrey introduced it with a translation of the Aeneid.  
  >>

  While this is true, it's also slightly incomplete.

  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey's (English) translation of the Aeneid was pretty-much a straight rip-off from Gavin Douglas's earlier rhymed (Scots) couplet version -- Surrey "invented" blank verse simply by knocking the rhymes off the Good Bish.

          Bloody hell, if that's all it takes to get famous ...

                     :-(

  Actually, it's only hindsight that makes the achievement seem trivial.  Look how hard it was for poets to simply junk meter  Even if Surrey didn't know what he was doing.  Soes anyone know if he did?  I mean, did he know he was trail-blazing?

  Dates:

  Surrey (and if there was ever an over-rated second-rater, he was one) was writing in England in the (roughly) 1530s.

  Gavin Douglas was writing in (sorry, I'm not checking my dates here) the 1450s.

  The earliest accentual-syllabic poem in English (12th century) is _The Owl and the Nightingale_, and that was written in *octosyllabic* rhyming couplets.

              <sigh>

                      ... bite it and see ...

  Basically, joking aside, rhymed iambic pentameter arrived with Chaucer in the 1380s, unrhymed iambic pentameter arrived with the early Elizabethan plays, and most of this locks-back to (not to be honest, one of my favourite writers) Philip Sidney in the 1590s.

              End/If

  Robin


  Thanks, Robin--and a semi-apology for dissing you in a reply to a later post of yours that I read before I read this one for not contributing to this thread.

  --Bob G.



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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 10:07:08 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:07:08 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Difference Between Poetry and Prose
References: <1ec.307e48fc.2ef4495c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <017a01c4e44a$14921f90$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Nice.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Thom424 at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 9:38 AM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] The Difference Between Poetry and Prose


  Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry

  Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
  That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
  Riding a gradient invisible
  From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

  There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
  And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

  ?Howard Nemerov





  Thom Tammaro
  Moorhead, MN 


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From tad at opus40.org  Fri Dec 17 10:20:09 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:20:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin>
	<013f01c4e449$2696f770$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <004701c4e44b$e7b75b50$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

Not reading every Bob-Marcus note is intolerance?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 10:00 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"


> Marcus started sending me the same messages he was posting to New-Poetry 
> with his return address on them, so I inadvertantly replied to him, not to 
> New-Poetry.
>
> Here are three messages I meant to post, but failed to because of the 
> above. They're all in this one post, so easy to skip for those of you 
> intolerant of Bob-versus-Marcus.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
> To: <marcus at designerglass.com>
> Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 4:21 PM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Another "What Is Poetry" Poem
>
>
>>>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
>>>> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
>>>> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
>>>> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
>>>> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
>>>>
>>> Marcus wrote:
>>>> > If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who can
>>>> > write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look at that
>>>> > word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
>>>
>>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>> ... I've
>>>> enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the ones by others
>>>> you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that you weren't amused by
>>>> my last line.<
>>>
>>> There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to
>>> nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more
>>> amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and
>>> doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being amusing;
>>> it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work.
>>>
>>> Only if you were going to be trying for the Julia A. Moore Award for
>>> worst metrical poetry would the notion of word inversions to get a
>>> rhyme be possibly funny -- and then only if you could show that you
>>> had no idea why it was wrong. Now THAT would be funny!
>>>
>>> But I suppose that your notion that word inversion to get a rhyme is
>>> funny might be evidence that shows that you don't know why word in
>>> version to get a rhyme is bad work. Perhaps I could be persuaded that
>>> it was funny after all, if I could come to believe that you really
>>> think that word inversion to get a rhyme is really "perfect meter".
>>
>> Of course, it's perfect meter in this case: meter has to do with strong
>> and weak accents.  The content is irrelevant.
>>
>>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>>... I'm bright enough to make more
>>>> than two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter without needing a
>>>> preposterous inversion to do so.<
>>>
>>> Oh, okay, then, not funny after all.
>>>
>>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>> The poem was an example, in part, of how easy it is to write proper
>>>> metrical verse, whether embarrassing or not.<
>>>
>>> The issue has never been how hard it is to write "metrical verse
>>> whether embarrassing or not", Bob. The issue is how hard it is to
>>> write metrical verse that's not embarrassing. It's as easy to write
>>> bad metrical as bad free verse -- it's just easier to tell when bad
>>> metrical verse is bad. We didn't really need another example of bad
>>> metrical verse -- there are plenty of them, which is why your bad
>>> example wasn't funny.
>>
>>
>>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>> By the way, I don't say that formal poets are afraid to do free verse
>>>> because they need mechanical rules to follow; I think that's true for
>>>> a few of them, but I think most of them sincerely feel that formal
>>>> verse is the best road to effective poetry.  Why can't you say the
>>>> same about those writing free free verse?<
>>>
>>> Because I think it's not true. Most of those writing free verse have
>>> the same kinds of problems you have demonstrated in your unfunny bad
>>> example for meter, and they either know it or suspect it, so they
>>> avoid meter and thus poetry in favor of free verse. Who can blame
>>> them?
>>>
>>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>> And why is it so hard for
>>>> you to believe some of those writing my kind of . . . texts do so
>>>> mainly to make the best art they can rather than win awards or make a
>>>> splash.<
>>>
>>> I have no objection to you writing your kind of texts, or any of
>>> those other folks writing their kinds of prose. But why fight to call
>>> it "poetry" when it's clearly nothing of the kind? It's not in meter,
>>> so it's not poetry. It may be startling, it may be excellent art
>>> indeed, but it's not poetry -- what's the big deal about that? Well,
>>> the big deal is, of course, that calling it poetry legitimizes it in
>>> a way that calling it "texts" or "prose" or "diary entries" or
>>> "newspaper column anecdotes" doesn't, that's why. Calling it poetry
>>> is the same kind of political tactic to legitimize bad work as
>>> calling a bill to gut environmental standards "The Clean Air Act" is.
>>
>> You're repeating yourself.  I've told you why I call it poetry: it's
>> because it seems logical to call it that.  I think there may be an iota 
>> of
>> merit in calling it not poetry, but it is insane to say that it is
>> therefore prose.
>>
>>>> Sure, I for one would like to get more recognition,
>>>> but--unless I'm severely self-deluded--my main aim by far is to make
>>>> poems that I enjoy and believe SOME others may, too. <
>>>
>>> Again, why call your texts "poems"? You're the neologism man, Bob -- 
>>> come up with a new name that takes into account that poems are in
>>> meter and everything else is not poetry. As long as you and others
>>> continue to insist you write poems without writing in meter I'll
>>> continue to suspect you, and everyone else who claims to write poems
>>> but who doesn't write in meter, of only wanting to call what you, or
>>> they, do "poetry" in an effort to make your work appear to be more
>>> important or more significant than it would appear if it were called
>>> by its right name.
>>>
>>> Marcus
>>
>> I call it poetry because I think it is.  Why should I let you determine
>> what I call it?  But don't worry: in any book I write on poetry, I'll let
>> the reader know that when I use the term, I'm using my definition of it,
>> which I will give.
>>
>> --Bob G.
>
>
>>> >> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 8:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> >> >> Yet Another Poem About Poetry
>>> >> >> It isn't difficult to build a line
>>> >> >> or two in meter, such as these of mine;
>>> >> >> it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
>>> >> >> for which your readers will not you condemn.
>>> >>
>>> > Marcus wrote:
>>> >> > If this is intended as an example of a non-metrical poet who can
>>> >> > write metrical poetry without embarassing himself, just look at
>>> >> > that word-inversion to get to the rhyme.
>>> >
>>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> >> ... I've
>>> >> enjoyed most of your pieces of light verse, and the ones by others
>>> >> you've posted.  Hence, I'm rather startled that you weren't amused
>>> >> by my last line.<
>>> >
>>> > There's nothing amusing about it, Bob. It's simply not amusing to
>>> > nail a 2x4 in crooked as a joke on a job site, and it's no more
>>> > amusing to invert words to get a rhyme. Bad work is bad work, and
>>> > doing bad work is not a way to get a reputation for being amusing;
>>> > it's the way to get a reputation for doing bad work.
>>
>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 16:21, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> Of course, it's perfect meter in this case: meter has to do with
>>> strong and weak accents.  The content is irrelevant.<
>>
>> If content were irrelevant in your example, then your example should
>> have been along the lines of:
>>
>> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
>> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
>> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard
>> Soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft hard,
>
>
>
>> but you didn't write something like that where the argument that
>> content was irrelevant might be believable. Instead you tried to
>> follow the rules of English grammar and sense right up to where you
>> inverted the ordinary order of words to get a rhyme, and when you
>> were caught at it, you tried to pretend that you didn't mean to make
>> sense in the first place
>
> You're calling me a liar.  I'm not.
>
>> -- as if all those other words in that
>> meter, with those rhymes, and that sentence structure, were merely a
>> random manifestation that came to you out of nowhere. It beggars
>> belief.
>>
>> The claim that perfect meter is easy to write if content is
>> meaningless is a claim no one will dispute -- because there is a very
>> large number indeed of ways to indicate basic iambic meter without
>> worrying about content. The essence of the thing, of course, about
>> poetry is that the content is not irrelevant. Meter is necessary but
>> not sufficient, as Michael has already pointed out.
>>
>>> You're repeating yourself.  I've told you why I call it poetry: it's
>>> because it seems logical to call it that.  I think there may be an
>>> iota of merit in calling it not poetry, but it is insane to say that
>>> it is therefore prose.
>>
>> You're the neologism man, Bob -- call it something else, just don't
>> call it poetry, because it's not.
>>
>>> > On 16 Dec 2004 at 12:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> I call it poetry because I think it is.  Why should I let you
>>> determine what I call it?  But don't worry: in any book I write on
>>> poetry, I'll let the reader know that when I use the term, I'm using
>>> my definition of it, which I will give.
>>
>> But Bob by your flow-breaks definition any address on an envelope,
>> any business letter, all this email we've been sending back and
>> forth, is poetry because it's ragged-right, and what is a flow-break
>> but ragged-right typography? Once you're willing to let your
>> definition become meaningless by a built-in absurdity, you've
>> abandoned reasonableness with regard to your definition. Your
>> definition of poetry is absurd. Mine has the virtues of clarity and
>> ease of use.
>>
>> Marcus
>
> I did want to thank you for finally telling us your definition of poetry: 
> text that uses meter.  But what about any address on an envelope that 
> happens to have a regular meter?  Not to get heavily into this with you 
> again, but my definition excludes "informrature," which is what I call
> verbal expression whose main purpose (to any group of rational observers) 
> is conveying information, so it excludes addresses on envelopes.
>
> --Bob G.
>
>> On 16 Dec 2004 at 17:11, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> You're calling me a liar.  I'm not.
>>
>> I'm saying you contradict yourself, Bob.
>
> Look, Marcus, I don't care what you call me, but you DID call me a liar. 
> You said, ". . . you tried to follow the rules of English grammar and 
> sense right up to where you inverted the ordinary order of words to get a 
> rhyme,
> and when you were caught at it, you tried to pretend that you didn't mean 
> to make sense in the first place -- as if all those other words in that 
> meter, with those rhymes, and that sentence structure, were merely a 
> random
> manifestation that came to you out of nowhere. It beggars belief."
>
> I did not "pretend" that I didn't want to make sense.  I said that I 
> inverted word order to make the rhyme as an attempt at a joke."
>
>> The claim that perfect
>> meter is easy to write if content is meaningless is a claim no one
>> will dispute,
>
> And I never made.  I stated that in determining whether a line is metrical 
> or not, content is irrelevant.  You simply misrepresent me, apparently to 
> get me to waste my time trying to clarify what I said. and to avoid 
> arguing
> my obvious points--which is the hallmark of a verosopath.
>
> --Bob G.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From mandolin at mac.com  Fri Dec 17 11:18:06 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 11:18:06 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
	<00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <3BEC17A7-5047-11D9-8712-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 17, 2004, at 6:09 AM, Bob Grumman wrote:

> My impression is that poetry in English was for centuries what I call 
> "repenemical," or having rhyme of some sort, if we loosely consider 
> (for the sake of this discussion only) alliteration and the like to be 
> rhyming.? So, using stasguard reasoning, according to which tradition 
> rules, however stultified and illogical, poetry ought to consist only 
> of metered texts which also possess rhyme or the equivalent.? Blank 
> verse should not count, because it didn't come into English until 
> 1540, according to the Princeton Dictionary.
>
> Also, while meter is natural (I'm almost certain we're wired to speak 
> rhythmically), repenemicry is not, so mere meter is more prose-related 
> than rhymes and the equivalent.? Certainly, blank verse is a step 
> toward free
> verse.
>
> While on the subject, I think it might shed light on why poets use 
> free verse to consider why blank verse came into use.? The Princeton 
> says Surrey introduced it with a translation of the Aeneid.? It would 
> seem to me that he
> did so mainly because it was, as the stasguards contend, easier.? 
> Rhyming is hard in English, fresh rhymes near-impossible to find for 
> poems of any length, at all, or became so once a semi-substantial body 
> of rhymed work existed in English.
>
> I believe, however, that blank verse had its real? beginning, its 
> formidable beginning, in English Drama, and I think it took over there 
> not only because it was easier than rhymed verse but because rhymes 
> muffled drama.? A spectator could flow with a playwright's meter AND 
> focusedly empathize with his characters' plights but rhymes would 
> distract him from the latter--at least after a while.? So, a main 
> reason for blank verse, and--later--for
> free verse, is to unmuffle other effects.? To feel unornamented.? This 
> is a strong motive behind the use of free verse, as well.? I believe a 
> poet needs to tell the members of his audience that they are in a 
> poem.? The question is, how emphatically should he tell them?? If you 
> only have rhymed metrical verse, you will eventually tell them too 
> overtly, so you drop rhyme; if you only have metrical verse, you will 
> eventually tell them too overtly, so will drop meter.
>
> The advantage is that once a text can declare that it is a poem 
> without meter, its having meter will again become fresh.
>
> --Bob G.

Celtic languages used syllabic meters with elaborate internal and end 
rhyme  schemes, and in the German languages the accentual measures were 
marked by alliteration, but Classical Greek and Latin poetry is only 
occasionally rhymed, and scholars of the Renaissance sometimes 
considered the rhymed poetry of the Latin Middle Ages to be one more 
evidence of decadence. Surrey though he was restoring Classical purity. 
Milton made that argument for the blank verse of Paradise Lost -- and 
Samuel Johnson said he was only justifying his lack of facility with 
rhyme.  In any case, meter was a constant feature of poetry until very 
recently, and rhyme usually considered unnecessary, however delightful.

Michael



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 11:23:27 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 11:23:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><013f01c4e449$2696f770$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<004701c4e44b$e7b75b50$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <01a801c4e454$bd882ae0$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Not reading every Bob-Marcus note is intolerance?

Not a great choice of words--but I did say "intolerant OF 
BOB-VERSUS-MARCUS," Mole, not "guilty of intolerance."

Some people are very much intolerant of B-v-M, though.

--Bob G. 




From pmetres at jcu.edu  Fri Dec 17 11:29:43 2004
From: pmetres at jcu.edu (Philip Metres)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 11:29:43 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] recommendations for prosody books
Message-ID: <46b311cd.b02faf63.837c000@mirapoint.jcu.edu>

Folks,

I've just joined this list, so I apologize in advance if 
you've raked this one over many times before.  Clearly, there 
are plenty of people who identify with the metrical 
tradition.  What books do you recommend dealing with 
prosody?  I feel like I have a solid basis in the tradition 
but I sense there are folks here who are true believers.  
So?  Also, how would you scan this line:

"Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" (L. Hughes)
Is this: a) trochaic hexameter with an added stress at the 
end, or b) a trochaic pentameter without the final 
unstressed, or c) really a syncopated iambic meter, since it 
really doesn't sound like "London bridges falling down..." ?

Curious to hear, either on or offlist.


Philip Metres
Assistant Professor
Department of English
John Carroll University
20700 N. Park Blvd
University Heights, OH 44118
(216) 397-4528 (work)
http://www.philipmetres.com


From tad at opus40.org  Fri Dec 17 12:29:42 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:29:42 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] recommendations for prosody books
References: <46b311cd.b02faf63.837c000@mirapoint.jcu.edu>
Message-ID: <001d01c4e45e$00a6d9d0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

Lewis Turco's "The Book of Forms" is a good one.

Tad


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip Metres" <pmetres at jcu.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 11:29 AM
Subject: [New-Poetry] recommendations for prosody books


> Folks,
> 
> I've just joined this list, so I apologize in advance if 
> you've raked this one over many times before.  Clearly, there 
> are plenty of people who identify with the metrical 
> tradition.  What books do you recommend dealing with 
> prosody?  I feel like I have a solid basis in the tradition 
> but I sense there are folks here who are true believers.  
> So?  Also, how would you scan this line:
> 
> "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" (L. Hughes)
> Is this: a) trochaic hexameter with an added stress at the 
> end, or b) a trochaic pentameter without the final 
> unstressed, or c) really a syncopated iambic meter, since it 
> really doesn't sound like "London bridges falling down..." ?
> 
> Curious to hear, either on or offlist.
> 
> 
> Philip Metres
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> John Carroll University
> 20700 N. Park Blvd
> University Heights, OH 44118
> (216) 397-4528 (work)
> http://www.philipmetres.com
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
>



From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 12:53:17 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 17:53:17 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin>
	<011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin>

From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>

>  "Princeton," no edition specified, is quite adequate for an
> Internet note not intended as a scholarly monograph.

No it's bloody *not*, if you allow that one purpose of a reference is to let
whomsoever you're communicating with look-up whatsoever you're referring to.

There's a hell of a difference in the metrics articles between the pre- and
post- Brogan editions of the NPEPP.

> I was referring to the #2 Tigerbook, but have #3.  Didn't know a fourth
> edition has come out since then!

        Lord, I must have the patience of the damned ...

                        (Ooops, just checked my shelves -- you're right on
this, Bob!)

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics first came out, edited by
Alex Preminger, in 1965, and got "enlarged" in 1974.

(That's where I managed to screw the numbers up so thoroughly -- I think of
this as the *third* edition, god knows why.)

In 1993 (which, I'm ruefully aware, is the point when it began to call
itself The *New* Princeton [etc.], Tim Brogan got on-board and revamped all
the metrics articles ...

> Does it have anything intelligent about
> the many kinds of poetry its previous editions ignored or only briefly
> mentioned?

Well, on the back fly-leaf of the 1974 edition, I discover I have scribbled
in pencil:

        Valediction
        Syllabics
        ennumerato (in Surrey)
        Lullaby
        Projective verse

                ... at this point, I realise that that when you're deep in a
hole, the worst thing to do is to keep on digging.

Anyone want to know why there isn't (technically) a Third Edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary?

        A Deeply Apologetic and Chagrined Hamilton




From marcus at designerglass.com  Fri Dec 17 12:59:09 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:59:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] recommendations for prosody books
In-Reply-To: <46b311cd.b02faf63.837c000@mirapoint.jcu.edu>
Message-ID: <41C2D81D.17160.1160B75@localhost>

On 17 Dec 2004 at 11:29, Philip Metres wrote:
> ... Also, how would you scan this line:
> "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" (L. Hughes)

Depends on the context -- on the other lines in the poem around it.

Marcus




From tad at opus40.org  Fri Dec 17 13:08:04 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:08:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] recommendations for prosody books
References: <41C2D81D.17160.1160B75@localhost>
Message-ID: <003a01c4e463$5caddd50$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

 Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.


  Our old buddy, the ghost of iambic pentameter, with that one in actual 
iambic pentameter (first foot truncated in the first use, filled out in the 
second).


I know no one is gonna let this scansion stand, but I might as well be sthe 
stalking horse.

And welcome to the list.

And is your name really Metres?



Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
To: <pmetres at jcu.edu>; "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] recommendations for prosody books


> On 17 Dec 2004 at 11:29, Philip Metres wrote:
>> ... Also, how would you scan this line:
>> "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" (L. Hughes)
>
> Depends on the context -- on the other lines in the poem around it.
>
> Marcus
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 13:35:10 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:35:10 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
>
>>  "Princeton," no edition specified, is quite adequate for an
>> Internet note not intended as a scholarly monograph.
>
> No it's bloody *not*, if you allow that one purpose of a reference is to 
> let
> whomsoever you're communicating with look-up whatsoever you're referring 
> to.

Robin, why would you have to look it up?  I didn't feel I put in anything 
that needed to be checked.  But if you suddenly wanted to read the article 
on blank verse, all you'd have to do is look it up in, gasp, ALL your 
editions of the Princeton.  Or politely asked Bob which one the article was 
in and what it's title was, in case I hadn't said, and I don't think I did.

> There's a hell of a difference in the metrics articles between the pre- 
> and
> post- Brogan editions of the NPEPP.

So what?  I was just introducing an apparent fact that Surrey is credited 
with introducing blank verse to Britain.


>> I was referring to the #2 Tigerbook, but have #3.  Didn't know a fourth
>> edition has come out since then!
>
>        Lord, I must have the patience of the damned ...
>
>                        (Ooops, just checked my shelves -- you're right on
> this, Bob!)

> The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics first came out, edited by
> Alex Preminger, in 1965, and got "enlarged" in 1974.
>
> (That's where I managed to screw the numbers up so thoroughly -- I think 
> of
> this as the *third* edition, god knows why.)

I think it IS--65, 74 and 93--none since, are there? I'm amazed that over 
ten years has gone by since what I still think of as the new one.

> In 1993 (which, I'm ruefully aware, is the point when it began to call
> itself The *New* Princeton [etc.], Tim Brogan got on-board and revamped 
> all
> the metrics articles ...
>
>> Does it have anything intelligent about
>> the many kinds of poetry its previous editions ignored or only briefly
>> mentioned?
>
> Well, on the back fly-leaf of the 1974 edition, I discover I have 
> scribbled
> in pencil:
>
>        Valediction
>        Syllabics
>        ennumerato (in Surrey)
>        Lullaby
>        Projective verse
>
>                ... at this point, I realise that that when you're deep in 
> a
> hole, the worst thing to do is to keep on digging.
>
> Anyone want to know why there isn't (technically) a Third Edition of the
> Oxford English Dictionary?

>        A Deeply Apologetic and Chagrined Hamilton

Well, you bloody well should be! 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 13:47:48 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 18:47:48 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin>
	<01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <009201c4e468$e9100750$e39c9951@Robin>

From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>

> >        A Deeply Apologetic and Chagrined Hamilton
> 
> Well, you bloody well should be! 

            grivel, grovelm grovel ...

Me.



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 13:52:15 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:52:15 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin><01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<009201c4e468$e9100750$e39c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <021601c4e469$8759e110$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


>> >        A Deeply Apologetic and Chagrined Hamilton
>>
>> Well, you bloody well should be!
>
>            grivel, grovelm grovel ...
>
> Me.

Whew, you realized I was trying to be funny.  Marcus had me worried that I 
didn't have any comic sense (well, not really).

--Bob
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 14:00:59 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 19:00:59 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin>
	<01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <009c01c4e46a$c09282b0$e39c9951@Robin>

Bob:

> > The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics first came out, edited
by
> > Alex Preminger, in 1965, and got "enlarged" in 1974.
> >
> > (That's where I managed to screw the numbers up so thoroughly -- I think
> > of
> > this as the *third* edition, god knows why.)
>
> I think it IS--65, 74 and 93--none since, are there? I'm amazed that over
> ten years has gone by since what I still think of as the new one.

Yeah, that *is* odd -- but mibee it's simply because nothing significant has
happened in the last ten years.

Incidentally, I suppose you know this, but Tim Brogan's _Versification: A
Bibliography_ is free on-line.

I don't have the URL to hand, but it should be googleable,

Robin




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 14:05:30 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 19:05:30 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin><01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><009201c4e468$e9100750$e39c9951@Robin>
	<021601c4e469$8759e110$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <00ae01c4e46b$62047770$e39c9951@Robin>

> Whew, you realized I was trying to be funny.  Marcus had me worried that I
> didn't have any comic sense (well, not really).
>
> --Bob

Well, it's a truism that tone translates badly in cyberspace.

End/Pedant




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 14:16:34 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:16:34 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin><01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><009201c4e468$e9100750$e39c9951@Robin><021601c4e469$8759e110$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<00ae01c4e46b$62047770$e39c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <022301c4e46c$ecbb3830$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


> Well, it's a truism that tone translates badly in cyberspace.
>
> End/Pedant

The attempt at humor that Marcus missed was an intentional inversion in a 
line of rhyming iambic pentameter.  It was one no one knowing anything at 
all about versification would make thinking it was okay, which was the joke. 
He thought I'd up slipped.  No tone involved.

--Bob 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 14:23:49 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 19:23:49 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin><01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<009c01c4e46a$c09282b0$e39c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <00bc01c4e46d$f119bae0$e39c9951@Robin>

Bob:

> > I think it IS--65, 74 and 93

... but that's exactly where I trip -- you're right, and the 93 edition is
the third.

Lor' knows why I refer to it as the Fourth.

            {I think I'm inserting a ghost between 65 and 74.}

                                    :-(

R.





From tad at opus40.org  Fri Dec 17 14:43:14 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:43:14 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin><01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><009201c4e468$e9100750$e39c9951@Robin><021601c4e469$8759e110$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><00ae01c4e46b$62047770$e39c9951@Robin>
	<022301c4e46c$ecbb3830$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <004001c4e470$a8319bb0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

Maybe it wasn't that good a joke?


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 2:16 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"


>
>> Well, it's a truism that tone translates badly in cyberspace.
>>
>> End/Pedant
>
> The attempt at humor that Marcus missed was an intentional inversion in a 
> line of rhyming iambic pentameter.  It was one no one knowing anything at 
> all about versification would make thinking it was okay, which was the 
> joke. He thought I'd up slipped.  No tone involved.
>
> --Bob
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 14:48:19 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:48:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin><01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><009201c4e468$e9100750$e39c9951@Robin><021601c4e469$8759e110$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><00ae01c4e46b$62047770$e39c9951@Robin><022301c4e46c$ecbb3830$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<004001c4e470$a8319bb0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <022d01c4e471$5ca59790$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Maybe it wasn't that good a joke?
>
It wasn't so bad it's intention to be a joke wasn't obvious.  But I think it 
was pretty funny, myself.  Did you read it, Mole?

--Bob G. 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 14:52:34 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 19:52:34 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Stopped at the frontier terms ...
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECELJJIAA.halvard@earthlink.net><00b001c4e428$e8d31970$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><09ec01c4e43a$4c5f0bf0$fd9c9951@Robin><011901c4e448$25fb7030$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><006a01c4e461$4b033ac0$e39c9951@Robin><01f501c4e467$2488b540$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><009c01c4e46a$c09282b0$e39c9951@Robin>
	<00bc01c4e46d$f119bae0$e39c9951@Robin>
Message-ID: <00fb01c4e471$f54f0350$e39c9951@Robin>

Anyone else play this game, refer to WW2 as The Great Patriotic War?

This term carries a double whammy in that on the literal level, it's
Stalinist, but of course nobody uses it other than unreconstructed
Trotskyists.

>From Cell 2455 Death Row




From marcus at designerglass.com  Fri Dec 17 15:10:00 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:10:00 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <022301c4e46c$ecbb3830$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost>

> > Well, it's a truism that tone translates badly in cyberspace.
> > End/Pedant
> 
On 17 Dec 2004 at 14:16, Bob Grumman wrote:
> The attempt at humor that Marcus missed was an intentional inversion
> in a line of rhyming iambic pentameter.  It was one no one knowing
> anything at all about versification would make thinking it was okay,
> which was the joke. He thought I'd up slipped.  No tone involved.

Tone is everything in humor, Bob -- and there was absolutely nothing 
in anything you'd said before, during, or after the contretemps to 
which you refer that would have indicated to anyone that you intended 
that inversion as humor. Your first line was not good, and your 
inversion confirmed that your claim, that it's easy to write in meter 
made it clear that you had no idea how hard it is. It is precisely in 
the matter of tone that your claim that you meant it as a joke fails 
most dismally. You were trying to make a serious point by giving a 
serious example, and you failed miserably. To claim it was all a joke 
now is so lame as to be unbelievable.

Marcus








From tad at opus40.org  Fri Dec 17 15:40:24 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:40:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost>
Message-ID: <002201c4e478$a76f1560$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

Marcus is kinda right...the rest of it would have had to be sharper and 
funnier in order to make the inversion funny. I did get that it was a 
deliberate inversion.


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 3:10 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"


>> > Well, it's a truism that tone translates badly in cyberspace.
>> > End/Pedant
>>
> On 17 Dec 2004 at 14:16, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> The attempt at humor that Marcus missed was an intentional inversion
>> in a line of rhyming iambic pentameter.  It was one no one knowing
>> anything at all about versification would make thinking it was okay,
>> which was the joke. He thought I'd up slipped.  No tone involved.
>
> Tone is everything in humor, Bob -- and there was absolutely nothing
> in anything you'd said before, during, or after the contretemps to
> which you refer that would have indicated to anyone that you intended
> that inversion as humor. Your first line was not good, and your
> inversion confirmed that your claim, that it's easy to write in meter
> made it clear that you had no idea how hard it is. It is precisely in
> the matter of tone that your claim that you meant it as a joke fails
> most dismally. You were trying to make a serious point by giving a
> serious example, and you failed miserably. To claim it was all a joke
> now is so lame as to be unbelievable.
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Dec 17 18:19:34 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 18:19:34 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
Message-ID: <fd.935aed1.2ef4c386@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/17/2004 12:54:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com writes:

> Anyone want to know why there isn't (technically) a Third Edition of the
> Oxford English Dictionary?
> 

James Murray (OED editor) said he faced "the terrible undertow of words."

It became a tsunami?
Finnegan
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 20:40:33 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:40:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost>
	<002201c4e478$a76f1560$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <028701c4e4a2$af636c60$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Marcus is kinda right...the rest of it would have had to be sharper and 
> funnier in order to make the inversion funny. I did get that it was a 
> deliberate inversion.


I somewhat agree.  I wasn't planning the inversion.  When I needed a rhyme 
for "them," all that came to mind was "condemn."  That fit, but I saw no way 
to use it without an inversion.  Then the use of an inversion to wryly 
illustrate just how difficult doing meter in rhyme was struck me as comic 
(and I didn't feel like working up a second couplet), so I kept it.

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Dec 17 21:11:22 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:11:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost>
Message-ID: <028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> > Well, it's a truism that tone translates badly in cyberspace.
>> > End/Pedant
>>
> On 17 Dec 2004 at 14:16, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> The attempt at humor that Marcus missed was an intentional inversion
>> in a line of rhyming iambic pentameter.  It was one no one knowing
>> anything at all about versification would make thinking it was okay,
>> which was the joke. He thought I'd up slipped.  No tone involved.
>
> Tone is everything in humor, Bob -- and there was absolutely nothing
> in anything you'd said before, during, or after the contretemps to
> which you refer that would have indicated to anyone that you intended
> that inversion as humor. Your first line was not good, and your
> inversion confirmed that your claim, that it's easy to write in meter
> made it clear that you had no idea how hard it is. It is precisely in
> the matter of tone that your claim that you meant it as a joke fails
> most dismally. You were trying to make a serious point by giving a
> serious example, and you failed miserably. To claim it was all a joke
> now is so lame as to be unbelievable.
>
> Marcus
>

As my poem showed, (coherently) writing in meter is a snap.  Rhyme is 
harder, if you stay in meter.  Writing something poetically worthwhile, 
which has to do with much larger things than meter and rhyme, is all that 
counts, though.

--Bob G. 




From mandolin at mac.com  Fri Dec 17 22:50:22 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 22:50:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost>
	<028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 17, 2004, at 9:11 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:

>>> > Well, it's a truism that tone translates badly in cyberspace.
>>> > End/Pedant
>>>
>> On 17 Dec 2004 at 14:16, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> The attempt at humor that Marcus missed was an intentional inversion
>>> in a line of rhyming iambic pentameter.  It was one no one knowing
>>> anything at all about versification would make thinking it was okay,
>>> which was the joke. He thought I'd up slipped.  No tone involved.
>>
>> Tone is everything in humor, Bob -- and there was absolutely nothing
>> in anything you'd said before, during, or after the contretemps to
>> which you refer that would have indicated to anyone that you intended
>> that inversion as humor. Your first line was not good, and your
>> inversion confirmed that your claim, that it's easy to write in meter
>> made it clear that you had no idea how hard it is. It is precisely in
>> the matter of tone that your claim that you meant it as a joke fails
>> most dismally. You were trying to make a serious point by giving a
>> serious example, and you failed miserably. To claim it was all a joke
>> now is so lame as to be unbelievable.
>>
>> Marcus
>>
>
> As my poem showed, (coherently) writing in meter is a snap.  Rhyme is 
> harder, if you stay in meter.  Writing something poetically 
> worthwhile, which has to do with much larger things than meter and 
> rhyme, is all that counts, though.
>
> --Bob G.
>

It showed no such thing, Bob.  You managed to alternate 36 stressed and 
unstressed syllables before you gave up on IP (I won't give you "WILL 
not YOU") , but as Marcus and I have  said before, poets don't compose 
in feet or stresses or even lines -- they make poems. Your 18 iambs in 
a row have no music, they don't cohere as lines, ( and certainly not as 
a poem). You've asked "Why all this attention to the sound?" and it's 
clear you don't understand that meter is a technique for the ear, not 
for patterning dictionary stresses -- meter creates an audible line 
which interacts with the sounds of speech. Those lines of yours might 
work as filler in a longer poem with a strong IP impulse, but they're 
disastrous for an opening.  Read them aloud, without a special poetry 
voice or unnatural pauses for line endings, and they'll sound about 
like this:

It isn't DIFficult to BUILD a LINE or two in MEter,
such as THESE of MINE;
it's MUCH more TRICKy pinning RHYMES to them for WHICH your READers 
will NOT you conDEMN.


I do believe you decided it was good enough to use as a joke when you 
couldn't wrangle the inversion. But you know, you're right to say that 
when you've worked at it for a while (a long while), meter really isn't 
that hard. Here's a couple of minutes work to sharpen yours so that it 
might actually set up that inversion as comic:

It's not so hard to to make a metered line,
Then make another, like this pair of mine.
What's hard, I've found, is finding rhymes for them
Which won't make jeering readers me condemn.

The thing is, the inversion isn't really hard to avoid, either:

It's not so hard to to make a metered line,
Then make another, like this pair of mine.
What's hard, I've found, is finding rhymes for them
Which readers find no reason to condemn.

Now the meter's not bad, though it's a little too mannered, too even, 
and there's lots of internal rhyme as well, some alliteration -- OK for 
light verse, but really wearying in a longer serious piece (unless 
you're really good). Is it poetry? Not by a long shot. You're right at 
the end, too: "Writing something poetically worthwhile, which has to do 
with much larger things than meter and rhyme, is all that counts, 
though."



Michael




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 23:00:26 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 04:00:26 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?" -- Sample Poem
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost>
	<028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <005a01c4e4b6$213b4610$f9032cd9@Robin>

                    PERSUASIONS TO ENJOY

Though thoughts of you indeed aspire
Yet love is rooted in desire,
Impulse half-brother to the lust
So early sprung from human dust.

A reasonable plain intent
Is all our bodies can invent,
In which the weaker vessel cries
For supreme unction as it dies.

Our private parts, united, groan
A sound that sighs, "I'm not alone":
An idiom that we reserve
For lexicons of lust - one verb.

A dull language, however we
Swerve into perversity,
Permutate, or change position
In strange shapes of joint coition.

The sweats of mingled ardours break
With more insistence than fears make:
Such modest sweat is oftener found
Than honour's detumescent sound.

While Nanny Time waits at the door,
The infant anguish still cries more,
Oh more of this enchanting juice
Which bathes our limbs in such excuse

As relegates the marriage pact,
The mortgage, and all moral fact
To such reminders as may serve
To salt with guilt a meal of love.

Till Death as bridegroom, Age as bride
Assert once more their ancient right,
And witnessed by the sexton worm
Remarry us within the tomb.

Meanwhile the blood, like a faint rose
Defines the body's clasping hose,
Where on that equatorial zone
Flesh kisses flesh, but stays alone.

Our quaint concerns with love or lust
Are problematics of the dust,
In which the liquid volumes rise
And flesh, not spirit, seeks the skies.


Robin Hamilton




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Fri Dec 17 23:21:29 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 04:21:29 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin>

Is there any poetry written in *unrhymed* octosyllabics?

The top of my head says "no," but I can't think how to check this.

(I'm thinking specifically of syllable-accent -- obviously [obviously?] this
happens lots in stress-metre.)

        Robin

Thinking around the unrhymed iambic pentameter question, there's a reason,
which I'm sure some linguist could explain, why this tends to be the default
in English language writing.

The further away you get from it -- rhymed iambic couplets, octosyllabics,
trochaic, anapestic and dactylic -- the more the metre foregrounds itself.

Then there's the way in which English is isochronic between stresses, which
means that the Assyrians descend faster like wolves on the fold than they
would if they were riding iambs.

Incidentally, is anyone here on the Versification list?  This seems to be
currently unduring one of its long periods of torpor, but this is the sort
of discussion that would have them salivating.

{My sense is that most of the posters to Versification are academics rather
than practicing poets, but maybe we should try to infiltrate it.}

        R.




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 01:44:35 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 06:44:35 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
	<006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin>
Message-ID: <000e01c4e4cd$0b49c8b0$f9032cd9@Robin>

> Is there any poetry written in *unrhymed* octosyllabics?

Thinking this through further, does *any* syllable-accent metrical line
other than the iambic pentameter work without rhymes?

Robin

{As a further thought, it was once put to me that the main pont of syllabics
was simply to *avoid* a ten-syllable line.}




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 06:16:57 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 06:16:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <00ed01c4e4f3$16d85a40$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> As my poem showed, (coherently) writing in meter is a snap.  Rhyme is 
>> harder, if you stay in meter.  Writing something poetically 
>> worthwhile, which has to do with much larger things than meter and 
>> rhyme, is all that counts, though.
>>
>> --Bob G.
>>
> 
> It showed no such thing, Bob.  You managed to alternate 36 stressed and 
> unstressed syllables before you gave up on IP (I won't give you "WILL 
> not YOU")

I think MOST readers WILL.  I think you would if it were by some dead canonical formalist poet.

 , but as Marcus and I have  said before, poets don't compose 
> in feet or stresses or even lines -- they make poems. 

Yes, Michael, but as I said, and as my poem clearly shows, writing in meter is a snap.  It has nothing to do with the quality of the lines created.  That, as I also have written, has to do with much more consequential techniques than meter.  If you dislike the first four lines of my poem, it's NOT because its not in meter. 

>Your 18 iambs in a row

There are twenty iambs in four rows.  The inversion makes for sloppy poetry, it does NOT unmeter the line it's in.  But I'm glad you understand I'm using iambs.

>have no music, they don't cohere as lines, ( and certainly not as 
> a poem).

Of course, they cohere as lines.  As for the lack of music, again, so what (if true--and they certainly aren't highly musical)?  Music is not required for metrical correctness.

> You've asked "Why all this attention to the sound?"

No, I haven't.  I suggested that attention to sound as the most important thing in poetry is foolish.


> and it's 
> clear you don't understand that meter is a technique for the ear, not 
> for patterning dictionary stresses -- meter creates an audible line 
> which interacts with the sounds of speech. Those lines of yours might 
> work as filler in a longer poem with a strong IP impulse, but they're 
> disastrous for an opening.  Read them aloud, without a special poetry 
> voice or unnatural pauses for line endings, and they'll sound about 
> like this:
> 
> It isn't DIFficult to BUILD a LINE or two in MEter,
> such as THESE of MINE;
> it's MUCH more TRICKy pinning RHYMES to them for WHICH your READers 
> will NOT you conDEMN.

I seriously doubt there's a single line in all your kingdom of metrical verse that can't be shown to have a non-metrical prose rhythm in the way you've shown my four lines to have.  Metrical poetry, though, as you obviously don't understand (that's a joke), is read differently than prose is. 

I'll give you the slight unnaturalness of the break before "or two."  I think your putting one before "for which" unfair.
 
> I do believe you decided it was good enough to use as a joke when you 
> couldn't wrangle the inversion.

Yes, I've now said that's exactly what happened.

>But you know, you're right to say that 
> when you've worked at it for a while (a long while), meter really isn't 
> that hard. Here's a couple of minutes work to sharpen yours so that it 
> might actually set up that inversion as comic:
> 
> It's not so hard to make a metered line,
> Then make another, like this pair of mine.
> What's hard, I've found, is finding rhymes for them
> Which won't make jeering readers me condemn.

Yes, I've since been thinking about a second line like yours (even to the use of "pair"), but never quite got it.  Your's, I'll grant, is better than my first second line.  My best try for the rhymed four so far is:

It takes no special gift to build a line
according to some metrical design;
including rhyme takes more ability
if fluid all your lines you want to be.

I consider this better than your improvement but certainly no world-beater.

> The thing is, the inversion isn't really hard to avoid, either:

Of course not.  In one of my messages to Marcus, I showed one way I fairly quickly replaced the flawed couplet: "it's much more tricky getting them to rhyme,/ at least a fair proportion of the time."  As I told him (in a message that went directly to him because he'd taken to sending his messages to me from his address instead of through New-Poetry, and I didn't realize it because their subject lines all said "[New Poetry]"), I didn't want to go to the bother of finding an uninverted line.  I wrote the four lines very quickly as pure demonstration that meter OF ITSELF is easy to write.
 
> It's not so hard to to make a metered line,
> Then make another, like this pair of mine.
> What's hard, I've found, is finding rhymes for them
> Which readers find no reason to condemn.
> 
> Now the meter's not bad, 

One can easily criticize as you did mine:

It's not so hard to make a metered line,
Then make another, like this pair of mine.
What's hard, I've found, is finding rhymes for them
Which readers find no reason to condemn.

It's not so HARD to MAKE a METered line,
Then MAKE aNOTHer, like this PAIR of mine.
What's HARD, I've found, is FINDing RHYMES for them
Which READERS find no REASon to conDEMN.

though it's a little too mannered, too even, 

Its main flaw is padding--"I've found" and "find no reason to."  "Then make another" even more so (and a locution standardly employed one way or another in many attempts at light verse I've read, so too predictable, or boring--which you maybe mean by "too mannered"). 


> and there's lots of internal rhyme as well, some alliteration -- OK for 
> light verse, but really wearying in a longer serious piece 

Both my attempts have, I think, about as much repenation, as I call it--alliteration, etc., as yours.  "Wearying in a longer serious piece?"  Sure.  But my four lines are not in such a piece.  I now feel that if I were to make a worthwhile poem out of this, I'd have to make four (or more) superior metrical rhymed lines so that the second stanza isn't such a jump in aesthetic value (and it certainly is, although I wouldn't say it's aesthetic value is yet much).

(unless 
> you're really good). Is it poetry?

According to Marcus it would be, because it's in meter.  According to me, it is, because it uses flow-breaks.  You're just misusing language to say that poems you don't like are not poems.  Do you really believe there's no such thing as a bad poem?  That anything written as a poem that you don't like is not a poem?  This is the ultimate Philistine position, in my view.

>Not by a long shot. You're right at 
> the end, too: "Writing something poetically worthwhile, which has to do 
> with much larger things than meter and rhyme, is all that counts, 
> though." 

Thanks.  I wonder if Marcus would agree.

Thanks, too, for discussing this.  I emphasize "discussing."  I wouldn't say you've been kind to me (I consider unkindness to my ideas and writing unkindness to me, because they are me), but I like the human element in discussions. 

--Bob G.
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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 06:18:32 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:18:32 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] recommendations for prosody books
References: <46b311cd.b02faf63.837c000@mirapoint.jcu.edu>
Message-ID: <002d01c4e4f3$50133b40$f9032cd9@Robin>

From: "Philip Metres" <pmetres at jcu.edu>

>  What books do you recommend dealing with
> prosody?

        Malof, _A Manual of English Meters_

>  Also, how would you scan this line:
>
> "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" (L. Hughes)

        ... basically iambic octosyllabics, with an initial anapestic foot
...

> Is this: a) trochaic hexameter with an added stress at the
> end, or b) a trochaic pentameter without the final
> unstressed,

        Let's not overcomplicate things.

                            <g>

> or c) really a syncopated iambic meter, since it
> really doesn't sound like "London bridges falling down..." ?

        "syncopated iambic meter" is a lulu of a way of describing (or
mis-characterising) Dipodic metre, the standard for both ballad and
folk-song.

Incidentally, it's:

            London Bridge is falling down

                    /  x  \  x /  x \

R.





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 06:20:27 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 06:20:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
	<006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin>
Message-ID: <00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Is there any poetry written in *unrhymed* octosyllabics?
>
> The top of my head says "no," but I can't think how to check this.
>
> (I'm thinking specifically of syllable-accent -- obviously [obviously?] 
> this
> happens lots in stress-metre.)

You know, I think of non-accentual ways of ordering lines as not "meter," 
regardless of what's correct.  Is there any term for them as a group?  Poems 
using them seem much more like free verse than like formal verse to me.

--Bob G. 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 06:59:44 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:59:44 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <004301c4e4f9$11dd6c50$f9032cd9@Robin>

From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>

> You know, I think of non-accentual ways of ordering lines as not "meter,"
> regardless of what's correct.  Is there any term for them as a group?
Poems
> using them seem much more like free verse than like formal verse to me.
>
> --Bob G.

I'm not sure there's one term, but a way of looking at it would be to split
the five English metrical systems between stress-based metrics
(accentual) -- stress, syllable-accent, and dypodic -- and qualitative
systems (syllabic and Classical {Greek/Roman}).

Dunno if this helps.  Or if it works.  Or if it even makes sense.

                    :-(

Robin

It would make life easier if you could simply say, "Metrical
English-language writing is stress-based," but then there's Clough's "Amours
de Voyage".

... and you can't simply switch stress for length -- everyone from Sidney to
Tennyson via Longfellow has tried this, and it doesn't work.

Be simpler if there was *no* case where a metrical poem in English was other
than stress-based -- but Amours, and the entire torrid history of the
Sapphic stanza in English ...

      Hark, the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches!
      Lively bright horror and amazing anguish
      Stare thro' their eyelids, while the living worm lies
                              Gnawing within them.


R.





From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 07:16:51 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:16:51 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin><00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<004301c4e4f9$11dd6c50$f9032cd9@Robin>
Message-ID: <005301c4e4fb$75dfec30$f9032cd9@Robin>

Right, before someone shoots me down in flames (I really should listen to
myself speak) ...

Stress metre is count-the-accents, sod the number of syllables.

Syllable-accent is a weird mix of syllable-count and stress patterns.

Dipodic is ... OUCH!!!

Classicial metrics differs from syllable-accent in two ways -- it's both
qualitative rather than quantitative, and non-recursive.

Syllabics (strictly) is simply count-the-syllables.

        End of muddying the waters ever further, and back to the teapot, me.

                                    :-(

                        Da Dormouse.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Hamilton" <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"


> From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
>
> > You know, I think of non-accentual ways of ordering lines as not
"meter,"
> > regardless of what's correct.  Is there any term for them as a group?
> Poems
> > using them seem much more like free verse than like formal verse to me.
> >
> > --Bob G.
>
> I'm not sure there's one term, but a way of looking at it would be to
split
> the five English metrical systems between stress-based metrics
> (accentual) -- stress, syllable-accent, and dypodic -- and qualitative
> systems (syllabic and Classical {Greek/Roman}).
>
> Dunno if this helps.  Or if it works.  Or if it even makes sense.
>
>                     :-(
>
> Robin
>
> It would make life easier if you could simply say, "Metrical
> English-language writing is stress-based," but then there's Clough's
"Amours
> de Voyage".
>
> ... and you can't simply switch stress for length -- everyone from Sidney
to
> Tennyson via Longfellow has tried this, and it doesn't work.
>
> Be simpler if there was *no* case where a metrical poem in English was
other
> than stress-based -- but Amours, and the entire torrid history of the
> Sapphic stanza in English ...
>
>       Hark, the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches!
>       Lively bright horror and amazing anguish
>       Stare thro' their eyelids, while the living worm lies
>                               Gnawing within them.
>
>
> R.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 09:47:03 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 09:47:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin><00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><004301c4e4f9$11dd6c50$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<005301c4e4fb$75dfec30$f9032cd9@Robin>
Message-ID: <012301c4e510$706dfbb0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Right, before someone shoots me down in flames (I really should listen to
> myself speak) ...
>
> Stress metre is count-the-accents, sod the number of syllables.
>
> Syllable-accent is a weird mix of syllable-count and stress patterns.
>
> Dipodic is ... OUCH!!!
>
> Classicial metrics differs from syllable-accent in two ways -- it's both
> qualitative rather than quantitative, and non-recursive.
>
> Syllabics (strictly) is simply count-the-syllables.
>
>        End of muddying the waters ever further, and back to the teapot, 
> me.
>
>                                    :-(
>
>                        Da Dormouse.


You HAVE been helpful, Da D--but I still think that classical accentual is 
off by itself, and the other make-shifts more like free verse than like 
classical accentual.

In fact, I see syllabic as nothing more than lineation without the need to 
make the lineation count.  Ditto stress meter.  Close to fake.

--Bob 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 09:49:42 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 09:49:42 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <012801c4e510$cf120a80$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Here's my blog entry (minus a short introductory passage) for today:

A minor thought occurred to me after Michael Snider opined in a New-Poetry 
post that avoiding inversions in rhymed metrical verse was easy.  I say that 
not only is it *not* easy to avoid inversions *or the equivalent* in rhymed 
metrical verse, but that the difficulty of doing so (for pay-offs much 
smaller than one can get with better devices) is a main reason that serious 
contemporary poets rarely compose such verse.  By "equivalent," I mean going 
out of meter, near-rhymes, grammatical solecisms like wrong verb tense or 
number, and obvious padding.  King Shakespeare does such things all the time 
(even if we agree that some of the rhymes he made that sound poor to us were 
correct in his time).  Sometime, I'll compile some examples of his 
inversions and inversion-equivalents.  Take my word for it, though, there 
are more than a few.

--Bob G. 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 10:10:38 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:10:38 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metre and thongs.
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin><00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<004301c4e4f9$11dd6c50$f9032cd9@Robin>
Message-ID: <009501c4e513$bca55e30$f9032cd9@Robin>

Here's an annecdote ...

I first got involved with the Sapphic Stanza years ago when my ex-wife was
auditing an MA class and she turned-up with this ... thing ...

        Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
        Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
        Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
                            Bolted against me.

Whoever (I said with a typical male certainty) wrote that was fucking
*crazy*.

        {Well, yeah -- Cowper *was* pretty crazy, but that wasn't the
point.}

What I was reacting to was the utter impossibility of mapping a sapphic
stanza onto anything I knew about English verse.

I could only write them (later) by counting my knuckles -- 11 / 7 / 11 and
smash the last line with:

        DAH di di DAH di ...

R.

***

Lines Written During A Period Of Insanity
William Cowper

Hatred and vengence-my eternal portion
Scarce can endure delay of execution-
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my
Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.

Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
I'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram's.

Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice
Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb am
Buried above ground.





From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 10:33:14 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:33:14 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin><00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><004301c4e4f9$11dd6c50$f9032cd9@Robin><005301c4e4fb$75dfec30$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<012301c4e510$706dfbb0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <00a801c4e516$e554fd10$f9032cd9@Robin>

Bob:

> In fact, I see syllabic as nothing more than lineation without the need to
> make the lineation count.  Ditto stress meter.  Close to fake.
>
> --Bob

I'm mostly with you here, Bob -- syllabic(s) from Marianne Moore to Thom
Gunn only barely work if there's an overlay of another pattern.

But stress metre is an horse of a quite different colour.

Leaving aside the walking catastrophe-zone of Auden's +Age of Anxiety+, how
about Francis Berry's "Illness and Ghosts"?

"Hvalsey"?

"Morant Bay"?

        R.







From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 10:34:22 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 10:34:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <028701c4e4a2$af636c60$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C407AE.22135.3D65A3@localhost>

> > Marcus is kinda right...the rest of it would have had to be sharper
> > and funnier in order to make the inversion funny.
> 
On 17 Dec 2004 at 20:40, Bob Grumman wrote:
> I somewhat agree.  I wasn't planning the inversion.  When I needed a
> rhyme for "them," all that came to mind was "condemn."  That fit, but
> I saw no way to use it without an inversion.<

That's the problem, right there! That's what reveals this whole "but 
it was a joke!" thing as the pathetic lame-o of an excuse that it 
ineluctably is. That admission right there demonstrates conclusively 
that it was NOT a joke, that it was merely ineptitude meeting an 
obstacle.

Writing In Meter
For Bob Grumman

If I have a minor failing --
	And I?m not convinced I do --
Like leaving prepositions trailing
	Off from where they?re leading to,

I may insert, an extra comma,
	Leave a needed coma out
Or whisper softly where for drama
	There should be a healthy shout,

But if you find an extra billable
	Hour in my bill to you,
My poems never have a single extra syllable
	Nor one too few.

Words around I never shuffle --
	Just to scan a line I broke,
But if I do I critics muffle,
	Claiming they don?t get the joke.

Marcus Bales








From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 10:39:18 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 09:39:18 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Lowell on free verse
Message-ID: <BDE9AB46.DFEF%grahamd@ripon.edu>

>From this week's *New Yorker*, Robert Lowell in a letter to Elizabeth
Bishop, 1976:

"I liked your interview but must disappoint you by saying I?m still in free
verse, written in the blue period after sickness, when I felt I could do
nothing else well. On the balance side and on the side of formality, I am
told all my lines are lines. I do scores of revisions to make them so. I use
iambics often loosened into anapests. I suppose definitions of words in the
dictionary can be made to do this?-anything can be scanned but not be made
into decisive lines. I meant to say that I agreed with everything you said,
but not in practice. How different prose is; sometimes the two mediums just
refuse to say the same things. I found this lately doing an obituary on
Hannah Arendt. Without verse, without philosophy, I found it hard, I was
naked without my line-ends."

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 10:53:06 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:53:06 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin><00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><004301c4e4f9$11dd6c50$f9032cd9@Robin><005301c4e4fb$75dfec30$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<012301c4e510$706dfbb0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <00c701c4e519$abcf5010$f9032cd9@Robin>

> You HAVE been helpful, Da D

        "Johan Sebastian Mendel was a *useful* man."

god, Bob, that's about the most viscious put-down I've encountered in a ton
of years.

                <g>

Green Julia




From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 11:02:28 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:02:28 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <00ed01c4e4f3$16d85a40$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C40E44.4989.571F52@localhost>

On 18 Dec 2004 at 6:16, Bob Grumman wrote:
> > I do believe you decided it was good enough to use as a joke when 
> > you  couldn't wrangle the inversion.
 
> Yes, I've now said that's exactly what happened.<

That's exactly what reveals it as a pathetically lame-o excuse 
instead of as a joke, too. A joke would have a point. It is simply 
NOT FUNNY to invert word order in a poem in order to get to a rhyme 
or eke out a rhythm -- it's not funny even in a poem otherwise funny, 
unless, as I've done in my reply to Bob, the point of the inversion 
is to show that inversions are badly-done meter, and even then it's 
not too damned funny. 

> It takes no special gift to build a line
> according to some metrical design;
> including rhyme takes more ability
> if fluid all your lines you want to be.

If this sucks, since the last syllable in "ability" is unaccented. 
You're trying to rhyme an unaccented syllable with an accented one. 
Have you no ear at all, Bob? 

> > Is it poetry?<

> According to Marcus it would be, because it's in meter. According to
> me, it is, because it uses flow-breaks. You're just misusing language
> to say that poems you don't like are not poems.<

We're not saying its not a poem, Bob -- we're saying that your claim 
that writing in meter is easy is obviously and clearly exploded by 
your own attempt to write in meter. Your efforts are so bad that you 
demonstrate that your own thesis is wrong by the vices in those 
efforts. We're not saying it's not poetry -- we're saying it's very 
bad poetry, and why it's very bad.

Mike Snider wrote: 
> > ... You're right at 
> > the end, too: "Writing something poetically worthwhile, which has 
> > to do with much larger things than meter and rhyme, is all that
> > counts, though."

Bob Grumman wrote:
> Thanks. I wonder if Marcus would agree.<

Sure -- worthwhileness is what we're all after. But first let's agree 
on what kind of worthwhileness we're trying for. Poetry demands a 
different kind of our attention than prose demands. The whole notion 
of trying to sneak a little poetry deceptively in to the unexpecting 
reader by discarding the elements of poetry that the reader would use 
as cues to expect poetry is, at best, lying to your audience beyond 
the conventional set of lies that artists and audiences have agreed 
are ok, that is, that art is fiction purporting to tell a larger 
truth even though it may not have happened just that way, and 
certainly not to just those people.

Prose poems, free verse, all that entire endeavor to lie to the 
audience about whether what is presented is poetry or not, is just 
that: a pernicious lie rather than a noble one. I think it's done out 
of ineptitude, and I think Bob has just demonstrated conclusively the 
kind of ineptitude that free versists characteristically enjoy. He 
has a tin ear for meter, he can't write it, and I'm pretty sure on 
the basis of his attempts at scansion, and by the content of wht he's 
trying to argue, that he can't appreciate it when it's well done, 
either. 

Bob Grumman wrote:
> ... (I consider unkindness to my ideas
> and writing unkindness to me, because they are me)

That's another fundamental and unfortunate revelation. Bob is here 
revealing that he's a fanatic zealot, someone who cannot change his 
ideas without changing his self -- and no self ever changes. 
Reasonable people can change their minds, embrace new opinions, have 
new ideas, enjoy others' ideas, modify their own. But not Bob -- 
nosiree, not Bob. He is his ideas, as they are right now, firmly and 
ineradicably impenetrable. Too bad.

Marcus






From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 11:46:41 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:46:41 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C40E44.4989.571F52@localhost>
Message-ID: <014d01c4e521$26dc4db0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> On 18 Dec 2004 at 6:16, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> > I do believe you decided it was good enough to use as a joke when
>> > you  couldn't wrangle the inversion.
>
>> Yes, I've now said that's exactly what happened.<
>
> That's exactly what reveals it as a pathetically lame-o excuse
> instead of as a joke, too. A joke would have a point. It is simply
> NOT FUNNY to invert word order in a poem in order to get to a rhyme
> or eke out a rhythm -- it's not funny even in a poem otherwise funny,
> unless, as I've done in my reply to Bob, the point of the inversion
> is to show that inversions are badly-done meter, and even then it's
> not too damned funny.

So, it's a failed joke.  But you won't grant that, Marcus, and call me a 
liar when I say I made it into what I thought was a joke.

>> It takes no special gift to build a line
>> according to some metrical design;
>> including rhyme takes more ability
>> if fluid all your lines you want to be.
>
> If this sucks, since the last syllable in "ability" is unaccented.
> You're trying to rhyme an unaccented syllable with an accented one.
> Have you no ear at all, Bob?

Nope.  "ty" is more accented than the syllable before it.  Hence, in iambic 
verse, it counts as accented.

>> > Is it poetry?<
>
>> According to Marcus it would be, because it's in meter. According to
>> me, it is, because it uses flow-breaks. You're just misusing language
>> to say that poems you don't like are not poems.<
>
> We're not saying its not a poem, Bob --

Actually, Michael did say that.

> we're saying that your claim
> that writing in meter is easy is obviously and clearly exploded by
> your own attempt to write in meter. Your efforts are so bad that you
> demonstrate that your own thesis is wrong by the vices in those
> efforts. We're not saying it's not poetry -- we're saying it's very
> bad poetry, and why it's very bad.

No, you're saying you don't like it.  And you haven't said why it's not 
meter, except that you think "ability" only has one stress (in metrical 
verse).

> Mike Snider wrote:
>> > ... You're right at
>> > the end, too: "Writing something poetically worthwhile, which has
>> > to do with much larger things than meter and rhyme, is all that
>> > counts, though."
>
> Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Thanks. I wonder if Marcus would agree.<
>
> Sure -- worthwhileness is what we're all after. But first let's agree
> on what kind of worthwhileness we're trying for. Poetry demands a
> different kind of our attention than prose demands. The whole notion
> of trying to sneak a little poetry deceptively in to the unexpecting
> reader by discarding the elements of poetry that the reader would use
> as cues to expect poetry is, at best, lying to your audience beyond
> the conventional set of lies that artists and audiences have agreed
> are ok,

You say lineation doesn't tell the audience what's up?

> that is, that art is fiction purporting to tell a larger
> truth even though it may not have happened just that way, and
> certainly not to just those people.
>
> Prose poems, free verse, all that entire endeavor to lie to the
> audience about whether what is presented is poetry or not, is just
> that: a pernicious lie rather than a noble one. I think it's done out
> of ineptitude, and I think Bob has just demonstrated conclusively the
> kind of ineptitude that free versists characteristically enjoy. He
> has a tin ear for meter, he can't write it, and I'm pretty sure on
> the basis of his attempts at scansion, and by the content of wht he's
> trying to argue, that he can't appreciate it when it's well done,
> either.
>
> Bob Grumman wrote:
>> ... (I consider unkindness to my ideas
>> and writing unkindness to me, because they are me)
>
> That's another fundamental and unfortunate revelation.

Oh?  After I've told you that at least ten times?

Snip of Marcus figuring me out.

--Bob G. 




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 12:04:22 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:04:22 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry's Chairman
Message-ID: <BDE9BF36.E008%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Interview with Dana Gioia at *Atlantic Monthly*:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200412u/int2004-12-15



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From tad at opus40.org  Sat Dec 18 13:11:26 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:11:26 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry's Chairman
References: <BDE9BF36.E008%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <006101c4e52c$ff72c590$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

That sounds like a nice title. I'd like to be poetry's chairman. 

Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 12:04 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry's Chairman


> Interview with Dana Gioia at *Atlantic Monthly*:
> 
> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200412u/int2004-12-15
> 
> 
> 
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
>



From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 13:36:19 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:36:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <00a801c4e516$e554fd10$f9032cd9@Robin>
Message-ID: <41C43253.24118.E3FB9C@localhost>

> > That's exactly what reveals it as a pathetically lame-o excuse
> > instead of as a joke, too. A joke would have a point. It is 
simply
> > NOT FUNNY to invert word order in a poem in order to get to a 
rhyme
> > or eke out a rhythm -- it's not funny even in a poem otherwise
> > funny, unless, as I've done in my reply to Bob, the point of the
> > inversion is to show that inversions are badly-done meter, and 
even
> > then it's not too damned funny.
> 
On 18 Dec 2004 at 11:46, Bob Grumman wrote:
> So, it's a failed joke.  But you won't grant that ...<

That's right, I don't grant it's a failed joke, because I think it's 
pretty clear from your own account of how you came to it that you 
didn't intend it as a joke at all. Your ineptitude at meter 
encountered a problem in meter that it could not surmount, and you 
let it go at that. If you wanted to go back to the first line and 
start over and create a setup for the joke so that the inversion 
became something resembling a punchline, that would be different -- 
but your account of how you came to write the poem simply doesn't 
include any such narrative. It's not a joke, it's an example of 
ineptitude in writing in meter -- and, as such, it explodes the claim 

you were trying to make, that it is easy to write in meter. It's 
clearly not easy to write in meter if you have to twist syntax and 
grammar in order to achieve it. If it were prose, and you had no 
meter or rhyme to work with or toward, you would never have done the 
inversion. The inversion was solely for achieving a particular set of 

accents on syllables, and is an example of ineptitude in writing in 
meter, not an example of an able practitioner in meter making a joke.

> > ... this sucks, since the last syllable in "ability" is 
unaccented.
> > You're trying to rhyme an unaccented syllable with an accented 
one.
> > Have you no ear at all, Bob?
> 
> Nope.  "ty" is more accented than the syllable before it.  Hence, 
in
> iambic verse, it counts as accented.

This only confirms that you have no ear at all, Bob -- you're 
constantly trying to apply only a few of the rules of meter as if 
they were all of them. When you put the "ty" from activity in  rhyme 
position to rhyme with a strong one-syllable word, you've screwed up. 

At best you can say it's assonance (and assonance, as the saying 
goes, is getting the rhyme wrong), but it's not good.
 
Marcus wrote:
> > ... your claim
> > that writing in meter is easy is obviously and clearly exploded 
by
> > your own attempt to write in meter. Your efforts are so bad that 
you
> > demonstrate that your own thesis is wrong by the vices in those
> > efforts. We're not saying it's not poetry -- we're saying it's 
very
> > bad poetry, and why it's very bad.
 
Bob Grumman wrote:
> No, you're saying you don't like it.  And you haven't said why it's
> not meter, except that you think "ability" only has one stress (in
> metrical verse).<

I'm not saying it's not meter, dammit, Bob! I'm saying it's bad 
writing in meter, and that that bad writing explodes your claim, in 
that bad writing, that writing in meter is easy. I'm perfectly 
willing to acknowledge that it's poetry because it's meter, but I'm 
arguing that it's bad writing because you don't seem to really 
understand what "writing in meter" is all about.

> You say lineation doesn't tell the audience what's up?<

Lineation without meter tells the audience that the person writing 
has such a tin ear that they can't get the meter right, and have 
resorted to writing prose while demanding poetry-attention from the 
audience. The audience has roundly rejected the entire notion. The 
audience of reasonably well-educated and intelligent people that Mike 

Snider postulates as the test has turned away from poetry in the last 

100 years of the ascendancy of the free versists.

Marcus





From JforJames at aol.com  Sat Dec 18 13:43:07 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:43:07 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <15b.46a3df51.2ef5d43b@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/16/2004 10:35:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
marcus at designerglass.com writes:

> 
> English isn?t the shadow word here; it?s the water we swim in; it?s 
> what we?re talking about. It may be different in very different 
> languages, but in English, in the tradition English has grown out of, 
> meter is the dividing line between poetry and prose. Different ages, 
> even different but broadly similar languages within the tradition may 
> have embraced different meters as their central meters than the 
> English iambic, but so what? It?s still meter.

Marcus,
Not all poetry is built from metered language. My point, and this,
Mike, is also my pointer (or hunting dog), is that if you want to 
define poetry as 'structured language', I'd be more inclined to go along. 
The question simply put is this: Do other cultures/languages have 'poetry' 
even if their ways of making it are very different from English metrical
system/traitions? I say they do have 'poetry'. Thus the use of a metrical 
lines doesn't exclusively equal or define 'poetry'. Thus meter is one 
of many possible systems and apporaches to constructing a poem. 
Free verse is another approach: a relaxation of structure or allowing for 
irregularities in the structuring of the language in order to foreground 
other elements.
Finnegan
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From wwmorgan at ilstu.edu  Sat Dec 18 13:45:29 2004
From: wwmorgan at ilstu.edu (Bill Morgan)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:45:29 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <41C43253.24118.E3FB9C@localhost>
References: <00a801c4e516$e554fd10$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<41C43253.24118.E3FB9C@localhost>
Message-ID: <6.0.2.0.2.20041218124241.01b33c50@mail.ilstu.edu>

Is this metrical?


  Widower Receives a Visitor

She sat behind him, still
in the deer blind all afternoon;
then back at the house at dusk,
she stretched out under the quilt
his sister had made and lay
reading his father's diary.

After chili, cheese, and fruit,
they walked the block; he stroked
the neighbors' cats; she watched.

When nine arrived, she waved
from her shiny new black car
as it pushed a hole in the dark.




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec 18 13:55:11 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 19:55:11 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <00a801c4e516$e554fd10$f9032cd9@Robin><41C43253.24118.E3FB9C@localhost>
	<6.0.2.0.2.20041218124241.01b33c50@mail.ilstu.edu>
Message-ID: <00bb01c4e533$1afe4220$9cd63152@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Whatever it is, it seems a good pOm to me,

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Morgan" <wwmorgan at ilstu.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 7:45 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"


> Is this metrical?
>
>
>   Widower Receives a Visitor
>
> She sat behind him, still
> in the deer blind all afternoon;
> then back at the house at dusk,
> she stretched out under the quilt
> his sister had made and lay
> reading his father's diary.
>
> After chili, cheese, and fruit,
> they walked the block; he stroked
> the neighbors' cats; she watched.
>
> When nine arrived, she waved
> from her shiny new black car
> as it pushed a hole in the dark.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 14:00:19 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:00:19 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <15b.46a3df51.2ef5d43b@aol.com>
Message-ID: <BDE9DA63.E017%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/18/04 12:43 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote:

I
Not all poetry is built from metered language. My point, and this,
Mike, is also my pointer (or hunting dog), is that if you want to
define poetry as 'structured language', I'd be more inclined to go along.
The question simply put is this: Do other cultures/languages have 'poetry'
even if their ways of making it are very different from English metrical
system/traitions? I say they do have 'poetry'. Thus the use of a metrical
lines doesn't exclusively equal or define 'poetry'. Thus meter is one
of many possible systems and apporaches to constructing a poem.
Free verse is another approach: a relaxation of structure or allowing for
irregularities in the structuring of the language in order to foreground
other elements.
Finnegan 
_______________________________________________


Yes indeed.  And here's one screamingly obvious point I haven't seen
mentioned in this latest go-round (apologies if I've missed something;
haven't been reading with greatest care)--

The basic rhythmic principle of free verse involves employing the linebreak
itself as a rhythmic tool.  In breaking a line, one sometimes one cuts
against the syntax, sometimes flows with it, and a jillion further variants
according to all sorts of factors--but in any case, the break itself is
musically significant.  No, the different kinds of linebreak don't yet have
prosodic names borrowed from dead languages, but that doesn't mean they
don't exist.

To argue that free verse is simply prose chopped into arbitrary lines, as
all too many Rebel Angels have done, misses the point hugely.  It's not
prose because it employs linebreaks--I mean, duh!

Such arguments assume that the only way to work with poetic rhythm is
metrical, and, failing to find meter, conclude that the linebreaks must be
meaningless.  That strikes me as circular reasoning.



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 14:10:05 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:10:05 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
In-Reply-To: <6.0.2.0.2.20041218124241.01b33c50@mail.ilstu.edu>
Message-ID: <BDE9DCAD.E01A%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Here's a poem in strict measure:

             so much depends
             upon

             a red wheel
             barrow

             glazed with rain
             water

             beside the white
             chickens

The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which Donald Hall has
termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2 words.  Repeat as
necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be discussed, but that's
another story.

No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if it's measurable and
regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel quantity, visual
patterning, etc.  

Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however much it's a nonce
form.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 18 14:15:34 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 14:15:34 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <15b.46a3df51.2ef5d43b@aol.com>
References: <15b.46a3df51.2ef5d43b@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3154ECEE-5129-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 18, 2004, at 1:43 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 12/16/2004 10:35:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
> marcus at designerglass.com writes:
>
>
>
>  English isn?t the shadow word here; it?s the water we swim in; it?s
>  what we?re talking about. It may be different in very different
>  languages, but in English, in the tradition English has grown out of,
>  meter is the dividing line between poetry and prose. Different ages,
>  even different but broadly similar languages within the tradition may
>  have embraced different meters as their central meters than the
>  English iambic, but so what? It?s still meter.
>
>
>  Marcus,
>  Not all poetry is built from metered language. My point, and this,
>  Mike, is also my pointer (or hunting dog), is that if you want to
>  define poetry as 'structured language', I'd be more inclined to go 
> along.
>  The question simply put is this: Do other cultures/languages have 
> 'poetry'
>  even if their ways of making it are very different from English 
> metrical
>  system/traitions?

The answer, simply put, is this: yes, other languages have poetry built 
on other metrical systems than those used in English. I know nothing of 
San poetry or of the formal systems in Hebrew, but in the Indo-European 
languages, in Chinese, in Japanese, and in every language I know 
anything about it's l meter -- counted patterns of one kind or another 
-- that was until the late 19th century acknowledged as the 
distinguishing characteristic of poetry despite occasional 
sophisticated exceptions such as Smart's amazing kitty-cat. Now  Helen 
Vendler and Charles Bernstein can't recognize iambic pentameter (I can 
give you citations), and I suppose it's no surprise that Bob G. thinks 
his doggerel is decent IP.

>  I say they do have 'poetry'. Thus the use of a metrical
>  lines doesn't exclusively equal or define 'poetry'. Thus meter is one
>  of many possible systems and apporaches to constructing a poem.
>  Free verse is another approach: a relaxation of structure or allowing 
> for
>  irregularities in the structuring of the language in order to 
> foreground
>  other elements.


Unlike Marcus, I don't want free verse poets out of the garden -- not 
when I've got a comfortably full belly and a glass of decent Scotch, 
anyway. Like Marcus, I think the dominance of free verse has been a 
nearly unqualified disaster for the status of poetry in our culture.





From wwmorgan at ilstu.edu  Sat Dec 18 14:17:30 2004
From: wwmorgan at ilstu.edu (Bill Morgan)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:17:30 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
In-Reply-To: <00bb01c4e533$1afe4220$9cd63152@yourpk9x5fuc06>
References: <00a801c4e516$e554fd10$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<41C43253.24118.E3FB9C@localhost>
	<6.0.2.0.2.20041218124241.01b33c50@mail.ilstu.edu>
	<00bb01c4e533$1afe4220$9cd63152@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <6.0.2.0.2.20041218131530.01b1f330@mail.ilstu.edu>

         Thank you, Anny; you make me purrrrr.

         But I still wonder if others may think the poem is metrical or 
not.  I don't mean to be coy, and I'll happily explain what I was trying to 
do if anybody cares, but it seems a fairer test to ask readers to respond 
without the poet's prompts.

                                                         Bill

At 12:55 PM 12/18/2004, you wrote:
>Whatever it is, it seems a good pOm to me,
>
>Anny Ballardini
>http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
>http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
>The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
>admirers.
>Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Bill Morgan" <wwmorgan at ilstu.edu>
>To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 7:45 PM
>Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
>
>
> > Is this metrical?
> >
> >
> >   Widower Receives a Visitor
> >
> > She sat behind him, still
> > in the deer blind all afternoon;
> > then back at the house at dusk,
> > she stretched out under the quilt
> > his sister had made and lay
> > reading his father's diary.
> >
> > After chili, cheese, and fruit,
> > they walked the block; he stroked
> > the neighbors' cats; she watched.
> >
> > When nine arrived, she waved
> > from her shiny new black car
> > as it pushed a hole in the dark.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry





From tad at opus40.org  Sat Dec 18 15:11:48 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:11:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?" -- Sample Poem
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<005a01c4e4b6$213b4610$f9032cd9@Robin>
Message-ID: <008e01c4e53d$e8f124e0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

Robin...yours? I like it.



Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Hamilton" <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 11:00 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?" -- Sample Poem


>                    PERSUASIONS TO ENJOY
>
> Though thoughts of you indeed aspire
> Yet love is rooted in desire,
> Impulse half-brother to the lust
> So early sprung from human dust.
>
> A reasonable plain intent
> Is all our bodies can invent,
> In which the weaker vessel cries
> For supreme unction as it dies.
>
> Our private parts, united, groan
> A sound that sighs, "I'm not alone":
> An idiom that we reserve
> For lexicons of lust - one verb.
>
> A dull language, however we
> Swerve into perversity,
> Permutate, or change position
> In strange shapes of joint coition.
>
> The sweats of mingled ardours break
> With more insistence than fears make:
> Such modest sweat is oftener found
> Than honour's detumescent sound.
>
> While Nanny Time waits at the door,
> The infant anguish still cries more,
> Oh more of this enchanting juice
> Which bathes our limbs in such excuse
>
> As relegates the marriage pact,
> The mortgage, and all moral fact
> To such reminders as may serve
> To salt with guilt a meal of love.
>
> Till Death as bridegroom, Age as bride
> Assert once more their ancient right,
> And witnessed by the sexton worm
> Remarry us within the tomb.
>
> Meanwhile the blood, like a faint rose
> Defines the body's clasping hose,
> Where on that equatorial zone
> Flesh kisses flesh, but stays alone.
>
> Our quaint concerns with love or lust
> Are problematics of the dust,
> In which the liquid volumes rise
> And flesh, not spirit, seeks the skies.
>
>
> Robin Hamilton
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From tad at opus40.org  Sat Dec 18 15:13:32 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:13:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
References: <BDE9DCAD.E01A%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <009d01c4e53e$0dea04b0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>

Three words/one word.


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:10 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical


> Here's a poem in strict measure:
>
>             so much depends
>             upon
>
>             a red wheel
>             barrow
>
>             glazed with rain
>             water
>
>             beside the white
>             chickens
>
> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which Donald Hall has
> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2 words.  Repeat as
> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be discussed, but that's
> another story.
>
> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if it's measurable 
> and
> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel quantity, visual
> patterning, etc.
>
> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however much it's a 
> nonce
> form.
>
>
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From JforJames at aol.com  Sat Dec 18 15:30:16 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:30:16 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <24.66a3a0e5.2ef5ed58@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/16/2004 8:41:54 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
mandolin at mac.com writes:

> Care to name names on that one, James?  Certainly Pound and Williams 
> couldn't do it -- their metrical verse is godawful. After Eliot, Lowell's probably 
> your best shot, but after a couple of startlingly good free verse books, 
> settled into the dreadful pseudo-sonnets of Notebook and The Dolphin -- and 
> whoreads his early metrical poetry? Same with James Wright. Even Roethke's 
> defenders (and I'm one) think his metrical poetry was inferior to his other work. 
> Justice and Mezey returned to metrical poetry (and wrote their best poems) 
> after long excursions into free verse. Ashbery wrote at least one bad sestina and 
> a worse pantoum, but they aren't metrical.
> 

Mike, just because someone left metrical poetry doesn't mean he/she
dismisses it, or had no inate ability for it. You judge WCW's capabilities
based on his early efforts? Similarly, those that returned to metrical poetry
are probably not going out of their way to disavow their work in free verse. 
There are many who move back and forth rather freely. Even among the
poets generally lumped under the rubric 'New Formalists' there are some 
who swing both ways. Maybe it's just when they're too lazy to write 
well that they dash off a little free verse.
Finnegan
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From JforJames at aol.com  Sat Dec 18 15:30:23 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:30:23 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
Message-ID: <1a8.2d5f6858.2ef5ed5f@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/18/2004 2:15:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
mandolin at mac.com writes:

> San poetry or of the formal systems in Hebrew, but in the Indo-European 
> languages, in Chinese, in Japanese, and in every language I know 
> anything about it's l meter -- counted patterns of one kind or another 
> 

So any 'pattern' is 'meter' and makes poetry? Can a poem be built 
with only alliteration? With only a rime scheme? With patterns of 
pitch or tone, but not stress or duration? Can a poem be built by
rhetorical structuring? What about the visual pattern of the text on 
the page itself? Can related images be said to be patterned or not?  
Now things are starting to widen out and beginning to encompass 
more of what I know as poetry. Still I would hold out for the intentional 
lack of pattern as being another available choice of structure.
Finnegan
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From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 18 15:36:37 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:36:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <BDE9DA63.E017%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <BDE9DA63.E017%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <83C26E15-5134-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 18, 2004, at 2:00 PM, David Graham wrote:

> on 12/18/04 12:43 PM, JforJames at aol.com at JforJames at aol.com wrote:
>
> I
> Not all poetry is built from metered language. My point, and this,
> Mike, is also my pointer (or hunting dog), is that if you want to
> define poetry as 'structured language', I'd be more inclined to go 
> along.
> The question simply put is this: Do other cultures/languages have 
> 'poetry'
> even if their ways of making it are very different from English 
> metrical
> system/traitions? I say they do have 'poetry'. Thus the use of a 
> metrical
> lines doesn't exclusively equal or define 'poetry'. Thus meter is one
> of many possible systems and apporaches to constructing a poem.
> Free verse is another approach: a relaxation of structure or allowing 
> for
> irregularities in the structuring of the language in order to 
> foreground
> other elements.
> Finnegan
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Yes indeed.  And here's one screamingly obvious point I haven't seen
> mentioned in this latest go-round (apologies if I've missed something;
> haven't been reading with greatest care)--
>
> The basic rhythmic principle of free verse involves employing the 
> linebreak
> itself as a rhythmic tool.  In breaking a line, one sometimes one cuts
> against the syntax, sometimes flows with it, and a jillion further 
> variants
> according to all sorts of factors--but in any case, the break itself is
> musically significant.  No, the different kinds of linebreak don't yet 
> have
> prosodic names borrowed from dead languages, but that doesn't mean they
> don't exist.
>
> To argue that free verse is simply prose chopped into arbitrary lines, 
> as
> all too many Rebel Angels have done, misses the point hugely.  It's not
> prose because it employs linebreaks--I mean, duh!
>
> Such arguments assume that the only way to work with poetic rhythm is
> metrical, and, failing to find meter, conclude that the linebreaks 
> must be
> meaningless.  That strikes me as circular reasoning.
>
>


David, that's the argument that I've been making at my blog -- that in 
free verse isn't built, like Whitman's, on grammatical repetitions 
(themselves rhythmic), the interaction between line break and speech 
does the same thing as the interaction between meter and speech in 
metrical verse.-- which means that enjambment is an entirely different 
thing in metrical vs non-metrical verse.

I don't want to say free verse isn't poetry.


>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 15:38:22 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:38:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry's Chairman
References: <BDE9BF36.E008%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<006101c4e52c$ff72c590$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <01f501c4e541$96839fe0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Okay, okay, you guys win.  If Gioia is "Poetry's Chairman," then what I do 
is not poetry.

--Bob G. 




From mandolin at mac.com  Sat Dec 18 15:41:30 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:41:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <1a8.2d5f6858.2ef5ed5f@aol.com>
References: <1a8.2d5f6858.2ef5ed5f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3292906C-5135-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 18, 2004, at 3:30 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 12/18/2004 2:15:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
> mandolin at mac.com writes:
>
>
> San poetry or of the formal systems in Hebrew, but in the Indo-European
>  languages, in Chinese, in Japanese, and in every language I know
>  anything about it's l meter -- counted patterns of one kind or another
>
>
>
>  So any 'pattern' is 'meter' and makes poetry?

almost -- it's got to be audible, and counting counts, and meter by 
itself doesn't make poetry for me. Syllabics are audible in French, 
quantities (syllable length) are audible in other languages, stress is 
audible in English.

> Can a poem be built
>  with only alliteration? With only a rime scheme? With patterns of
>  pitch or tone, but not stress or duration? Can a poem be built by
>  rhetorical structuring? What about the visual pattern of the text on
>  the page itself? Can related images be said to be patterned or not??
>  Now things are starting to widen out and beginning to encompass
>  more of what I know as poetry. Still I would hold out for the 
> intentional
>  lack of pattern as being another available choice of structure.

I agree that all of these can be used to build poems. I think that, in 
English, there's good evidence that none are as effective in reaching 
and moving an audience as accentual-syllabic meters. 200 years from now 
someone else will know for sure.


>  Finnegan_______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec 18 15:42:31 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:42:31 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <1a8.2d5f6858.2ef5ed5f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <010201c4e542$18eaf4b0$9cd63152@yourpk9x5fuc06>

I have always hated rhyme and avoided it as much as I could. Because of rhyme I hated poetry and was able to accept poetry only in the moment in which it made sense enough (even with rhymes... sigh) to give a surrogate of something, a hidden structure, the possibility of reading few words in different ways, a ciphered encrypted set based on the intuition of the reader. In Italian it is so easy to rhyme (a-a o-o ato-ato ito-ito ...), anybody, the more drunk you are the easier - can make rhymes, when I want to say something silly in Italian and stress that it is silly, I let it rhyme,
and my emphasis is well understood.
Montale does not have one rhyming poem.

Leopardi does, but his diction, his search for words and adjectives is superb, we can thus forgive him.

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 9:30 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands


  In a message dated 12/18/2004 2:15:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, mandolin at mac.com writes:


    San poetry or of the formal systems in Hebrew, but in the Indo-European 
    languages, in Chinese, in Japanese, and in every language I know 
    anything about it's l meter -- counted patterns of one kind or another 



  So any 'pattern' is 'meter' and makes poetry? Can a poem be built 
  with only alliteration? With only a rime scheme? With patterns of 
  pitch or tone, but not stress or duration? Can a poem be built by
  rhetorical structuring? What about the visual pattern of the text on 
  the page itself? Can related images be said to be patterned or not?  
  Now things are starting to widen out and beginning to encompass 
  more of what I know as poetry. Still I would hold out for the intentional 
  lack of pattern as being another available choice of structure.
  Finnegan 


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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 15:53:19 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:53:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
References: <41C43253.24118.E3FB9C@localhost>
Message-ID: <021601c4e543$9b3afb80$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


> Lineation without meter tells the audience that the person writing
> has such a tin ear that they can't get the meter right, and have
> resorted to writing prose while demanding poetry-attention from the
> audience. The audience has roundly rejected the entire notion. The
> audience of reasonably well-educated and intelligent people that Mike 
> Snider postulates as the test has turned away from poetry in the last 100 
> years of the ascendancy of the free versists.
>
> Marcus

I wasn't going to reply to Marcus, anymore, but this is just to priceless 
not to say anything to.  All who write in free verse do so because they 
can't to write formal verse!  Not even one does so because he sincerely
thinks he can do worthwhile things with it that can't be done in formal 
verse?!  I've probably asked before, but how about non-representational 
painters?  Are they all failed representational painters?  Or maybe they're
failed poets.  Yeah, all artists who do anything but our major art do so 
because they can't compose poetry.  In fact, anyone who doesn't pattern his 
life exactly on mine only fails to do so because he's tried to and failed.

--Bob G.




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 15:57:20 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:57:20 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?" -- Sample Poem
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><005a01c4e4b6$213b4610$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<008e01c4e53d$e8f124e0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <01d301c4e544$2bd172a0$f9032cd9@Robin>

> Robin...yours? I like it.

Thanks, yeah ...

Wrote it in the 80s  (and among other things, it illustrates the difficulty
of how difficult it is to write rhymed octosyllabics that aren't simply
Marvell-and-water).

Boosterblurb -- it ought to be reprinted in March 05, in a New&Selected from
Arrowhead Press.

... unless I manage to blow the entire damn project due to how intensely I
seem to manage to hate&loath virtuatally *everything* I've written in the
last twenty years.

            ... angels weep ...

                            :-(

Robin.

> Tad Richards
> www.opus40.org
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Robin Hamilton" <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com>
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 11:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Why Is Blank Verse "Poetry?" -- Sample Poem
>
>
> >                    PERSUASIONS TO ENJOY




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 16:01:33 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:01:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <15b.46a3df51.2ef5d43b@aol.com>
	<3154ECEE-5129-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <022b01c4e544$c178e900$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>>  English isn?t the shadow word here; it?s the water we swim in; it?s
>>  what we?re talking about. It may be different in very different
>>  languages, but in English, in the tradition English has grown out of,
>>  meter is the dividing line between poetry and prose. Different ages,
>>  even different but broadly similar languages within the tradition may
>>  have embraced different meters as their central meters than the
>>  English iambic, but so what? It?s still meter.
>>
>>
>>  Marcus,
>>  Not all poetry is built from metered language. My point, and this,
>>  Mike, is also my pointer (or hunting dog), is that if you want to
>>  define poetry as 'structured language', I'd be more inclined to go 
>> along.
>>  The question simply put is this: Do other cultures/languages have 
>> 'poetry'
>>  even if their ways of making it are very different from English metrical
>>  system/traitions?
>
> The answer, simply put, is this: yes, other languages have poetry built on 
> other metrical systems than those used in English. I know nothing of San 
> poetry or of the formal systems in Hebrew, but in the Indo-European 
> languages, in Chinese, in Japanese, and in every language I know anything 
> about it's l meter -- counted patterns of one kind or another -- that was 
> until the late 19th century acknowledged as the distinguishing 
> characteristic of poetry despite occasional sophisticated exceptions such 
> as Smart's amazing kitty-cat. Now  Helen Vendler and Charles Bernstein 
> can't recognize iambic pentameter (I can give you citations), and I 
> suppose it's no surprise that Bob G. thinks his doggerel is decent IP.

Dammit, I keep telling you and Marcus that I do not say it is DECENT iambic 
pentameter.  What I tell you that it is CORRECT iambic pentameter.  I think 
you two are as incompetent at recognizing it as you say Vendler and 
Bernstein are--because you seem to think it requires superior language, 
and--it's hard not to believe--has to have been done by an Approved Poet.

>>  I say they do have 'poetry'. Thus the use of a metrical
>>  lines doesn't exclusively equal or define 'poetry'. Thus meter is one
>>  of many possible systems and apporaches to constructing a poem.
>>  Free verse is another approach: a relaxation of structure or allowing 
>> for
>>  irregularities in the structuring of the language in order to foreground
>>  other elements.
>
>
> Unlike Marcus, I don't want free verse poets out of the garden -- not when 
> I've got a comfortably full belly and a glass of decent Scotch, anyway. 
> Like Marcus, I think the dominance of free verse has been a nearly 
> unqualified disaster for the status of poetry in our culture.

As bad as, shudder, non-repesentational painting?

--Bob G. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 16:13:52 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:13:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
References: <BDE9DCAD.E01A%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<009d01c4e53e$0dea04b0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <023901c4e546$79d6d3d0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Three words/one word.
>
> Tad Richards
>> Here's a poem in strict measure:
>>
>>             so much depends
>>             upon
>>
>>             a red wheel
>>             barrow
>>
>>             glazed with rain
>>             water
>>
>>             beside the white
>>             chickens
>>

This is the first poem I thought of as a free verse poem equal to anything 
done in formal verse, of its approximate size.  Then I realized it was in 
those iambic pentameter things . . .  That's why I didn't bring it up. 
Also, I know David doesn't think much of it, and I didn't want him to make 
fun of me, again.

Semi-seriously, I really believe a lot of old poems that pass for formal are 
really free verse; and that more than a few poems called free verse are 
formal the way "The Wheelbarrow" is, except not usually so exactly--and 
probably not often intended.  Look at the number of them in stanzas all the 
same length, for instance.

--Bob G. 




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sat Dec 18 16:31:54 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:31:54 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
Message-ID: <158.4666fb71.2ef5fbca@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/18/2004 1:09:07 PM Central Standard Time, 
grahamd at ripon.edu writes: 
> Here's a poem in strict measure:
> 
>              so much depends
>              upon
> 
>              a red wheel
>              barrow
> 
>              glazed with rain
>              water
> 
>              beside the white
>              chickens
> 
> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which Donald Hall has
> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2 words.  Repeat as
> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be discussed, but that's
> another story.
> 
> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if it's measurable and
> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel quantity, visual
> patterning, etc.  
> 
> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however much it's a nonce
> form.
> 

I agree.  Any plausible unit--vowels, spaces, total number of letters--can 
conceivably be used in measuring a line.  But some of them do seem kind of 
pointless, like those novels written without using "e."
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 16:53:11 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:53:11 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <1a8.2d5f6858.2ef5ed5f@aol.com>
	<3292906C-5135-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <026801c4e54b$f80aecf0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>>  So any 'pattern' is 'meter' and makes poetry?
>
> almost -- it's got to be audible, and counting counts, and meter by itself 
> doesn't make poetry for me.

What does meter have to have to become poetry?  Your approval or 
Marcus's--or both?

--Bob G. 




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 16:54:59 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 15:54:59 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Metrical
In-Reply-To: <009d01c4e53e$0dea04b0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <BDEA0352.E038%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/18/04 2:13 PM, The Old Mole at tad at opus40.org wrote:

> Three words/one word.
> 
> 
> Tad Richards
> www.opus40.org


Yeah, you know we free versers are metrically illiterate!

Can't believe that one slipped by me. . . In my own defense, I *have* just
been reading a stack of student papers.

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 17:05:33 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:05:33 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Metrical
In-Reply-To: <158.4666fb71.2ef5fbca@cs.com>
Message-ID: <BDEA05CD.E03B%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/18/04 3:31 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:

I agree.  Any plausible unit--vowels, spaces, total number of letters--can
conceivably be used in measuring a line.  But some of them do seem kind of
pointless, like those novels written without using "e."
--------------------

Yes, in the "pointless" category I might put oddball experiments like James
Laughlin's poems, which he wrote with lines of equal measure on the
typewriter.  Taking the concept of measure rather literally:  by-the-inch.
In the age of computer fonts, the effect gets lost entirely in some
reprintings; but even when he wrote them, it was the sort of meter that
mainly helped the poet get the thing written, providing the useful struggle
of a form to push against.

Same is true of most syllabics, which help the poem get written and may
provide some visual rhythm on the page, but which cannot be heard.  I've
written a lot of syllabics myself, which I don't particularly mind having
people assume is free verse.  But it's not free verse, strictly speaking; I
see no reason to banish such stuff from the kingdom of meter.  I'm with
Finnegan:  the more formal options available, the better.

====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sat Dec 18 17:10:27 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:10:27 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
References: <158.4666fb71.2ef5fbca@cs.com>
Message-ID: <027301c4e54e$632893f0$f9032cd9@Robin>

Actually, it seems to me, behind this is the ghost of  Williams' trptych
line.

Relineate:

             so much
                            depends
                                         upon

             a red
                        wheel
                                     barrow

             glazed with
                                rain
                                          water

             beside the
                                     white
                                                 chickens

Nah?

R.




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 17:39:42 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:39:42 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Lines in the sand
Message-ID: <BDEA0DCE.E041%grahamd@ripon.edu>

How about another text to chew on?  Here's a sample of some free verse by a
poet who learned much--everything?--from Whitman.  To my ears this is very
beautiful, and very much poetry, not prose.  I think Roethke really had a
great ear for free verse rhythms in the Whitman mode.  Not sure anyone else
has matched him in that.

Someone like Creeley, to pick an obvious example, makes very different music
of his linebreaks.

(Some lines are so long that they'll get broken by the mailer, I expect.)




Meditation at Oyster River

I

Over the low, barnacled, elephant-colored rocks
Come the first tide ripples, moving, almost without sound, toward me,
Running along the narrow furrows of the shore, the rows of dead clamshells;
Then a runnel behind me, creeping closer,
Alive with tiny striped fish, and young crabs climbing in and out of the
water.

No sound from the bay. No violence.
Even the gulls quiet on the far rocks,
Silent, in the deepening light,
Their cat-mewing over,
Their child-whimpering.

At last one long undulant ripple,
Blue black from where I am sitting,
Makes almost a wave over a barrier of small stones,
Slapping lightly against a sunken log.
I dabble my toes in the brackish foam sliding forward,
Then retire to a rock higher up on the cliffside.

The wind slackens, light as a moth fanning a stone ?-
A twilight wind, light as a child?s breath,
Turning not a leaf, not a ripple.

The dew revives on the beach grass;
The salt-soaked wood of a fire crackles;
A fish raven turns on its perch (a dead tree in the river mouth),
Its wings catching a last glint of the reflected sunlight.

--Theodore Roethke


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 18:06:49 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 18:06:49 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Lines in the sand
References: <BDEA0DCE.E041%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <02b301c4e556$416c20d0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Yeah, this by Roethke is one of my all-time favorites, along with the other 
poems of his in the same sequence.  Nothing by Lowell, considered by the 
critics his superior--it would appear, seems close to them.

--Bob G. 




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sat Dec 18 19:02:00 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 19:02:00 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Metrical
Message-ID: <1e5.318b8759.2ef61ef8@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/18/2004 4:04:56 PM Central Standard Time, 
grahamd at ripon.edu writes: 
> Yes, in the "pointless" category I might put oddball experiments like James 
> Laughlin's poems, which he wrote with lines of equal measure on the 
> typewriter.  Taking the concept of measure rather literally:  by-the-inch.  In the 
> age of computer fonts, the effect gets lost entirely in some reprintings; but 
> even when he wrote them, it was the sort of meter that mainly helped the poet 
> get the thing written, providing the useful struggle of a form to push 
> against.  
> 
> Same is true of most syllabics, which help the poem get written and may 
> provide some visual rhythm on the page, but which cannot be heard.  I've written 
> a lot of syllabics myself, which I don't particularly mind having people 
> assume is free verse.  But it's not free verse, strictly speaking; I see no 
> reason to banish such stuff from the kingdom of meter.  I'm with Finnegan:  the 
> more formal options available, the better.  

I've often thought that syllabic patterns are more of an aid to the 
writer--forcing him or her to think about word choice and line breaks--than to the 
reader, who can applaud the cleverness but not hear anything in the lines that 
indicates a pattern.  
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From peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk  Sat Dec 18 19:25:40 2004
From: peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk (Peter Cudmore)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 00:25:40 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
In-Reply-To: <158.4666fb71.2ef5fbca@cs.com>
Message-ID: <ECOWS05Mmyga7yhHkEY00023847@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>

like those novels written without using "e."  
 
There's only the one, isn't there? 
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From bardo at optonline.net  Sat Dec 18 19:44:45 2004
From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 19:44:45 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
References: <BDE9DCAD.E01A%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<009d01c4e53e$0dea04b0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <006d01c4e563$ef8c9f70$3a95c044@MULDER>

Four syllables,
two syllables.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical


> Three words/one word.
>
>
> Tad Richards
> www.opus40.org
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:10 PM
> Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>
>
>> Here's a poem in strict measure:
>>
>>             so much depends
>>             upon
>>
>>             a red wheel
>>             barrow
>>
>>             glazed with rain
>>             water
>>
>>             beside the white
>>             chickens
>>
>> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which Donald Hall 
>> has
>> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2 words.  Repeat 
>> as
>> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be discussed, but that's
>> another story.
>>
>> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if it's measurable 
>> and
>> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel quantity, visual
>> patterning, etc.
>>
>> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however much it's a 
>> nonce
>> form.
>>
>>
>> ====================================================
>> David Graham
>> grahamd at ripon.edu
>> Home Page:
>> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
>> Poetry Library:
>> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
>> ====================================================
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 



From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec 18 20:12:58 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:12:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
In-Reply-To: <006d01c4e563$ef8c9f70$3a95c044@MULDER>
References: <BDE9DCAD.E01A%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<009d01c4e53e$0dea04b0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<006d01c4e563$ef8c9f70$3a95c044@MULDER>
Message-ID: <20041218201050.K56915@kpaul.spinweb.net>

something something
something else

nothing nothing
nothing else


----------

also, the recent comment about how the poem is displayed is, i think, 
important. i believe in today's day and age there is a visual poetry as 
well as a poetry of sound.

perhaps the best are those that combine both?


-kpaul

  On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Daniel 
Zimmerman wrote:

> Four syllables,
> two syllables.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 3:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>
>
>> Three words/one word.
>> 
>> 
>> Tad Richards
>> www.opus40.org
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
>> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
>> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:10 PM
>> Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>> 
>> 
>>> Here's a poem in strict measure:
>>> 
>>>             so much depends
>>>             upon
>>> 
>>>             a red wheel
>>>             barrow
>>> 
>>>             glazed with rain
>>>             water
>>> 
>>>             beside the white
>>>             chickens
>>> 
>>> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which Donald Hall has
>>> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2 words.  Repeat as
>>> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be discussed, but that's
>>> another story.
>>> 
>>> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if it's measurable 
>>> and
>>> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel quantity, visual
>>> patterning, etc.
>>> 
>>> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however much it's a 
>>> nonce
>>> form.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ====================================================
>>> David Graham
>>> grahamd at ripon.edu
>>> Home Page:
>>> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
>>> Poetry Library:
>>> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
>>> ====================================================
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> New-Poetry mailing list
>>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>> 
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk  Sat Dec 18 20:21:08 2004
From: peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk (Peter Cudmore)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 01:21:08 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
In-Reply-To: <006d01c4e563$ef8c9f70$3a95c044@MULDER>
Message-ID: <ECOWS05MBRQB7R9Rd7200023902@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>

4/2
3/2
3/2
4/2

But also, 

iamb iamb
iamb

anapest
trochee

anapest
trochee

iamb iamb
trochee

If I am not mistaken... 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Daniel Zimmerman
> Sent: 19 December 2004 00:45
> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views
> Cc: Daniel Zimmerman
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
> 
> Four syllables,
> two syllables.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 3:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
> 
> 
> > Three words/one word.
> >
> >
> > Tad Richards
> > www.opus40.org
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
> > To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
> > <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:10 PM
> > Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
> >
> >
> >> Here's a poem in strict measure:
> >>
> >>             so much depends
> >>             upon
> >>
> >>             a red wheel
> >>             barrow
> >>
> >>             glazed with rain
> >>             water
> >>
> >>             beside the white
> >>             chickens
> >>
> >> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which 
> Donald Hall 
> >> has
> >> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2 
> words.  Repeat 
> >> as
> >> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be 
> discussed, but that's
> >> another story.
> >>
> >> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if 
> it's measurable 
> >> and
> >> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel 
> quantity, visual
> >> patterning, etc.
> >>
> >> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however 
> much it's a 
> >> nonce
> >> form.
> >>
> >>
> >> ====================================================
> >> David Graham
> >> grahamd at ripon.edu
> >> Home Page:
> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> >> Poetry Library:
> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> >> ====================================================
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> New-Poetry mailing list
> >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> > 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
> 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 20:57:26 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:57:26 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
References: <ECOWS05Mmyga7yhHkEY00023847@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>
Message-ID: <02ff01c4e56e$17457e10$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

like those novels written without using "e."  

There's only the one, isn't there? 

I think the idea, first used, is fascinating, and the result had to have been an intriguing exploration of the language.  Of course, visual poets have more than a few times composed poems using NOTHING but e's.  I think it telling that most formal poets (and conventional free verse poets)never think of doing anything like that, nor find it interesting that others do.

--Bob G.
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 20:59:46 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:59:46 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
References: <BDE9DCAD.E01A%grahamd@ripon.edu><009d01c4e53e$0dea04b0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ><006d01c4e563$ef8c9f70$3a95c044@MULDER>
	<20041218201050.K56915@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <030a01c4e56e$6ae9d890$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> something something
> something else
> 
> nothing nothing
> nothing else
> 
> -kpaul

I prefer:

something something
nothing else

nothing nothing
something else

--Bob G.



From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec 18 21:18:19 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:18:19 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
In-Reply-To: <030a01c4e56e$6ae9d890$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <BDE9DCAD.E01A%grahamd@ripon.edu><009d01c4e53e$0dea04b0$6401a8c0@MoleHQ><006d01c4e563$ef8c9f70$3a95c044@MULDER>
	<20041218201050.K56915@kpaul.spinweb.net>
	<030a01c4e56e$6ae9d890$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <20041218211708.O83160@kpaul.spinweb.net>

or (||)

if then else
this

if then else
that

if this then
else

then this or
else

-kpaul

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:

>> something something
>> something else
>> 
>> nothing nothing
>> nothing else
>> 
>> -kpaul
>
> I prefer:
>
> something something
> nothing else
>
> nothing nothing
> something else
>
> --Bob G.
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sat Dec 18 21:19:36 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:19:36 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
In-Reply-To: <02ff01c4e56e$17457e10$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <ECOWS05Mmyga7yhHkEY00023847@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>
	<02ff01c4e56e$17457e10$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <20041218211837.W83160@kpaul.spinweb.net>

The question is, tho, did the author (as opposed to writEr) refer to it as 
a book (rather than a novEl)?

;)

-kpaul

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:

> like those novels written without using "e."
>
> There's only the one, isn't there?
>
> I think the idea, first used, is fascinating, and the result had to have been an intriguing exploration of the language.  Of course, visual poets have more than a few times composed poems using NOTHING but e's.  I think it telling that most formal poets (and conventional free verse poets)never think of doing anything like that, nor find it interesting that others do.
>
> --Bob G.


From bardo at optonline.net  Sat Dec 18 21:23:56 2004
From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:23:56 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
References: <ECOWS05MBRQB7R9Rd7200023902@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>
Message-ID: <00b101c4e571$ca7b7450$3a95c044@MULDER>

Hi, Peter.

Perhaps English scans differently than (my) 'Merikun?

I hear WCW's wryness as follows:

  /      /      ~    /
so much depends
~   /
upon

~   /       (/ ~)
a red wheel
   /   ~
barrow

    /        ~     (/ ~)
glazed with rain
   /  ~
water

  ~  /       ~      /
beside the white
    /    ~
chickens


I've lived in New Jersey (Williams' stomping ground)
for 25 years, and often hear "wheel" and "rain" as
diphthongized disyllables (inverse of British GARaj
vs. American GRAj). I've heard Wms read the poem,
but don't remember how he inflected it--anyone?).
Thus, I see it as syllabic rather than primarily
metrical: 4/2, 4/2, 4/2, 4/2. (Makes me wonder
how to read, for instance, early vs. late Eliot . . .).

~ Dan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Cudmore" <peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk>
To: "'NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views'" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 8:21 PM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow


> 4/2
> 3/2
> 3/2
> 4/2
>
> But also,
>
> iamb iamb
> iamb
>
> anapest
> trochee
>
> anapest
> trochee
>
> iamb iamb
> trochee
>
> If I am not mistaken...
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of
>> Daniel Zimmerman
>> Sent: 19 December 2004 00:45
>> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views
>> Cc: Daniel Zimmerman
>> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>
>> Four syllables,
>> two syllables.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
>> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 3:13 PM
>> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>
>>
>> > Three words/one word.
>> >
>> >
>> > Tad Richards
>> > www.opus40.org
>> > ----- Original Message ----- 
>> > From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
>> > To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>> > <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:10 PM
>> > Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>> >
>> >
>> >> Here's a poem in strict measure:
>> >>
>> >>             so much depends
>> >>             upon
>> >>
>> >>             a red wheel
>> >>             barrow
>> >>
>> >>             glazed with rain
>> >>             water
>> >>
>> >>             beside the white
>> >>             chickens
>> >>
>> >> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which
>> Donald Hall
>> >> has
>> >> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2
>> words.  Repeat
>> >> as
>> >> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be
>> discussed, but that's
>> >> another story.
>> >>
>> >> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if
>> it's measurable
>> >> and
>> >> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel
>> quantity, visual
>> >> patterning, etc.
>> >>
>> >> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however
>> much it's a
>> >> nonce
>> >> form.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> ====================================================
>> >> David Graham
>> >> grahamd at ripon.edu
>> >> Home Page:
>> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
>> >> Poetry Library:
>> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
>> >> ====================================================
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> New-Poetry mailing list
>> >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > New-Poetry mailing list
>> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 



From peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk  Sat Dec 18 21:24:25 2004
From: peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk (Peter Cudmore)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 02:24:25 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
In-Reply-To: <20041218211837.W83160@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <ECOWS03M6tvqbUBkcEl0002aed5@smtp-out3.blueyonder.co.uk>

Not 'the' question, but 'a' question 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of 
> kpaul mallasch
> Sent: 19 December 2004 02:20
> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
> 
> The question is, tho, did the author (as opposed to writEr) 
> refer to it as a book (rather than a novEl)?
> 
> ;)
> 
> -kpaul
> 
> On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:
> 
> > like those novels written without using "e."
> >
> > There's only the one, isn't there?
> >
> > I think the idea, first used, is fascinating, and the 
> result had to have been an intriguing exploration of the 
> language.  Of course, visual poets have more than a few times 
> composed poems using NOTHING but e's.  I think it telling 
> that most formal poets (and conventional free verse 
> poets)never think of doing anything like that, nor find it 
> interesting that others do.
> >
> > --Bob G.
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
> 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Dec 18 21:47:17 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:47:17 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
References: <ECOWS05MBRQB7R9Rd7200023902@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>
	<00b101c4e571$ca7b7450$3a95c044@MULDER>
Message-ID: <031e01c4e575$0e403600$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Hi, Peter.
>
> Perhaps English scans differently than (my) 'Merikun?
>
> I hear WCW's wryness as follows:
>
>  /      /      ~    /
> so much depends
> ~   /
> upon
>
> ~   /       (/ ~)
> a red wheel
>   /   ~
> barrow
>
>    /        ~     (/ ~)
> glazed with rain
>   /  ~
> water
>
>  ~  /       ~      /
> beside the white
>    /    ~
> chickens
>
>
> I've lived in New Jersey (Williams' stomping ground)
> for 25 years, and often hear "wheel" and "rain" as
> diphthongized disyllables (inverse of British GARaj
> vs. American GRAj). I've heard Wms read the poem,
> but don't remember how he inflected it--anyone?).
> Thus, I see it as syllabic rather than primarily
> metrical: 4/2, 4/2, 4/2, 4/2. (Makes me wonder
> how to read, for instance, early vs. late Eliot . . .).
>
> ~ Dan

Interesting.  I realize that there ARE words like "wheel" that I pronounce 
as sort of two syllables when REALLY pronouncing them. "Whole," for 
instance.  As in, "You want my ho-el paycheck!"  Any word, rail, real, 
ending in l, maybe. . .

Also, in seeing your "so much" as two accented syllables, I realize that I 
have some kind of bias against hearing two accented or two unaccented 
syllables in a row as not weak strong or the reverse.  That is, I always 
hear or think I hear a difference that I consider enough to make them iambic 
or trochaic.  But the "much" in "so much" seems to me the most accented word 
in the who el line. . . .

--Bob G.

>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Peter Cudmore" <peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk>
> To: "'NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views'" 
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 8:21 PM
> Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
>
>
>> 4/2
>> 3/2
>> 3/2
>> 4/2
>>
>> But also,
>>
>> iamb iamb
>> iamb
>>
>> anapest
>> trochee
>>
>> anapest
>> trochee
>>
>> iamb iamb
>> trochee
>>
>> If I am not mistaken...
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of
>>> Daniel Zimmerman
>>> Sent: 19 December 2004 00:45
>>> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views
>>> Cc: Daniel Zimmerman
>>> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>>
>>> Four syllables,
>>> two syllables.
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
>>> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>>> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>>> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 3:13 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>>
>>>
>>> > Three words/one word.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Tad Richards
>>> > www.opus40.org
>>> > ----- Original Message ----- 
>>> > From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
>>> > To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>>> > <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>>> > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:10 PM
>>> > Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >> Here's a poem in strict measure:
>>> >>
>>> >>             so much depends
>>> >>             upon
>>> >>
>>> >>             a red wheel
>>> >>             barrow
>>> >>
>>> >>             glazed with rain
>>> >>             water
>>> >>
>>> >>             beside the white
>>> >>             chickens
>>> >>
>>> >> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which
>>> Donald Hall
>>> >> has
>>> >> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2
>>> words.  Repeat
>>> >> as
>>> >> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be
>>> discussed, but that's
>>> >> another story.
>>> >>
>>> >> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if
>>> it's measurable
>>> >> and
>>> >> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel
>>> quantity, visual
>>> >> patterning, etc.
>>> >>
>>> >> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however
>>> much it's a
>>> >> nonce
>>> >> form.
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> ====================================================
>>> >> David Graham
>>> >> grahamd at ripon.edu
>>> >> Home Page:
>>> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
>>> >> Poetry Library:
>>> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
>>> >> ====================================================
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>> >> New-Poetry mailing list
>>> >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>> >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > New-Poetry mailing list
>>> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>> >
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> New-Poetry mailing list
>>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 




From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 22:46:59 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:46:59 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
Message-ID: <41C4B363.1123.1AE4FA@localhost>

> marcus at designerglass.com writes:
>     Lineation without meter tells the audience that the person 
writing
>     has such a tin ear that they can't get the meter right, and 
have
>     resorted to writing prose while demanding poetry-attention from
>     the audience. The audience has roundly rejected the entire 
notion.
>     The audience of reasonably well-educated and intelligent people
>     that Mike Snider postulates as the test has turned away from 
poetry in the
>     last 100 years of the ascendancy of the free versists.
> 
On 18 Dec 2004 at 14:14, JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> O if poetry were so easy as putting lines into meter. <

This again conflates the meaning of "poetry" with "good work", and 
that's wrong. Poetry is indeed nothing more than that which is 
written in meter -- whether it's good or not is another, and 
different, question. The whole point is to remove the qualitative 
value from the notion of "poetry" by continuing to hold that the 
distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between 
writing in meter and writing without meter so that the question of 
what's good and what's bad is a separate question. The idea was, and 
is, to keep the word "poetry" from being applied as a qualitative 
judgment, and keep it nothing more than a descriptive term. That way 
we can all look at what's good and bad about poetry as a question 
independent of the qualitative connotations of the word.

Marcus






From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 22:52:24 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:52:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <026801c4e54b$f80aecf0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C4B4A8.1987.1FD6D2@localhost>

> >>  So any 'pattern' is 'meter' and makes poetry?
> >
> > almost -- it's got to be audible, and counting counts, and meter by
> > itself doesn't make poetry for me.
> 
On 18 Dec 2004 at 16:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
> What does meter have to have to become poetry?  Your approval or
> Marcus's--or both?

Nothing -- because this is, once again, conflating the qualitiative 
with the descriptive meanings of the word "poetry", Bob. You are once 
more pretending to understand "poetry" to mean "good writing of 
certain kinds", that is, qualitatively, instead of as "writing in 
meter". Writing in meter is poetry -- whether it's good or bad 
writing is a separate question. Writing without meter is prose -- 
whether it's good or bad prose is a separate question.

Marcus





From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 23:08:18 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:08:18 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <022b01c4e544$c178e900$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C4B862.22787.2E6853@localhost>

Marcus wrote:
> >>  English isn?t the shadow word here; it?s the water we swim in;
> >>  it?s what we?re talking about. It may be different in very
> >>  different languages, but in English, in the tradition English has
> >>  grown out of, meter is the dividing line between poetry and prose.
> >>  Different ages, even different but broadly similar languages
> >>  within the tradition may have embraced different meters as their
> >>  central meters than the English iambic, but so what? It?s still
> >>  meter.

Someone else wrote:
> >>  Not all poetry is built from metered language. My point, and this,
> >>  Mike, is also my pointer (or hunting dog), is that if you want to
> >>  define poetry as 'structured language', I'd be more inclined to go
> >> along.
> >>  The question simply put is this: Do other cultures/languages have 
> >> 'poetry'
> >>  even if their ways of making it are very different from English
> >>  metrical system/traitions?

Mike Snider wrote:
> > The answer, simply put, is this: yes, other languages have poetry
> > built on other metrical systems than those used in English. I know
> > nothing of San poetry or of the formal systems in Hebrew, but in the
> > Indo-European languages, in Chinese, in Japanese, and in every
> > language I know anything about it's l meter -- counted patterns of
> > one kind or another -- that was until the late 19th century
> > acknowledged as the distinguishing characteristic of poetry despite
> > occasional sophisticated exceptions such as Smart's amazing
> > kitty-cat. Now  Helen Vendler and Charles Bernstein can't recognize
> > iambic pentameter (I can give you citations), and I suppose it's no
> > surprise that Bob G. thinks his doggerel is decent IP.

Bob Grumman wrote: 
> Dammit, I keep telling you and Marcus that I do not say it is DECENT
> iambic pentameter.  What I tell you that it is CORRECT iambic
> pentameter.<

What you set out to demonstrate was that it is easy to write in 
meter, and what you did demonstrate is that it is not. You 
demonstrated that it's hard to get English to do correct iambic 
pentameter without doing goofy things to other rules for writing 
correct English. That demonstrates your fundamental misunderstanding 
of how meter works at all, and how it works with the other rules of a 
language in order to be made into good, or even competent, work.

Mike Snider wrote:
> > Unlike Marcus, I don't want free verse poets out of the garden --

I want talented people to write poetry if they're writing poetry and 
prose if they're writing prose, mostly in order to keep the con 
artists who deliberately take advantage of the "good qualitative" 
connotations of the word "poetry" to try to get approbation for their 
texts, and recognition as poets for themselves out of the garden.

> ... Like Marcus, I think the dominance of free verse has
> > been a nearly unqualified disaster for the status of poetry in our
> > culture.<

I hold that the reason for that nearly unqualified disaster is the 
influx of con artists who take advantage of the good qualitative 
connotations of the word "poetry" to try to get approbation for texts 
that are neither poetry nor good writing, and to gain status for 
themselves as "poets" when they're nothing of the kind.

That audience of reasonably well-educated and intelligent people Mike 
Snider has postulated as a good judge of what's good and bad in art 
in a culture have voted almost unanimously with their dollars and 
their feet: they reject the notion that free verse is poetry because 
they understand that free versists have rejected the notion of meter. 
What "free verse" wants to be free from, after all, is exactly meter -
- what Sam Gwynn says is "verse". That public accurately assesses the 
intent and purposes of free versists: to try to get that public to 
pay poetry-quality attention to texts that are merely prose in 
disguise, and they reject the idea, and have rejected it right along.

Why is it that free versists are so insistent that what they do is 
"poetry"? Because they are deliberately trying to take advantage of 
the good qualitative connotations that "poetry" as a notion has. And 
in so doing they have very nearly destroyed those good qualitative 
connotations. Now when someone claims to be a poet in public there is 
snickering and disdain because what you can be pretty sure you have 
in front of you when you have someone who claims to be a poet in 
front of you is someone with almost no critical thinking skills, a 
tin ear for English, and an exalted sense of his or her importance on 
the basis of those supposed virtues.

Marcus






From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 23:14:04 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:14:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <41C4B862.22787.2E6853@localhost>
References: <022b01c4e544$c178e900$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C4B9BC.12540.33AF7C@localhost>

> Bob Grumman wrote: 
> > Dammit, I keep telling you and Marcus that I do not say it is DECENT
> > iambic pentameter.  What I tell you that it is CORRECT iambic
> > pentameter.<

Writing In Meter
For Bob Grumman

If I have a minor failing --
	And I?m not convinced I do --
Like leaving prepositions trailing
	Off from where they?re leading to,

I may insert, an extra comma,
	Leave a needed coma out
Or whisper softly where for drama
	There should be a healthy shout,

But if you find an extra billable
	Hour in my bill to you,
My poems never have a single extra syllable
	Nor one too few.

Words around I never shuffle --
	Just to scan a line I broke,
But if I do I critics muffle,
	Claiming they don?t get the joke.







From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 18 23:16:38 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:16:38 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <41C4B862.22787.2E6853@localhost>
Message-ID: <BDEA5CC6.E066%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/18/04 10:08 PM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote:

> That audience of reasonably well-educated and intelligent people Mike
> Snider has postulated as a good judge of what's good and bad in art
> in a culture have voted almost unanimously with their dollars and
> their feet: they reject the notion that free verse is poetry because
> they understand that free versists have rejected the notion of meter.

Really?  Anyone want to compare sales statistics on this claim?  Let's see,
on one side we have Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and James Merrill, for
instance.  On the other side, how about Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg, and
Gary Snyder.  

The original New Formalists manifestos all claimed, in fact, the same thing
that Mike Snider has repeatedly mentioned:  that free verse has been
dominant for nearly a century now.  Whether that's good or bad is, yes,
another question.  But apparently William Carlos Williams has not been
lacking in readers in recent decades, eh?


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From bardo at optonline.net  Sat Dec 18 23:27:55 2004
From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:27:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
References: <ECOWS05MBRQB7R9Rd7200023902@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>
	<00b101c4e571$ca7b7450$3a95c044@MULDER>
	<031e01c4e575$0e403600$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <000f01c4e583$1ce8c5b0$3a95c044@MULDER>

Bob,

I grew up in Buffalo ("The Gateway to to the Midwest"), a territory with a 
very small native accentual pattern (characterized, most notably, by the 
hideous "buffalo a":
"thAy-at's nice" or "hey, thAy-anks a lot"--a barbarism I managed not to 
assimilate, though I may have picked it up in then context of other such 
local morphological atavisms/idiosyncracies, e.g., as in my grandfather's 
"el-em" for "elm" and "fil-um" for film"--usages I've also happily 
eschewed). Does your taxonomy allow for such regional variations in 
pronunciation and accentual patterning?

~ Dan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 9:47 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow


>> Hi, Peter.
>>
>> Perhaps English scans differently than (my) 'Merikun?
>>
>> I hear WCW's wryness as follows:
>>
>>  /      /      ~    /
>> so much depends
>> ~   /
>> upon
>>
>> ~   /       (/ ~)
>> a red wheel
>>   /   ~
>> barrow
>>
>>    /        ~     (/ ~)
>> glazed with rain
>>   /  ~
>> water
>>
>>  ~  /       ~      /
>> beside the white
>>    /    ~
>> chickens
>>
>>
>> I've lived in New Jersey (Williams' stomping ground)
>> for 25 years, and often hear "wheel" and "rain" as
>> diphthongized disyllables (inverse of British GARaj
>> vs. American GRAj). I've heard Wms read the poem,
>> but don't remember how he inflected it--anyone?).
>> Thus, I see it as syllabic rather than primarily
>> metrical: 4/2, 4/2, 4/2, 4/2. (Makes me wonder
>> how to read, for instance, early vs. late Eliot . . .).
>>
>> ~ Dan
>
> Interesting.  I realize that there ARE words like "wheel" that I pronounce 
> as sort of two syllables when REALLY pronouncing them. "Whole," for 
> instance.  As in, "You want my ho-el paycheck!"  Any word, rail, real, 
> ending in l, maybe. . .
>
> Also, in seeing your "so much" as two accented syllables, I realize that I 
> have some kind of bias against hearing two accented or two unaccented 
> syllables in a row as not weak strong or the reverse.  That is, I always 
> hear or think I hear a difference that I consider enough to make them 
> iambic or trochaic.  But the "much" in "so much" seems to me the most 
> accented word in the who el line. . . .
>
> --Bob G.
>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Peter Cudmore" <peter.cudmore at blueyonder.co.uk>
>> To: "'NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views'" 
>> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 8:21 PM
>> Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
>>
>>
>>> 4/2
>>> 3/2
>>> 3/2
>>> 4/2
>>>
>>> But also,
>>>
>>> iamb iamb
>>> iamb
>>>
>>> anapest
>>> trochee
>>>
>>> anapest
>>> trochee
>>>
>>> iamb iamb
>>> trochee
>>>
>>> If I am not mistaken...
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>>> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of
>>>> Daniel Zimmerman
>>>> Sent: 19 December 2004 00:45
>>>> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views
>>>> Cc: Daniel Zimmerman
>>>> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>>>
>>>> Four syllables,
>>>> two syllables.
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
>>>> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>>>> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>>>> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 3:13 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > Three words/one word.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Tad Richards
>>>> > www.opus40.org
>>>> > ----- Original Message ----- 
>>>> > From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
>>>> > To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>>>> > <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>>>> > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:10 PM
>>>> > Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >> Here's a poem in strict measure:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>             so much depends
>>>> >>             upon
>>>> >>
>>>> >>             a red wheel
>>>> >>             barrow
>>>> >>
>>>> >>             glazed with rain
>>>> >>             water
>>>> >>
>>>> >>             beside the white
>>>> >>             chickens
>>>> >>
>>>> >> The meter is obvious enough:  word-count.  The form, which
>>>> Donald Hall
>>>> >> has
>>>> >> termed "The Wheelbarrow," involves couplets of 3 words/2
>>>> words.  Repeat
>>>> >> as
>>>> >> necessary.  There are other symmetries that can be
>>>> discussed, but that's
>>>> >> another story.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> No, it's not conventional Norton Anthology meter, but if
>>>> it's measurable
>>>> >> and
>>>> >> regular, it's meter:  syllable, stress, word, vowel
>>>> quantity, visual
>>>> >> patterning, etc.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Williams's notorious poem is as metrical as haiku, however
>>>> much it's a
>>>> >> nonce
>>>> >> form.
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> ====================================================
>>>> >> David Graham
>>>> >> grahamd at ripon.edu
>>>> >> Home Page:
>>>> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
>>>> >> Poetry Library:
>>>> >> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
>>>> >> ====================================================
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>>> >> New-Poetry mailing list
>>>> >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>>> >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > New-Poetry mailing list
>>>> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>>> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> New-Poetry mailing list
>>>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> New-Poetry mailing list
>>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry 



From marcus at designerglass.com  Sat Dec 18 23:38:41 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:38:41 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <BDEA5CC6.E066%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <41C4B862.22787.2E6853@localhost>
Message-ID: <41C4BF81.8516.4A39E4@localhost>

With just "Candide" I think Wilbur wins, not to mention his Moliere 
translations.

But the question remains about that audience Mike Snider referred to: 
the non-student, non-professor audience of reasonably well-educated, 
reasonably intelligent people.

You may be able to point to sales statistics in the academy, but that 
was explicitly excluded from Mike Snider's proposed audience, if I 
understand the proposed comparison correctly.

Marcus


On 18 Dec 2004 at 22:16, David Graham wrote:

> on 12/18/04 10:08 PM, Marcus Bales at marcus at designerglass.com wrote:
> 
> > That audience of reasonably well-educated and intelligent people
> > Mike Snider has postulated as a good judge of what's good and bad in
> > art in a culture have voted almost unanimously with their dollars
> > and their feet: they reject the notion that free verse is poetry
> > because they understand that free versists have rejected the notion
> > of meter.
> 
> Really?  Anyone want to compare sales statistics on this claim?  Let's
> see, on one side we have Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and James
> Merrill, for instance.  On the other side, how about Adrienne Rich,
> Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder.  
> 
> The original New Formalists manifestos all claimed, in fact, the same
> thing that Mike Snider has repeatedly mentioned:  that free verse has
> been dominant for nearly a century now.  Whether that's good or bad
> is, yes, another question.  But apparently William Carlos Williams has
> not been lacking in readers in recent decades, eh?
> 
> 
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 05:28:02 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 05:28:02 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <41C4B4A8.1987.1FD6D2@localhost>
Message-ID: <003001c4e5b5$6ba12260$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> On 18 Dec 2004 at 16:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> What does meter have to have to become poetry?  Your approval or
>> Marcus's--or both?
>
> Nothing -- because this is, once again, conflating the qualitiative
> with the descriptive meanings of the word "poetry", Bob. You are once
> more pretending to understand "poetry" to mean "good writing of
> certain kinds", that is, qualitatively, instead of as "writing in
> meter".

No, I'm not.  I was suggesting that Michael thinks that because he has 
stated, it seems to me, that bad meter in correct meter is not poetry.

> Writing in meter is poetry -- whether it's good or bad
> writing is a separate question. Writing without meter is prose -- 
> whether it's good or bad prose is a separate question.
>
> Marcus

What is unlineated iambic pentameter, then? 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 05:46:30 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 05:46:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
References: <ECOWS05MBRQB7R9Rd7200023902@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk><00b101c4e571$ca7b7450$3a95c044@MULDER><031e01c4e575$0e403600$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<000f01c4e583$1ce8c5b0$3a95c044@MULDER>
Message-ID: <006301c4e5b8$00ec8420$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Bob,
>
> I grew up in Buffalo ("The Gateway to to the Midwest"), a territory with a 
> very small native accentual pattern (characterized, most notably, by the 
> hideous "buffalo a":
> "thAy-at's nice" or "hey, thAy-anks a lot"--a barbarism I managed not to 
> assimilate, though I may have picked it up in then context of other such 
> local morphological atavisms/idiosyncracies, e.g., as in my grandfather's 
> "el-em" for "elm" and "fil-um" for film"--usages I've also happily 
> eschewed). Does your taxonomy allow for such regional variations in 
> pronunciation and accentual patterning?
>
> ~ Dan

It hadn't but now it might!  By the way, "elm" is pronounced "el muh;" "El 
em" is truly barbaric!

Writing th last reminds me of a question that always occurs to me when I 
start a sentence quoting something in all lower-case letters: should it be 
capitalized?  It begins a sentence, but to capitalize it makes it an 
incorrect quotation.  Or do you write "[E]l"?  But that still fails 
accurately to quote it. . . .

--Bob 




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Sun Dec 19 05:54:39 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 10:54:39 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] How I met metrics ...
References: <41C2F6C8.3810.18DD71C@localhost><028a01c4e4a6$e09b6180$5ab831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><F13B7F63-50A7-11D9-97B0-000A95E985A4@mac.com><006a01c4e4b9$0dcf7940$f9032cd9@Robin><00f801c4e4f3$9448ee90$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><004301c4e4f9$11dd6c50$f9032cd9@Robin><005301c4e4fb$75dfec30$f9032cd9@Robin>
	<012301c4e510$706dfbb0$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <045d01c4e5b9$23a54280$f9032cd9@Robin>

I was walkimg along picking my nails with a clasp-knife (well, doesn't
everyone?) when my then HOD said:

        "Robin, what's the metrical problem with the eighth line of Wyatt's
'Farewell, love ...?' "

Sheesh, took me five years to crack this and another five to document it.

                    I HATE METRICS!!!!

R.







From bardo at optonline.net  Sun Dec 19 06:10:14 2004
From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 06:10:14 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
References: <ECOWS05MBRQB7R9Rd7200023902@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk>
	<00b101c4e571$ca7b7450$3a95c044@MULDER>
	<031e01c4e575$0e403600$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<000f01c4e583$1ce8c5b0$3a95c044@MULDER>
	<006301c4e5b8$00ec8420$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <003501c4e5bb$51276d80$3a95c044@MULDER>

The handbooks I use recommend the form "[E]l" to begin a sentence quoting 
something originally beginning in lower case; I think it does accurately 
quote it--it just shows the man behind the curtain more conspicuously.

By the way, Grandpa used to say "dassn't"--sort of a combination of "dare 
not" and "must not," as in "You dassn't do that." Has anyone else heard that 
usage?

"El muh"??? New to me! (& who says "off ten" for "offen"? I've always left 
the "t" silent . . .)

~ Dan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 5:46 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow


>> Bob,
>>
>> I grew up in Buffalo ("The Gateway to to the Midwest"), a territory with 
>> a very small native accentual pattern (characterized, most notably, by 
>> the hideous "buffalo a":
>> "thAy-at's nice" or "hey, thAy-anks a lot"--a barbarism I managed not to 
>> assimilate, though I may have picked it up in then context of other such 
>> local morphological atavisms/idiosyncracies, e.g., as in my grandfather's 
>> "el-em" for "elm" and "fil-um" for film"--usages I've also happily 
>> eschewed). Does your taxonomy allow for such regional variations in 
>> pronunciation and accentual patterning?
>>
>> ~ Dan
>
> It hadn't but now it might!  By the way, "elm" is pronounced "el muh;" "El 
> em" is truly barbaric!
>
> Writing th last reminds me of a question that always occurs to me when I 
> start a sentence quoting something in all lower-case letters: should it be 
> capitalized?  It begins a sentence, but to capitalize it makes it an 
> incorrect quotation.  Or do you write "[E]l"?  But that still fails 
> accurately to quote it. . . .
>
> --Bob
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 06:29:29 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 06:29:29 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <022b01c4e544$c178e900$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<41C4B9BC.12540.33AF7C@localhost>
Message-ID: <00a601c4e5be$015151b0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>



>> Bob Grumman wrote: 
>> > Dammit, I keep telling you and Marcus that I do not say it is DECENT
>> > iambic pentameter.  What I tell you that it is CORRECT iambic
>> > pentameter.<
> 
> Writing In Meter
> For Bob Grumman
> 
> If I have a minor failing --
> And I'm not convinced I do --
> Like leaving prepositions trailing
> Off from where they're leading to,
> 
> I may insert, an extra comma,
> Leave a needed coma out
> Or whisper softly where for drama
> There should be a healthy shout,
> 
> But if you find an extra billable
> Hour in my bill to you,
> My poems never have a single extra syllable
> Nor one too few.
> 
> Words around I never shuffle --
> Just to scan a line I broke,
> But if I do I critics muffle,
> Claiming they don't get the joke.


Why do you persist in calling me a liar, Marcus?



From marcus at designerglass.com  Sun Dec 19 07:13:56 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 07:13:56 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <003001c4e5b5$6ba12260$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C52A34.4671.336976@localhost>

> > On 18 Dec 2004 at 16:53, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> What does meter have to have to become poetry?  Your approval or
> >> Marcus's--or both?

Marcus wrote:
> > Nothing -- because this is, once again, conflating the qualitiative
> > with the descriptive meanings of the word "poetry", Bob. You are
> > once more pretending to understand "poetry" to mean "good writing of
> > certain kinds", that is, qualitatively, instead of as "writing in
> > meter".
> 
On 19 Dec 2004 at 5:28, Bob Grumman wrote:
> No, I'm not.  I was suggesting that Michael thinks that because he has
> stated, it seems to me, that bad meter in correct meter is not poetry.<

I don't remember Michael stating such a thing -- but if he did, then 
I think he's mistaken. Using the word "poetry" to mean something 
qualitative is what has gotten the literary world into this morass in 
the first place. Postponing the discussion of what's good and bad and 
why is most of the point of distinguishing poetry from prose by a 
simple means such as "Poetry is written in meter, prose is not". Such 
a distinction deliberately avoids the entire issue of quality of work 
to a different discussion in order to encourage that discussion of 
quality as one apart from the discussion of the description.

Why is that a good idea? Because words have not only denotations but 
connotations, and the connotation of "poetry", "poet" and "poem" have 
long had connotations of qualitative judgment: the common 
understanding of rewarding a thing or person with the sobriquet 
"poet" or "poem" or "poetry" is that that judgment is indeed a reward 
for some degree of fineness of work. We cannot deny that that 
connotation exists. Unscrupulous people have taken advantage of the 
connotations to make claims for their work and themselves solely on 
the basis of what they call it, and can get others to call it. Though 
it is bad reasoning, the presumption remains that 40,000 poets can't 
be wrong: if they all call things "poetry" or "poems", or people 
"poets", then they must be.

I'm trying to point out that that is bad reasoning. 

There is no onus to writing prose -- it's just that writing prose 
hasn't the cachet of writing poetry. The fire and insistence of the 
resistance to the idea that it's easy to separate poetry and prose 
according to the traditional plan that poetry is written in meter and 
prose is not demonstrates to a large extent the importance that those 
who want to be known as poets place on being known as poets instead 
of as prose writers. As Bob Grumman has demonstrated, it's not easy 
to write in meter, because meter exposes in a pitiless way the 
ineptitudes of the beginning writer. I think that's a good thing -- 
it challenges some people to get better, and it discourages the rest. 
Why should everyone who wants to be known as a poet be known as a 
poet merely on the basis of his or her claim that he or she is a 
poet? There's no reason for that any more than that anyone who wants 
to be known as an auto mechanic can be known as one merely by 
claiming to be one. There has to be a test of skill, of at least some 
minimal skill, in order to assert any reasonable claim of skill, and 
claiming to be a poet is, after all, a claim of some kind of skill.

What we're discussing is just what kind of skill that is.

David Graham has suggested that there are skills involved in 
lineation without meter or rhyme, but that those skills simply have 
no names in foreign languages, and are disrespected thereby. 

He's less than half right: there are no names in foreign languages 
for those skills, but there are no names in our language for those 
skills, either -- and there's no articulation without names for what 
those skills are, either. Graham, along with many others, boldly 
asserts that there are such skills, but he can no more than the 
others who have gone before him describe them. 

Graham is saying that the work of free verse poetry is a mystery that 
escapes articulation. But to say something escapes articulation is 
simply to say that it is unintelligible. If their work is 
unintelligible then those who are trying to describe it must be 
speaking nonsense about it. Now Graham may say that we cannot rule 
out that he has come to some synthetic truth by intuition, instead of 
by the means that we are accustomed to come to it, and that?s right. 
We must not rule out any approach out of hand. But we must demand 
that the approach be testable in some reasonable way.

And there's the question: what's a reasonable way to test the claims 
that Graham and others make for writing-not-in-meter being poetry?

So, while we must not deny beforehand that Graham and his colleagues 
may discover truths by their own special methods, we wait to hear 
what the propositions are that embody their conclusions so we can see 
whether they are verified or not by reasonable observations. If 
Graham or one of his colleagues apprehends truths then he, or they, 
should be able to express them in ways that might be reasonably 
examined. The fact that neither he nor they can say what it is they  
know, beyond that there are no names or descriptions for the 
techniques they use, nor offer any reasonable test to examine their 
claims, shows that their states of intuitional insight are not really 
cognitive states at all. 
 
Marcus wrote:
> > Writing in meter is poetry -- whether it's good or bad
> > writing is a separate question. Writing without meter is prose --
> > whether it's good or bad prose is a separate question.

Bob Grumman wrote:
> What is unlineated iambic pentameter, then? 

Oddly lineated poetry. The question of whether it's a good idea to 
lineate it thus is separate from the question of whether it's poetry, 
just as whether it's poetry or not is separate from whether it's 
good, bad, or indifferent quality work. What makes it, or prevents it 
from achieving, goodness in quality of work is a question that is 
important to separate from the categorization of the work.

Marcus






From marcus at designerglass.com  Sun Dec 19 07:25:57 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 07:25:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <00a601c4e5be$015151b0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C52D05.14621.3E67FA@localhost>

> >> Bob Grumman wrote: 
> >> > Dammit, I keep telling you and Marcus that I do not say it is
> >> > DECENT iambic pentameter.  What I tell you that it is CORRECT
> >> > iambic pentameter.<
> > 
> > Writing In Meter
> > For Bob Grumman
> > 
> > If I have a minor failing --
> > And I'm not convinced I do --
> > Like leaving prepositions trailing
> > Off from where they're leading to,
> > 
> > I may insert, an extra comma,
> > Leave a needed coma out
> > Or whisper softly where for drama
> > There should be a healthy shout,
> > 
> > But if you find an extra billable
> > Hour in my bill to you,
> > My poems never have a single extra syllable
> > Nor one too few.
> > 
> > Words around I never shuffle --
> > Just to scan a line I broke,
> > But if I do I critics muffle,
> > Claiming they don't get the joke.
> 
On 19 Dec 2004 at 6:29, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Why do you persist in calling me a liar, Marcus?

I don't, Bob -- I persist in pointing out that you contradict 
yourself. Only someone who believes that their opinions cannot change 

and must not change would take evidence of them contradicting 
themselves as an accusation that they are a liar. Oh, wait. You _are_ 

one of those people who believes that your opinions cannot and must 
not change! 

Too bad you and your opinions are so welded together that changing 
your mind about anything is a major life crisis. What happens to you, 

Bob, when you conceive a desire for a peanut butter sandwich and 
discover that you're out of peanut butter? Do you go through a major 
personal crisis, reexamining your entire being, before you can make a 

BLT instead, or do you go on a relentless hunt for peanut butter at 
two in the morning?

Marcus








From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 08:17:25 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 08:17:25 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <41C52D05.14621.3E67FA@localhost>
Message-ID: <00bc01c4e5cd$153fdde0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>> >> Bob Grumman wrote:
>> >> > Dammit, I keep telling you and Marcus that I do not say it is
>> >> > DECENT iambic pentameter.  What I tell you that it is CORRECT
>> >> > iambic pentameter.<
>> >
>> > Writing In Meter
>> > For Bob Grumman
>> >
>> > If I have a minor failing --
>> > And I'm not convinced I do --
>> > Like leaving prepositions trailing
>> > Off from where they're leading to,
>> >
>> > I may insert, an extra comma,
>> > Leave a needed coma out
>> > Or whisper softly where for drama
>> > There should be a healthy shout,
>> >
>> > But if you find an extra billable
>> > Hour in my bill to you,
>> > My poems never have a single extra syllable
>> > Nor one too few.
>> >
>> > Words around I never shuffle --
>> > Just to scan a line I broke,
>> > But if I do I critics muffle,
>> > Claiming they don't get the joke.
>>
> On 19 Dec 2004 at 6:29, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> Why do you persist in calling me a liar, Marcus?

Because you said I PRETEND that I made an inversion as a joke after I said 
that I had made it as a joke.  To pretend is to assert falsely.  How is it 
not lying? 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 08:52:39 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 08:52:39 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <41C52A34.4671.336976@localhost>
Message-ID: <00d501c4e5d2$0145c8e0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

How about this solution: we give up the term, "poetry," entirely.  Instead, 
we call traditional poetry, "metery," (as practiced by "metreots" whom make 
"metrems"), and free verse, "lineatry," (as practiced by "lineots" who make 
"linems").  "Prosetry" would be the practice of "proseots" making "prosems" 
(or prose poems).  "Prosist" would write "prose," as now, with "literature" 
being divided into prose and "evokatry," the latter term covering metery, 
lineatry and prosetry.

Then "metery" would soon have the cachet that Marcus believes only formal 
verse merits, and would have yet if pernicious free versers were not 
muddying the waters by calling themselves the same name as composers of 
formal verse, which they no longer could.

--Bob 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 09:04:32 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 09:04:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical wheelbarrow
References: <ECOWS05MBRQB7R9Rd7200023902@smtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk><00b101c4e571$ca7b7450$3a95c044@MULDER><031e01c4e575$0e403600$26b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc><000f01c4e583$1ce8c5b0$3a95c044@MULDER><006301c4e5b8$00ec8420$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<003501c4e5bb$51276d80$3a95c044@MULDER>
Message-ID: <00df01c4e5d3$aa7570e0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> The handbooks I use recommend the form "[E]l" to begin a sentence quoting 
> something originally beginning in lower case; I think it does accurately 
> quote it--it just shows the man behind the curtain more conspicuously.

Makes sense.

> By the way, Grandpa used to say "dassn't"--sort of a combination of "dare 
> not" and "must not," as in "You dassn't do that." Has anyone else heard 
> that usage?

I'm familiar with it--but probably from books and/or movies.  Wait, my 
father used it jokingly, so it was probably around in his childhood, 100 
years ago.

> "El muh"??? New to me! (& who says "off ten" for "offen"? I've always left 
> the "t" silent . . .)

It's still not uncommon.  When subbing, I offun have to fight the urge to 
correct a student who reads it that way in read-aloud English sessions.

--Bob 




From marcus at designerglass.com  Sun Dec 19 09:35:48 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 09:35:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <00bc01c4e5cd$153fdde0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C54B74.13850.96D5A@localhost>

> >> >> Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> >> > Dammit, I keep telling you and Marcus that I do not say it is
> >> >> > DECENT iambic pentameter.  What I tell you that it is CORRECT
> >> >> > iambic pentameter.<
> >> >
> >> > Writing In Meter
> >> > For Bob Grumman
> >> >
> >> > If I have a minor failing --
> >> > And I'm not convinced I do --
> >> > Like leaving prepositions trailing
> >> > Off from where they're leading to,
> >> >
> >> > I may insert, an extra comma,
> >> > Leave a needed coma out
> >> > Or whisper softly where for drama
> >> > There should be a healthy shout,
> >> >
> >> > But if you find an extra billable
> >> > Hour in my bill to you,
> >> > My poems never have a single extra syllable
> >> > Nor one too few.
> >> >
> >> > Words around I never shuffle --
> >> > Just to scan a line I broke,
> >> > But if I do I critics muffle,
> >> > Claiming they don't get the joke.
> >>
> > On 19 Dec 2004 at 6:29, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >> Why do you persist in calling me a liar, Marcus?
> 
On 19 Dec 2004 at 8:17, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Because you said I PRETEND that I made an inversion as a joke after I
> said that I had made it as a joke.  To pretend is to assert falsely. 
> How is it not lying? 

You could be pretending disingenuously for socratic irony reasons -- 
it might be, in short, merely a rhetorical ploy on your part, just as 
writing a poem as if speaking in your voice was a rhetorical ploy on 
mine. You really aren't very good at this game, are you, Bob?

Marcus






From marcus at designerglass.com  Sun Dec 19 09:35:48 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 09:35:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <00d501c4e5d2$0145c8e0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C54B74.20060.96DAA@localhost>

On 19 Dec 2004 at 8:52, Bob Grumman wrote:
> How about this solution: we give up the term, "poetry," entirely. 
> Instead, we call traditional poetry, "metery," (as practiced by
> "metreots" whom make "metrems"), and free verse, "lineatry," (as
> practiced by "lineots" who make "linems").  "Prosetry" would be the
> practice of "proseots" making "prosems" (or prose poems).  "Prosist"
> would write "prose," as now, with "literature" being divided into
> prose and "evokatry," the latter term covering metery, lineatry and
> prosetry.

Why bother? It's much simpler and less confusing to say poetry is 
written in meter and prose is not.

Marcus






From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 09:50:59 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 09:50:59 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <41C54B74.13850.96D5A@localhost>
Message-ID: <00f201c4e5da$27e903b0$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> You could be pretending disingenuously for socratic irony reasons -- 
> it might be, in short, merely a rhetorical ploy on your part, just as
> writing a poem as if speaking in your voice was a rhetorical ploy on
> mine.

I could be any of that but I said I was not pretending.  Therefore, when you 
nonetheless say I was pretending, you are acusing me of being a liar.

>You really aren't very good at this game, are you, Bob?

No, sophistry is your game, Marcus.





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 09:55:31 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 09:55:31 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <41C54B74.20060.96DAA@localhost>
Message-ID: <010101c4e5da$c96e0b40$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> On 19 Dec 2004 at 8:52, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> How about this solution: we give up the term, "poetry," entirely.
>> Instead, we call traditional poetry, "metery," (as practiced by
>> "metreots" whom make "metrems"), and free verse, "lineatry," (as
>> practiced by "lineots" who make "linems").  "Prosetry" would be the
>> practice of "proseots" making "prosems" (or prose poems).  "Prosist"
>> would write "prose," as now, with "literature" being divided into
>> prose and "evokatry," the latter term covering metery, lineatry and
>> prosetry.
>
> Why bother? It's much simpler and less confusing to say poetry is
> written in meter and prose is not.
>
> Marcus

It would test you thesis (if I have it right) that the intelligent people 
now forsaking poetry because the unscrupulous have led them to believe it's 
mostly free verse to come back to it.

Also, it's much more saner than calling free verse "prose" when it most 
certainly is less like prose than it is like metery.  I wouldn't mind 
calling metery "poetry" except that too many people consider it to include 
free verse, so it would be confusing to do so.

By the way, when are you going to tell us whether poetry has to be lineated?




From halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Dec 19 11:16:55 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 11:16:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sonnet:  Calling All Lexicographers
Message-ID: <000201c4e5e6$28810780$b56fec04@computer>


Sonnet:  Calling All Lexicographers

Lord knows, I?m tired of chewing on all this
just to learn how snowmobiles bundle themselves
up in grammar. Their full- or adult-sized progeny
severely stressed, too stressed to say they?re sorry.

Chewing abuse far from love, but at least not
browbeaten. Subscriptions all lapsed. Snowmobiles
beneath you, beneath me. But seduction splits us,
as if truth itself were at stake. There?s someone she

loves, but I?m far from being that one. She says she?s
worried, but I wonder. I?d still love you in the morning,
I say, but she says it?s already too late to take a vote
on that. She hems and haws, even comes, but I'm dirty,

so afraid to open her book of fists clenched in tension,
creating viruses she'll thread her mayhem through.

--Halvard Johnson



Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/





From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec 19 11:21:46 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 11:21:46 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <BDEA5CC6.E066%grahamd@ripon.edu>
References: <BDEA5CC6.E066%grahamd@ripon.edu>
Message-ID: <144C2F30-51DA-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 18, 2004, at 11:16 PM, David Graham wrote:

> The original New Formalists manifestos all claimed, in fact, the same 
> thing
> that Mike Snider has repeatedly mentioned:  that free verse has been
> dominant for nearly a century now.  Whether that's good or bad is, yes,
> another question.  But apparently William Carlos Williams has not been
> lacking in readers in recent decades, eh?

But they're different readers, David. Poetry used to be bought and read 
by people who did not themselves write poems. Tennyson didn't sell like 
Dickens, and Dickens wasn't the best-selling novelist of his time, but 
major publishing houses didn't have to justify their poetry lines by 
prestige -- sales alone were good enough.



From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sun Dec 19 11:31:04 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 11:31:04 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Lewis Turco Interview in P&W
Message-ID: <12c.5374682b.2ef706c8@cs.com>

http://www.pw.org/mag/dq_turco.htm
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From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec 19 11:40:43 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 11:40:43 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <41C52A34.4671.336976@localhost>
References: <41C52A34.4671.336976@localhost>
Message-ID: <B9CCB961-51DC-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 19, 2004, at 7:13 AM, Marcus Bales wrote:

> On 19 Dec 2004 at 5:28, Bob Grumman wrote:
>> No, I'm not.  I was suggesting that Michael thinks that because he has
>> stated, it seems to me, that bad meter in correct meter is not 
>> poetry.<
>
> I don't remember Michael stating such a thing -- but if he did, then
> I think he's mistaken. Using the word "poetry" to mean something
> qualitative is what has gotten the literary world into this morass in
> the first place.


Actually, I did, Marcus. And I'd go farther and say that even 
well-handled meter isn't enough to make something poetry, and, if I'm 
wrong (and that's never happened!), the confusion goes back at least to 
Aristotle. But I think you're right that the sense of "poetry" as a 
mere honorific, as in "poetry in motion," can be a problem. The thing 
is, language is always messy; usage by just those people whom I'd like 
to see buying poetry is always conventional, always conditioned by 
family resemblances. I don't mean that in a condescending way -- that 
is the normal use of language except in specialized contexts like 
physics and analytic philosophy.




From mandolin at mac.com  Sun Dec 19 12:13:02 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:13:02 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
In-Reply-To: <B9CCB961-51DC-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
References: <41C52A34.4671.336976@localhost>
	<B9CCB961-51DC-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <3D932B98-51E1-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 19, 2004, at 11:40 AM, Michael Snider wrote:

>
> On Dec 19, 2004, at 7:13 AM, Marcus Bales wrote:
>
>> On 19 Dec 2004 at 5:28, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> No, I'm not.  I was suggesting that Michael thinks that because he 
>>> has
>>> stated, it seems to me, that bad meter in correct meter is not 
>>> poetry.<
>>
>> I don't remember Michael stating such a thing -- but if he did, then
>> I think he's mistaken. Using the word "poetry" to mean something
>> qualitative is what has gotten the literary world into this morass in
>> the first place.
>
>
> Actually, I did, Marcus. And I'd go farther and say that even 
> well-handled meter isn't enough to make something poetry, and, if I'm 
> wrong (and that's never happened!), the confusion goes back at least 
> to Aristotle. But I think you're right that the sense of "poetry" as a 
> mere honorific, as in "poetry in motion," can be a problem. The thing 
> is, language is always messy; usage by just those people whom I'd like 
> to see buying poetry is always conventional, always conditioned by 
> family resemblances. I don't mean that in a condescending way -- that 
> is the normal use of language except in specialized contexts like 
> physics and analytic philosophy.
>

And, just to be clear, I don't think meter is a necessary property of 
poetry either, though that was a near-universal opinion prior to the 
second half 19th century. Timothy Steele's Missing Measures is a 
wonderful resource for understanding how that happened--and he doesn't 
argue that free verse was a mistake. Neither do I.

But I think the  influence of Pound (a second-rate poet and third rate 
thinker) on the much more competent Eliot was a disaster despite the 
The Waste Land. Eliot''s self-serving and fatuous characterization of 
Kipling's poetry as "mere verse" turned things inside out: nearly 
everyone accepted that metrical faciltiy didn't make poetry -- by 
itself, it made doggerel -- but Eliot managed to make it seem as if 
metrical facility  disqualified a modern writer as a poet. The wide 
academic acceptance of Eliot's critical stance was a real disaster.

>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



From grahamd at vbe.com  Sun Dec 19 12:37:40 2004
From: grahamd at vbe.com (David Graham)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 11:37:40 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear
In-Reply-To: <3D932B98-51E1-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <BDEB1884.3B44%grahamd@vbe.com>

on 12/19/04 11:13 AM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:

> And, just to be clear, I don't think meter is a necessary property of
> poetry either, though that was a near-universal opinion prior to the
> second half 19th century. Timothy Steele's Missing Measures is a
> wonderful resource for understanding how that happened--and he doesn't
> argue that free verse was a mistake. Neither do I.
> 
> But I think the  influence of Pound (a second-rate poet and third rate
> thinker) on the much more competent Eliot was a disaster despite the
> The Waste Land. Eliot''s self-serving and fatuous characterization of
> Kipling's poetry as "mere verse" turned things inside out: nearly
> everyone accepted that metrical faciltiy didn't make poetry -- by
> itself, it made doggerel -- but Eliot managed to make it seem as if
> metrical facility  disqualified a modern writer as a poet. The wide
> academic acceptance of Eliot's critical stance was a real disaster.

Yes. If nothing else, a century and more of free verse exists--what's the
point of trying to banish it from the kingdom of poetry?  That's where
discussion must end (with Marcus, e.g.), I think.

I've always been quite happy letting the line be the defining factor of
poetry vs. prose.  Meter won't work because, well, because of William Carlos
Williams et al.

And yes, that means I'm happy if people don't consider prose poems poetry,
though I don't get worked up over it.  The term "prose poem" is in wide use,
means something to many people, and, well, life is short: I don't often feel
like wrangling over such purely terminological battles.

What interests me very much, as a poet, is the infinity of things one can do
with rhythm and line, the rich banquet of ways one can be musical while
writing in lines.  And one of the things that's happened in the past century
is a broadening of possibility, as I hear it.  From the experiments of Pound
and Williams, through the Harlem Renaissance to today's bewildering array of
options, including a vigorous formalism, I hear America singing varied and
pretty wonderful carols.

Michael & others evidently feel that, with Meter's loss of the monopoly on
poetry, there's been a great diminishment and debasement, but I simply don't
(with the usual caveat that most poetry, most of the time, is by definition
mediocre).  

I don't think Pound's poetry is all second-rate, by the way, though I would
agree that he's hugely over-rated by lots of people, and I long since
concluded that *The Cantos*, like *Paterson*, is mostly an amazing mess.
And in a just world "Home Burial" would receive as much critical attention
as either "Spring and All" or "The Waste Land," for that matter.  But
unfortunately no one has appointed me Chairman of Poetry, I find. . . .


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at vbe.com
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================



From Thom424 at aol.com  Sun Dec 19 12:57:24 2004
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:57:24 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear
Message-ID: <6.3ac2ac52.2ef71b04@aol.com>

david,

by the powers vested in me by the state of minnesota (none), i hereby do 
declare you chairman of poetry....


thom tammaro
moorhead, mn
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 14:28:39 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 14:28:39 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
References: <BDEA5CC6.E066%grahamd@ripon.edu>
	<144C2F30-51DA-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <013701c4e601$05529330$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>



>
> On Dec 18, 2004, at 11:16 PM, David Graham wrote:
>
>> The original New Formalists manifestos all claimed, in fact, the same 
>> thing
>> that Mike Snider has repeatedly mentioned:  that free verse has been
>> dominant for nearly a century now.  Whether that's good or bad is, yes,
>> another question.  But apparently William Carlos Williams has not been
>> lacking in readers in recent decades, eh?
>
> But they're different readers, David. Poetry used to be bought and read by 
> people who did not themselves write poems. Tennyson didn't sell like 
> Dickens, and Dickens wasn't the best-selling novelist of his time, but 
> major publishing houses didn't have to justify their poetry lines by 
> prestige -- sales alone were good enough.

Isn't Jewel a free verser, and doesn't she sell as well as Tennyson did? 
Wasn't that follower of Williams, Bukowski, a big commercial success?  And 
popular still?  Don't Rita Dove and Maya Angelou make big bucks with free 
verse, and have a lot of readers?  What about Gibran?  Although maybe his 
stuff is not considered poetry.  The problem with poetry with the public is 
not that free verse has alienated them but the competition of movies, radio, 
television, records, the computer, etc.  Pl;us the fact that serious poetry 
has never had a big public.

--Bob G.
 




From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Dec 19 14:34:24 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 14:34:24 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Why is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
Message-ID: <12b.52ad0e84.2ef731c0@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/18/2004 10:47:10 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
marcus at designerglass.com writes:

> This again conflates the meaning of "poetry" with "good work", and 
> that's wrong. Poetry is indeed nothing more than that which is 
> written in meter -- whether it's good or not is another, and 
> different, question. The whole point is to remove the qualitative 
> value from the notion of "poetry" by continuing to hold that the 
> distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between 
> writing in meter and writing without meter so that the question of 
> what's good and what's bad is a separate question. The idea was, and 
> is, to keep the word "poetry" from being applied as a qualitative 
> judgment, and keep it nothing more than a descriptive term. That way 
> we can all look at what's good and bad about poetry as a question 
> independent of the qualitative connotations of the word.
> 

Marcus, I wasn't talking about quality, good/bad. Your definition 
of poetry makes meter integral. Mine doesn't; simple as that. 
For me the essence of 'poemness' is not tied to meter
whether roughly rendered or impeccable. 
I can quote hundreds of definitions that don't even breathe the word
'meter'. That doesn't make them better than yours...but it supports
the view that for many poets/critics, even among those who 
favor tradition formalist models of poem-making, the definition 
of 'poetry' is not bound solely to 'meter'.  
I embrace capaciousness, but I don't fear stricture, and I recognize
that the latter, paradoxically, sometimes widens a poet's ambit.
Finnegan
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From DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com  Sun Dec 19 16:25:05 2004
From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 04 16:25:05 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
Message-ID: <200412192133.iBJLXOWC028807@d01av01.pok.ibm.com>

***** Reply to your note of: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 07:23:10 -0500 *************
>>....          Poetry is indeed nothing more than that which is
>>written in meter -- whether it's good or not is another, and
>>different, question. The whole point is to remove the qualitative
>>value from the notion of "poetry" by continuing to hold that the
>>distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between
>>writing in meter and writing without meter
>>
>>Marcus
>>
I'm continually amazed that Marcus is so certain of this definition
of poetry - when, statistically, the entire WORLD holds something
different.  All the Poets Laureate back to but not including Richard
Wilbur, 90-what % of poets and poems published - the confidence in
the face of almost universal disagreement with him - is notable in
a bizarre way.

Richard


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Dec 19 17:42:40 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 17:42:40 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
References: <200412192133.iBJLXOWC028807@d01av01.pok.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <01a801c4e61c$0c196480$89b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>>>....          Poetry is indeed nothing more than that which is
>>>written in meter -- whether it's good or not is another, and
>>>different, question. The whole point is to remove the qualitative
>>>value from the notion of "poetry" by continuing to hold that the
>>>distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between
>>>writing in meter and writing without meter
>>>
>>>Marcus
>>>
> I'm continually amazed that Marcus is so certain of this definition
> of poetry - when, statistically, the entire WORLD holds something
> different.  All the Poets Laureate back to but not including Richard
> Wilbur, 90-what % of poets and poems published - the confidence in
> the face of almost universal disagreement with him - is notable in
> a bizarre way.
>
> Richard

And he doesn't say that it's HIS definition of poetry, but THE definition.

By the way, I'm pretty sure even Richard Wilbur has written free verse 
texts.  But maybe not.  Anyone know for sure?

--Bob 




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sun Dec 19 18:05:14 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:05:14 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
Message-ID: <142.3b64c44e.2ef7632a@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/19/2004 4:43:00 PM Central Standard Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: 
> >>>
> >I'm continually amazed that Marcus is so certain of this definition
> >of poetry - when, statistically, the entire WORLD holds something
> >different.  All the Poets Laureate back to but not including Richard
> >Wilbur, 90-what % of poets and poems published - the confidence in
> >the face of almost universal disagreement with him - is notable in
> >a bizarre way.
> >
> >Richard
> 
> And he doesn't say that it's HIS definition of poetry, but THE definition.
> 
> By the way, I'm pretty sure even Richard Wilbur has written free verse 
> texts.  But maybe not.  Anyone know for sure?
> 
I don't think there's much in Wilbur you could call free verse.  Some of his 
accentual poems sound like free verse but aren't when you start counting the 
strong stresses.  I can't think if any Wilbur free verse.  Hecht wrote some, 
though.
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From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Dec 19 18:05:30 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:05:30 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
Message-ID: <1a8.2d6c79ae.2ef7633a@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/19/2004 5:42:54 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:

> Richard Wilbur has written free verse 
> texts.  But maybe not.  Anyone know for sure?
> 

"Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World", lots
of iambs (ghostly or overt), but swinging free and easy
like laundry on a line.
Finnegan
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From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Dec 19 18:37:50 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:37:50 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wilbur
Message-ID: <1e6.310c27cc.2ef76ace@aol.com>

http://www.slate.com/id/2110115/#ContinueArticle
The Overlooked Master
How poetic history conspired against Richard Wilbur.
By James Longenbach
Nov. 29, 2004

    

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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sun Dec 19 18:49:34 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:49:34 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
Message-ID: <1cf.2dca09de.2ef76d8e@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/19/2004 5:06:16 PM Central Standard Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes: 
> 
> "Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World", lots
> of iambs (ghostly or overt), but swinging free and easy
> like laundry on a line.
> Finnegan
The indented lines are four-stress.  The other lines are five-stress. Some of 
the five-stress lines are broken and stepped-down.  Trust me, I know Wilbur's 
meters like I know my own.  This is a good example of his "free" accentual 
meters.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sun Dec 19 18:53:20 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:53:20 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wilbur
Message-ID: <193.3570fc47.2ef76e70@cs.com>

One thing about Wilbur's meters in the last 25 years or so--he's drifted away 
from the accentuals toward stricter accentual-syllabics (iambics) and toward 
syllabics (the haiku-stanza poems).  God, there are some nice new poems in the 
new collected.
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From tad at opus40.org  Sun Dec 19 19:10:44 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:10:44 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear
References: <BDEB1884.3B44%grahamd@vbe.com>
Message-ID: <003601c4e628$5bbfe700$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

David - you can be Chairman after my term is up.



Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Graham" <grahamd at vbe.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 12:37 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear


> on 12/19/04 11:13 AM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:
>
>> And, just to be clear, I don't think meter is a necessary property of
>> poetry either, though that was a near-universal opinion prior to the
>> second half 19th century. Timothy Steele's Missing Measures is a
>> wonderful resource for understanding how that happened--and he doesn't
>> argue that free verse was a mistake. Neither do I.
>>
>> But I think the  influence of Pound (a second-rate poet and third rate
>> thinker) on the much more competent Eliot was a disaster despite the
>> The Waste Land. Eliot''s self-serving and fatuous characterization of
>> Kipling's poetry as "mere verse" turned things inside out: nearly
>> everyone accepted that metrical faciltiy didn't make poetry -- by
>> itself, it made doggerel -- but Eliot managed to make it seem as if
>> metrical facility  disqualified a modern writer as a poet. The wide
>> academic acceptance of Eliot's critical stance was a real disaster.
>
> Yes. If nothing else, a century and more of free verse exists--what's the
> point of trying to banish it from the kingdom of poetry?  That's where
> discussion must end (with Marcus, e.g.), I think.
>
> I've always been quite happy letting the line be the defining factor of
> poetry vs. prose.  Meter won't work because, well, because of William 
> Carlos
> Williams et al.
>
> And yes, that means I'm happy if people don't consider prose poems poetry,
> though I don't get worked up over it.  The term "prose poem" is in wide 
> use,
> means something to many people, and, well, life is short: I don't often 
> feel
> like wrangling over such purely terminological battles.
>
> What interests me very much, as a poet, is the infinity of things one can 
> do
> with rhythm and line, the rich banquet of ways one can be musical while
> writing in lines.  And one of the things that's happened in the past 
> century
> is a broadening of possibility, as I hear it.  From the experiments of 
> Pound
> and Williams, through the Harlem Renaissance to today's bewildering array 
> of
> options, including a vigorous formalism, I hear America singing varied and
> pretty wonderful carols.
>
> Michael & others evidently feel that, with Meter's loss of the monopoly on
> poetry, there's been a great diminishment and debasement, but I simply 
> don't
> (with the usual caveat that most poetry, most of the time, is by 
> definition
> mediocre).
>
> I don't think Pound's poetry is all second-rate, by the way, though I 
> would
> agree that he's hugely over-rated by lots of people, and I long since
> concluded that *The Cantos*, like *Paterson*, is mostly an amazing mess.
> And in a just world "Home Burial" would receive as much critical attention
> as either "Spring and All" or "The Waste Land," for that matter.  But
> unfortunately no one has appointed me Chairman of Poetry, I find. . . .
>
>
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at vbe.com
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From elemenope at icubed.com  Sun Dec 19 14:31:22 2004
From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 03:31:22 +0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
Message-ID: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>

W H A T  I S  P O E T R Y

It Ends In A Frisson Of Cliched Platitudes Offered On A Platter Of Bombast

Poetry, the literary lyric,
as practiced in our time,
is the record of certain self-privleged minds
especially suited for the endeavor.

It's a private matter,
writer to reader, shared,
not stipulated, voiced,
not invoiced, discovered

In the making by its maker,
and if to you, or you,
notions herein are expressed
that you would enjoin

There is no reason to disputate,
you can always get up, yawn,
or scream, no need for enmity,
walk away onward into Infinity!


---- Part Two -------


Its measures delivered in a hush
when breathing is reduced to billowing
snowflakes plummeting through blinding sparkle,
and Time, String or Newtonian, suspended.

Like a clock found in a desert by a monkey
it's an event puzzled secretly inside a society,
thought up by some inimitable human, elevated
into art by illimitable linguistical skills and malarkey.

Enter at your own risk,
be sure to pay big money to the trickster for his tricks,
these hubbubbing visions beckon sober and risible
ultimately irreducible but evenso quite chic!


R i c h a r d  D i l l o n


-- 
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From ron.silliman at verizon.net  Mon Dec 20 08:24:37 2004
From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:24:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog
Message-ID: <000001c4e697$416eb100$6501a8c0@Dell>

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

RECENT TOPICS:

Riding writing:
poetry & time -
"snail's trace in the moonlight"

What is character?
Walter Mosley's
Socrates Fortlow

What is the Philly Sound?
Furniture Press' new run
of "book-thingees"

Devin Johnston
& the poetics of stillness

Sociology of the 
"open" reading

Carla Harryman's Open Box:
poetry vs. flash poetry
(Brian Kim Stefans,
failing the Blake Test)

Alcohol & poetry:
Better to read Jack Spicer
than BE Jack Spicer
(on 20 years without a drink)

Jackson Mac Low
1922 - 2004:
seeing, hearing, feeling language
with the most open mind

57 "notable" books of poetry
as chosen by the NY Times
1997 - 2004
listed by publisher

Why the NY Times
has never had a comics section

The Poker 5:
New poems by Jack Spicer
in a journal that is an "how to"
lesson in editing

What Gertrude Stein, Sandra Gilbert &
"Puff the Magic Dragon"
have in common -
The Berkeley Poetry Walk

Our inner typewriter(s)

Typing the poem as a mechanism for understanding

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/




From tad at opus40.org  Mon Dec 20 10:43:42 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:43:42 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
Message-ID: <003101c4e6aa$b1320290$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

What Is PoetryARS POETICA
 

Sir, we have read

without compensation

 

and no more than usual

recourse to your rum

 

your entire oeuvre.

We have some questions:

 

Why no tempo?

It's all one glissando,

 

as though rubbing sticks together

could generate passion.

 

We divided on the issue:

What aspect of your work

 

is the most heartless?

The poisoned floss,

 

the severed necks

of old women? Others

 

chose the headlong

celebration of rules

 

or the brokered hypocrisy

of your critique of sin. 
Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
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From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Mon Dec 20 10:53:20 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:53:20 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
	<003101c4e6aa$b1320290$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <41C6F570.6E8030CA@earthlink.net>

>From March 1979

Weary of all who come with words, words but not language
I make my way to the snow-covered island.
The untamed has no words.
The unwritten pages spread out on every side!
I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow.
Language but no words.


- Thomas Transtromer, trans by Robin Fulton

As long as you read this poem
I will be writing it
. . . .

- from "An Exchange of Gifts," Alden Nowlan


- Jim


From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Mon Dec 20 11:30:56 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 16:30:56 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><003101c4e6aa$b1320290$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<41C6F570.6E8030CA@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <00b201c4e6b1$49964040$52169c51@Robin>

> - Thomas Transtromer, trans by Robin Fulton

Boy, Jim -- Robin Fulton -- now *there's* a name that goes way back.

Say what you like against the Scots, even Edinburgh poets like Fulton, we do
seem to do translation quite often.

        (The other) Robin

{Didn't Fulton and D.M.Black intersect in +Scottish International+ in the
sixties?}

                    Neither got the credit they deserved -- TANJ!!!

R again.







From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 20 12:24:24 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:24:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
In-Reply-To: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
Message-ID: <15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
Arse Poetica


Full of myself as I was
I told a dozen bold lies
About my poems while she
Sat by me. I watched her thighs

Cross and uncross and I thought
"She's really hot for me," dead
Sure when she stood up she'd take
Me, she'd break my back in bed,

And I'd break her yearning heart
With my magic art and deft,
Hard, heavy penis. She yawned
"I'm not fond of fools." And left.



An awdl gywydd -- Lew Turco liked it, but Alan Sullivan hated it. 

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Mon Dec 20 12:33:24 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:33:24 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
	<15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>

From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>

> "I'm not fond of fools." And left.

The rhythm doesn't quite work for me here -- how about:

             "I'm not [so] fond of fools." And left.

???

R.




From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 20 12:44:09 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:44:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
In-Reply-To: <00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
	<15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
	<00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
Message-ID: <15093356.1103564649922.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Monday, December 20, 2004, at 12:34PM, Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:

>From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>
>
>> "I'm not fond of fools." And left.
>
>The rhythm doesn't quite work for me here -- how about:
>
>             "I'm not [so] fond of fools." And left.
>
>???
>
>R.
>

Alas, I've only got seven syllables. I let the rest of it get too accentual-syllabic sounding, and so it sounds a little flat at the end, I agree. Not a good place for that, though I sometimes tell myself it's OK since he (not me! not me!) is left pretty flat, too.


>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>


-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From grahamd at ripon.edu  Mon Dec 20 12:47:35 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 11:47:35 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
In-Reply-To: <003101c4e6aa$b1320290$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <BDEC6C57.E0F9%grahamd@ripon.edu>

What the hell, here's one of mine.


POSTMODERN TWO STEP


Our books are all busy reading themselves.
We don?t need them anymore.

Objects in the rear view mirror
may appear larger than they seem.

Down at the Dew Drop Inn, Sancho Panza
and Elmer Fudd share a pitcher.

I live in a not the white house, yet
like the President I am both guest and resident.

Sure, I hum theme songs from sixties sitcoms,
but I wasn?t born in a cathode ray tube.

You were, of course, but then you don?t exist
except as outmoded rhetorical gesture.

I?m so sick of beginnings, middles, and ends!
I live elsewhere, acting otherwise,

I being wholly a construction busy unassembling.
I being nothing special until written down.

Just signify on the dotted line, pal.
If form is missing, feel free to duplicate.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================


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From tad at opus40.org  Mon Dec 20 12:58:16 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:58:16 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
	<00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
Message-ID: <00ab01c4e6bd$7da80fb0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

Only if they're four-stress lines. I read them as three-stress.


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Hamilton" <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry


> From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>
>
>> "I'm not fond of fools." And left.
>
> The rhythm doesn't quite work for me here -- how about:
>
>             "I'm not [so] fond of fools." And left.
>
> ???
>
> R.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From tad at opus40.org  Mon Dec 20 12:59:39 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:59:39 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry/Poems by others
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
	<00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
Message-ID: <00b101c4e6bd$af162cd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

 
At the Shrine     


Grunting and shoving, punctilious Muslims,
Talmudic Jews, Old-Testament Christians 
jostling one another. 
                                                 The dead look down 
on the scene in wonder, pondering what 
celestial unction might lubricate 
this witless friction. 
                                           Yet the dead remember 
an unlikely pause: two lying beatified, 
breast to breast, the point of their quarrel
past recall. 
                            So the dead look down 
and hold their breath, for the dead have time 
if nothing else. 

 

 

Burden     


Nouns were the first to slip away.
Was it because they were easier to forget, 
or the most dispensable? 

Funerals back then were milling 
with nouns whose names he'd forgotten, 
if he'd ever met them. 

Evidently, somewhere out there 
a swarm of improper nouns 
had prospered and multiplied. 

Odd nouns came knocking every day 
looking for work, till the old bard 
left off answering the door. 

Verbs were beasts of another persuasion. 
For a while some stayed behind, 
pacing the halls or curled on the living room sofa. 

But they had to be fed. Some nights 
they sank their claws in his thigh 
when they were hungry. 

As the last syllable crept away, 
he felt a peculiar lightness, 
like the wisp that rises, 

from a smoldering wick-
as if words were the burden 
he'd been bearing, all his life. 

  Donald Finkel
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From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Mon Dec 20 12:59:59 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:59:59 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com><00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
	<15093356.1103564649922.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <011e01c4e6bd$b9f25390$52169c51@Robin>

Ah, I was reading in terms of accentual-syllabic, not stress.

        More fool me.

                    <g>

Robin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry


>
> On Monday, December 20, 2004, at 12:34PM, Robin Hamilton
<robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> >From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>
> >
> >> "I'm not fond of fools." And left.
> >
> >The rhythm doesn't quite work for me here -- how about:
> >
> >             "I'm not [so] fond of fools." And left.
> >
> >???
> >
> >R.
> >
>
> Alas, I've only got seven syllables. I let the rest of it get too
accentual-syllabic sounding, and so it sounds a little flat at the end, I
agree. Not a good place for that, though I sometimes tell myself it's OK
since he (not me! not me!) is left pretty flat, too.
>
>
> >_______________________________________________
> >New-Poetry mailing list
> >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >
> >
>
>
> -----
> Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer.
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 20 13:13:34 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:13:34 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
In-Reply-To: <00ab01c4e6bd$7da80fb0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
	<15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
	<00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
	<00ab01c4e6bd$7da80fb0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <13267730.1103566414187.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Monday, December 20, 2004, at 01:02PM, The Old Mole <tad at opus40.org> wrote:

>Only if they're four-stress lines. I read them as three-stress.
>
>
>Tad Richards
>www.opus40.org
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Robin Hamilton" <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com>
>To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 12:33 PM
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
>
>
>> From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>
>>
>>> "I'm not fond of fools." And left.
>>
>> The rhythm doesn't quite work for me here -- how about:
>>
>>             "I'm not [so] fond of fools." And left.
>>
>> ???
>>
>> R.


I thought my recent AC evangelizing might trip me up on this one.

The awdl gywydd is a Welsh syllabic form, seven syllables per line, end-rhyme for lines 2 and 4, and cross-rhyme from the ends of lines 1 and 3 into the middles (one of syllables 3-5)of lines 2 qnd 4, respectively. 




-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From tad at opus40.org  Mon Dec 20 13:16:31 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:16:31 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry/Poems by others
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com><00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
	<00b101c4e6bd$af162cd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <00fe01c4e6c0$0a007d10$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

On the Finkel poems - I only meant to post the second one, as having 
relevance to the subject.


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry/Poems by others


>
> At the Shrine
>
>
> Grunting and shoving, punctilious Muslims,
> Talmudic Jews, Old-Testament Christians
> jostling one another.
>                                                 The dead look down
> on the scene in wonder, pondering what
> celestial unction might lubricate
> this witless friction.
>                                           Yet the dead remember
> an unlikely pause: two lying beatified,
> breast to breast, the point of their quarrel
> past recall.
>                            So the dead look down
> and hold their breath, for the dead have time
> if nothing else.
>
>
>
>
>
> Burden
>
>
> Nouns were the first to slip away.
> Was it because they were easier to forget,
> or the most dispensable?
>
> Funerals back then were milling
> with nouns whose names he'd forgotten,
> if he'd ever met them.
>
> Evidently, somewhere out there
> a swarm of improper nouns
> had prospered and multiplied.
>
> Odd nouns came knocking every day
> looking for work, till the old bard
> left off answering the door.
>
> Verbs were beasts of another persuasion.
> For a while some stayed behind,
> pacing the halls or curled on the living room sofa.
>
> But they had to be fed. Some nights
> they sank their claws in his thigh
> when they were hungry.
>
> As the last syllable crept away,
> he felt a peculiar lightness,
> like the wisp that rises,
>
> from a smoldering wick-
> as if words were the burden
> he'd been bearing, all his life.
>
>  Donald Finkel


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 




From tad at opus40.org  Mon Dec 20 13:16:58 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:16:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com><00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin><15093356.1103564649922.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
	<011e01c4e6bd$b9f25390$52169c51@Robin>
Message-ID: <010501c4e6c0$1ce1dcd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

And me.


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Hamilton" <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry


> Ah, I was reading in terms of accentual-syllabic, not stress.
>
>        More fool me.
>
>                    <g>
>
> Robin
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>
> To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 5:44 PM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
>
>
>>
>> On Monday, December 20, 2004, at 12:34PM, Robin Hamilton
> <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>
>> >From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>
>> >
>> >> "I'm not fond of fools." And left.
>> >
>> >The rhythm doesn't quite work for me here -- how about:
>> >
>> >             "I'm not [so] fond of fools." And left.
>> >
>> >???
>> >
>> >R.
>> >
>>
>> Alas, I've only got seven syllables. I let the rest of it get too
> accentual-syllabic sounding, and so it sounds a little flat at the end, I
> agree. Not a good place for that, though I sometimes tell myself it's OK
> since he (not me! not me!) is left pretty flat, too.
>>
>>
>> >_______________________________________________
>> >New-Poetry mailing list
>> >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>> -----
>> Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer.
>> http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Dec 20 13:18:22 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:18:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
	<15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <00dc01c4e6c0$4ae6b740$5bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>




> Arse Poetica
>
>
> Full of myself as I was
> I told a dozen bold lies
> About my poems while she
> Sat by me. I watched her thighs
>
> Cross and uncross and I thought
> "She's really hot for me," dead
> Sure when she stood up she'd take
> Me, she'd break my back in bed,
>
> And I'd break her yearning heart
> With my magic art and deft,
> Hard, heavy penis. She yawned
> "I'm not fond of fools." And left.
>
> An awdl gywydd -- Lew Turco liked it, but Alan Sullivan hated it.

Okay, here's proof I'm no expert in meter.  Where is there meter in this? 
And, to be cruel, what's in it to make it good enough for you to call it 
poetry (which its line breaks make it for me)?  Again, too, a question I 
asked you or/and Marcus: what is rhyming lineated writing that lacks meter?

Oops, syllabics.  Can anyone in his right mind claim that free versers could 
not write in syllabics--if they saw any sense in it?

--Bob G. 




From mandolin at mac.com  Mon Dec 20 13:23:19 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Mike Snider)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 13:23:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry/Poems by others
In-Reply-To: <00fe01c4e6c0$0a007d10$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]>
	<15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
	<00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin>
	<00b101c4e6bd$af162cd0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<00fe01c4e6c0$0a007d10$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <4572272.1103566999996.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>

 
On Monday, December 20, 2004, at 01:18PM, The Old Mole <tad at opus40.org> wrote:

>On the Finkel poems - I only meant to post the second one, as having 
>relevance to the subject.
>
>

I'm glad you posted them both. They're the first of Finkel's poems I've liked. I admit Ihaven't seen many, just in an occasional magazine.

-----
Sent from webmail, so I'm not at my computer. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113501/ for the Sonnetarium


From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Mon Dec 20 13:24:40 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 18:24:40 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another octosyllabic couplet  pome ...
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com><00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin><15093356.1103564649922.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
	<011e01c4e6bd$b9f25390$52169c51@Robin>
Message-ID: <013e01c4e6c1$2d499490$52169c51@Robin>

        QUIXOTIC COUPLETS

The prophet's calling is to waste
His life in misdirected haste,
Swinging from hither back to yon
Only to find his audience gone;

Then turning round, bewildered, see
The ocean of humanity
Ebbing outwards from his hill
In search of some more modern thrill.

Meanwhile his trite, though sad, reminder
Asserts that only God is blinder
Than man, whose misdirected will
May sing and lie, both love and kill.

            *          *          *          *          *

Dear girl, these couplets sublimate
A somewhat outr? mental state:

In days of old, old men were taught
To bed young virgins. It was thought
That this would heat the senile blood
And teach the palsied heart to thud.

So I: a cat drawn near the fire
To slake its natural desire,
With youth once more to gain a youth  -
Though forced to note that sterner truth
That time is like a moving stair,
Receding faster than our hair.

After thirty, to the depths we go,
And ought by rights to look below;
Nor covetously eye the rising flight
Which only serves to emphasise our plight.

            *          *          *          *          *

None of the good, handsome, or witty
Ever command that suspect pity
Which must be given to obscene
Humans who are too fat or lean;

And to be loved for self alone
(The futile lover's fruitless moan)
Is only done by God or saint,
Each of whose loves is much too quaint
To gratify that singularity
That they should love poor only me.

Love may be given for pearls or verse:
Most other bargains struck are worse.

            *          *          *          *          *

Like an old scholastic, I
Come to this place to learn to die,
Confront a page white as a skull
That serves as image of that dull
Internment when, mixed all with dust,
I'll make a cocktail of my lust
And what is left of innocence
To repay God for His expense.

            *          *          *          *          *

Time's arrow is not misdirected,
Nor easily, once loosed, deflected.

Thus even ageing, rou? poets
Must in their sober moments know it's
Time to see the turned-down thumb
And out of words, be simply dumb.


            ROBIN HAMILTON




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Mon Dec 20 13:37:44 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 18:37:44 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><15086382.1103563464808.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com><00e401c4e6ba$03776b80$52169c51@Robin><00ab01c4e6bd$7da80fb0$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<13267730.1103566414187.JavaMail.mandolin@mac.com>
Message-ID: <015a01c4e6c3$00219ab0$52169c51@Robin>

From: "Mike Snider" <mandolin at mac.com>

> The awdl gywydd is a Welsh syllabic form, seven syllables per line,
end-rhyme for lines 2 and 4, and cross-rhyme from the ends of lines 1 and 3
into the middles (one of syllables 3-5)of lines 2 qnd 4, respectively.

            Save us save us save us from this Turco afternoon!!!!

                                    <g>

R.

(There's a REASON why the concept of Neoformalist doesn't run West of the
Pond ...}




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Mon Dec 20 15:02:47 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 14:02:47 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry/Poems by others
In-Reply-To: <00fe01c4e6c0$0a007d10$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <BDEC8C07.E10F%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Poetry

Call it a field where animals
who were forgotten by the Ark
come to graze over the evening clouds.

Or a cistern where the rain that fell
before history trickles over a concrete lip.

However you see it,
this is no place to set up
the three-legged easel of realism

or make a reader climb
over the many fences of a plot.

Let the portly novelist
with his noisy typewriter
describe the city where Francine was born,

how Albert read the paper on the train,
how curtains were blowing in the bedroom.

Let the playwright with her torn cardigan
and a dog curled on the rug
move the characters

from the wings to the stage
to face the many-eyed darkness of the house.

Poetry is no place for that.
We have enough to do
complaining about the price of tobacco,

passing the dripping ladle,
and singing songs to a bird in a cage.

We are busy doing nothing?-
and all we need for that is an afternoon,
a rowboat under a blue sky,

and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge,
or, better still, nobody on that bridge at all.

--Billy Collins. *Nine Horses*, 2002.




====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================





From hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk  Mon Dec 20 16:42:11 2004
From: hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk (gbemi tijani-mst)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:42:11 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6,
	Issue 42-initial comment only... by gbemi tijani mst
	re WHAT'S POETRY?
In-Reply-To: <200412201700.iBKH06An022733@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <20041220214211.63421.qmail@web26003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

nb.WITH ALL MODESTY  i must say--i have  without waiting till the  seemingly interminable end of the very enlightening critical exchange on What's poetry?,is blank  verse poetry?the carols i hear ,drawing a line in shifting sands,the meter factor in formal,traditional poetry and what 's to be considered quality poemness-poem -making across the centuries till date- i HAVE A LOT FEATHERS TO DECORATE BOB ,DAVID,MARCUS,KENT,J4 JAMES, THOM and many a contributor that waded into the seemingly murky waters of literature ,i 'm sure its so  clear to each of these poets annotating  not just defending the existence a well as the temerity  and dynamic flourishing of either of these variety of poetry as reutable literature amongst poets ,writers of poems( apology to Robert Graves),prose writers,essayists,dramatists,song writers and non -poets alike..We hopr they 'll keep the discource alive to the extent CONTEMPORARY POETRY  will be inspired to publish a small monograph on it for the general
 digest of readers  on the internet -or even for GOOGLE as part of the select readable in the proposed VIRTUAL LIBRARY ACQUISITIONS /dreams with well-known ivory tower consortium  that will soon be a reality & oasis for hungry readers of poetry.I intentionally use the word hungry for a purpose-Who's reading poetry so fervently as such -other than free verse? Or again i could ask who's reading -or in LOVE with diifficult poetry? Though this depends  on literacy or rofessional foci -i ask again other than for a thesis or viva voce there are very small audience for poetry globally Even in Africa & diaspora as a whole inured from premordial times in artistically loud,anthropologically rich poetry -oral poetry,ritual ballads,lullaby,elegies and sociologically resplendent totems-ORIKI POETRY-we assume a lot on aesthetics-simply colonial mentality-till recent decades ...we dont even know we have a rich treasury of artistry-other than cubism &  related theories of african arts,poetry,and
 civilized ntiquities that does not need alien perspective for measurement -evaluation vis a vis ethnocentric crique -YES insofar as thi s does not affect creativity/originality...i veer a little into poetry in history because some of your contributors also refered to THE PSALMS,SONG OF SONGS   believed   to be written as sacred poems from the caves ..JUST KNOW  SOME LAY POETS ARE WATCHING YOUR resilience and sustained intellectual rigour to poen up more of poetry integrity as a work of art ,as literature facile or difficult for some to do or make or create or muse or even sell !..KODOS  TILL I WATCH DELIGHT WHEN THE LONG ROPE OF HARMLESS FILTERING or poetic titration will end WHEN OR WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL BE THE END TITRE?
SURE IT"LL END WELL 
_Gbemi tijani mst

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: drawing a line in shifting sands (Michael Snider)
2. The varied carols I hear (David Graham)
3. Re: The varied carols I hear (Thom424 at aol.com)
4. Re: drawing a line in shifting sands (Bob ,Grumman)
5. Re: Why is Blank Verse "Poetry?" (JforJames at aol.com)
6. Metrical (DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com)
7. Re: Metrical (Bob Grumman)
8. Re: Metrical (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
9. Re: Metrical (JforJames at aol.com)
10. Wilbur (JforJames at aol.com)
11. Re: Metrical (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
12. Re: Wilbur (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
13. Re: The varied carols I hear (The Old Mole)
14. What Is Poetry (ELEMENOPE Productions)
15. Silliman's Blog (Ron)
16. Re: What Is Poetry (The Old Mole)
17. Re: What Is Poetry (James Cervantes)
18. Re: What Is Poetry (Robin Hamilton)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:13:02 -0500
From: Michael Snider 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <3D932B98-51E1-11D9-AE37-000A95E985A4 at mac.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed


On Dec 19, 2004, at 11:40 AM, Michael Snider wrote:

>
> On Dec 19, 2004, at 7:13 AM, Marcus Bales wrote:
>
>> On 19 Dec 2004 at 5:28, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>> No, I'm not. I was suggesting that Michael thinks that because he 
>>> has
>>> stated, it seems to me, that bad meter in correct meter is not 
>>> poetry.<
>>
>> I don't remember Michael stating such a thing -- but if he did, then
>> I think he's mistaken. Using the word "poetry" to mean something
>> qualitative is what has gotten the literary world into this morass in
>> the first place.
>
>
> Actually, I did, Marcus. And I'd go farther and say that even 
> well-handled meter isn't enough to make something poetry, and, if I'm 
> wrong (and that's never happened!), the confusion goes back at least 
> to Aristotle. But I think you're right that the sense of "poetry" as a 
> mere honorific, as in "poetry in motion," can be a problem. The thing 
> is, language is always messy; usage by just those people whom I'd like 
> to see buying poetry is always conventional, always conditioned by 
> family resemblances. I don't mean that in a condescending way -- that 
> is the normal use of language except in specialized contexts like 
> physics and analytic philosophy.
>

And, just to be clear, I don't think meter is a necessary property of 
poetry either, though that was a near-universal opinion prior to the 
second half 19th century. Timothy Steele's Missing Measures is a 
wonderful resource for understanding how that happened--and he doesn't 
argue that free verse was a mistake. Neither do I.

But I think the influence of Pound (a second-rate poet and third rate 
thinker) on the much more competent Eliot was a disaster despite the 
The Waste Land. Eliot''s self-serving and fatuous characterization of 
Kipling's poetry as "mere verse" turned things inside out: nearly 
everyone accepted that metrical faciltiy didn't make poetry -- by 
itself, it made doggerel -- but Eliot managed to make it seem as if 
metrical facility disqualified a modern writer as a poet. The wide 
academic acceptance of Eliot's critical stance was a real disaster.

>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 11:37:40 -0600
From: David Graham 
Subject: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

on 12/19/04 11:13 AM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:

> And, just to be clear, I don't think meter is a necessary property of
> poetry either, though that was a near-universal opinion prior to the
> second half 19th century. Timothy Steele's Missing Measures is a
> wonderful resource for understanding how that happened--and he doesn't
> argue that free verse was a mistake. Neither do I.
> 
> But I think the influence of Pound (a second-rate poet and third rate
> thinker) on the much more competent Eliot was a disaster despite the
> The Waste Land. Eliot''s self-serving and fatuous characterization of
> Kipling's poetry as "mere verse" turned things inside out: nearly
> everyone accepted that metrical faciltiy didn't make poetry -- by
> itself, it made doggerel -- but Eliot managed to make it seem as if
> metrical facility disqualified a modern writer as a poet. The wide
> academic acceptance of Eliot's critical stance was a real disaster.

Yes. If nothing else, a century and more of free verse exists--what's the
point of trying to banish it from the kingdom of poetry? That's where
discussion must end (with Marcus, e.g.), I think.

I've always been quite happy letting the line be the defining factor of
poetry vs. prose. Meter won't work because, well, because of William Carlos
Williams et al.

And yes, that means I'm happy if people don't consider prose poems poetry,
though I don't get worked up over it. The term "prose poem" is in wide use,
means something to many people, and, well, life is short: I don't often feel
like wrangling over such purely terminological battles.

What interests me very much, as a poet, is the infinity of things one can do
with rhythm and line, the rich banquet of ways one can be musical while
writing in lines. And one of the things that's happened in the past century
is a broadening of possibility, as I hear it. From the experiments of Pound
and Williams, through the Harlem Renaissance to today's bewildering array of
options, including a vigorous formalism, I hear America singing varied and
pretty wonderful carols.

Michael & others evidently feel that, with Meter's loss of the monopoly on
poetry, there's been a great diminishment and debasement, but I simply don't
(with the usual caveat that most poetry, most of the time, is by definition
mediocre). 

I don't think Pound's poetry is all second-rate, by the way, though I would
agree that he's hugely over-rated by lots of people, and I long since
concluded that *The Cantos*, like *Paterson*, is mostly an amazing mess.
And in a just world "Home Burial" would receive as much critical attention
as either "Spring and All" or "The Waste Land," for that matter. But
unfortunately no one has appointed me Chairman of Poetry, I find. . . .


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at vbe.com
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:57:24 EST
From: Thom424 at aol.com
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <6.3ac2ac52.2ef71b04 at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

david,

by the powers vested in me by the state of minnesota (none), i hereby do 
declare you chairman of poetry....


thom tammaro
moorhead, mn
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Message: 4
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 14:28:39 -0500
From: "Bob Grumman" 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] drawing a line in shifting sands
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <013701c4e601$05529330$89b831d0 at youro0kwkw9jwc>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response



>
> On Dec 18, 2004, at 11:16 PM, David Graham wrote:
>
>> The original New Formalists manifestos all claimed, in fact, the same 
>> thing
>> that Mike Snider has repeatedly mentioned: that free verse has been
>> dominant for nearly a century now. Whether that's good or bad is, yes,
>> another question. But apparently William Carlos Williams has not been
>> lacking in readers in recent decades, eh?
>
> But they're different readers, David. Poetry used to be bought and read by 
> people who did not themselves write poems. Tennyson didn't sell like 
> Dickens, and Dickens wasn't the best-selling novelist of his time, but 
> major publishing houses didn't have to justify their poetry lines by 
> prestige -- sales alone were good enough.

Isn't Jewel a free verser, and doesn't she sell as well as Tennyson did? 
Wasn't that follower of Williams, Bukowski, a big commercial success? And 
popular still? Don't Rita Dove and Maya Angelou make big bucks with free 
verse, and have a lot of readers? What about Gibran? Although maybe his 
stuff is not considered poetry. The problem with poetry with the public is 
not that free verse has alienated them but the competition of movies, radio, 
television, records, the computer, etc. Pl;us the fact that serious poetry 
has never had a big public.

--Bob G.





------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 14:34:24 EST
From: JforJames at aol.com
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Why is Blank Verse "Poetry?"
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <12b.52ad0e84.2ef731c0 at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

In a message dated 12/18/2004 10:47:10 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
marcus at designerglass.com writes:

> This again conflates the meaning of "poetry" with "good work", and 
> that's wrong. Poetry is indeed nothing more than that which is 
> written in meter -- whether it's good or not is another, and 
> different, question. The whole point is to remove the qualitative 
> value from the notion of "poetry" by continuing to hold that the 
> distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between 
> writing in meter and writing without meter so that the question of 
> what's good and what's bad is a separate question. The idea was, and 
> is, to keep the word "poetry" from being applied as a qualitative 
> judgment, and keep it nothing more than a descriptive term. That way 
> we can all look at what's good and bad about poetry as a question 
> independent of the qualitative connotations of the word.
> 

Marcus, I wasn't talking about quality, good/bad. Your definition 
of poetry makes meter integral. Mine doesn't; simple as that. 
For me the essence of 'poemness' is not tied to meter
whether roughly rendered or impeccable. 
I can quote hundreds of definitions that don't even breathe the word
'meter'. That doesn't make them better than yours...but it supports
the view that for many poets/critics, even among those who 
favor tradition formalist models of poem-making, the definition 
of 'poetry' is not bound solely to 'meter'. 
I embrace capaciousness, but I don't fear stricture, and I recognize
that the latter, paradoxically, sometimes widens a poet's ambit.
Finnegan
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Message: 6
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 04 16:25:05 EST
From: DICK at pkmfgvm4.vnet.ibm.com
Subject: [New-Poetry] Metrical
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <200412192133.iBJLXOWC028807 at d01av01.pok.ibm.com>

***** Reply to your note of: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 07:23:10 -0500 *************
>>.... Poetry is indeed nothing more than that which is
>>written in meter -- whether it's good or not is another, and
>>different, question. The whole point is to remove the qualitative
>>value from the notion of "poetry" by continuing to hold that the
>>distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between
>>writing in meter and writing without meter
>>
>>Marcus
>>
I'm continually amazed that Marcus is so certain of this definition
of poetry - when, statistically, the entire WORLD holds something
different. All the Poets Laureate back to but not including Richard
Wilbur, 90-what % of poets and poems published - the confidence in
the face of almost universal disagreement with him - is notable in
a bizarre way.

Richard


------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 17:42:40 -0500
From: "Bob Grumman" 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <01a801c4e61c$0c196480$89b831d0 at youro0kwkw9jwc>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

>>>.... Poetry is indeed nothing more than that which is
>>>written in meter -- whether it's good or not is another, and
>>>different, question. The whole point is to remove the qualitative
>>>value from the notion of "poetry" by continuing to hold that the
>>>distinction between poetry and prose is the distinction between
>>>writing in meter and writing without meter
>>>
>>>Marcus
>>>
> I'm continually amazed that Marcus is so certain of this definition
> of poetry - when, statistically, the entire WORLD holds something
> different. All the Poets Laureate back to but not including Richard
> Wilbur, 90-what % of poets and poems published - the confidence in
> the face of almost universal disagreement with him - is notable in
> a bizarre way.
>
> Richard

And he doesn't say that it's HIS definition of poetry, but THE definition.

By the way, I'm pretty sure even Richard Wilbur has written free verse 
texts. But maybe not. Anyone know for sure?

--Bob 




------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:05:14 EST
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <142.3b64c44e.2ef7632a at cs.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

In a message dated 12/19/2004 4:43:00 PM Central Standard Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: 
> >>>
> >I'm continually amazed that Marcus is so certain of this definition
> >of poetry - when, statistically, the entire WORLD holds something
> >different. All the Poets Laureate back to but not including Richard
> >Wilbur, 90-what % of poets and poems published - the confidence in
> >the face of almost universal disagreement with him - is notable in
> >a bizarre way.
> >
> >Richard
> 
> And he doesn't say that it's HIS definition of poetry, but THE definition.
> 
> By the way, I'm pretty sure even Richard Wilbur has written free verse 
> texts. But maybe not. Anyone know for sure?
> 
I don't think there's much in Wilbur you could call free verse. Some of his 
accentual poems sound like free verse but aren't when you start counting the 
strong stresses. I can't think if any Wilbur free verse. Hecht wrote some, 
though.
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Message: 9
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:05:30 EST
From: JforJames at aol.com
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <1a8.2d6c79ae.2ef7633a at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

In a message dated 12/19/2004 5:42:54 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:

> Richard Wilbur has written free verse 
> texts. But maybe not. Anyone know for sure?
> 

"Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World", lots
of iambs (ghostly or overt), but swinging free and easy
like laundry on a line.
Finnegan
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Message: 10
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:37:50 EST
From: JforJames at aol.com
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wilbur
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <1e6.310c27cc.2ef76ace at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

http://www.slate.com/id/2110115/#ContinueArticle
The Overlooked Master
How poetic history conspired against Richard Wilbur.
By James Longenbach
Nov. 29, 2004



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Message: 11
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:49:34 EST
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Metrical
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <1cf.2dca09de.2ef76d8e at cs.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

In a message dated 12/19/2004 5:06:16 PM Central Standard Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes: 
> 
> "Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World", lots
> of iambs (ghostly or overt), but swinging free and easy
> like laundry on a line.
> Finnegan
The indented lines are four-stress. The other lines are five-stress. Some of 
the five-stress lines are broken and stepped-down. Trust me, I know Wilbur's 
meters like I know my own. This is a good example of his "free" accentual 
meters.
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Message: 12
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 18:53:20 EST
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Wilbur
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Message-ID: <193.3570fc47.2ef76e70 at cs.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

One thing about Wilbur's meters in the last 25 years or so--he's drifted away 
from the accentuals toward stricter accentual-syllabics (iambics) and toward 
syllabics (the haiku-stanza poems). God, there are some nice new poems in the 
new collected.
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Message: 13
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:10:44 -0500
From: "The Old Mole" 
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views"

Message-ID: <003601c4e628$5bbfe700$6501a8c0 at MoleHQ>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

David - you can be Chairman after my term is up.



Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Graham" 
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views" 

Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 12:37 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] The varied carols I hear


> on 12/19/04 11:13 AM, Michael Snider at mandolin at mac.com wrote:
>
>> And, just to be clear, I don't think meter is a necessary property of
>> poetry either, though that was a near-universal opinion prior to the
>> second half 19th century. Timothy Steele's Missing Measures is a
>> wonderful resource for understanding how that happened--and he doesn't
>> argue that free verse was a mistake. Neither do I.
>>
>> But I think the influence of Pound (a second-rate poet and third rate
>> thinker) on the much more competent Eliot was a disaster despite the
>> The Waste Land. Eliot''s self-serving and fatuous characterization of
>> Kipling's poetry as "mere verse" turned things inside out: nearly
>> everyone accepted that metrical faciltiy didn't make poetry -- by
>> itself, it made doggerel -- but Eliot managed to make it seem as if
>> metrical facility disqualified a modern writer as a poet. The wide
>> academic acceptance of Eliot's critical stance was a real disaster.
>
> Yes. If nothing else, a century and more of free verse exists--what's the
> point of trying to banish it from the kingdom of poetry? That's where

=== message truncated ===

		
---------------------------------
 ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!  
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec 20 17:00:00 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:00:00 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6,
	Issue 42-initial comment only... by gbemi tijani mstre WHAT'S POETRY?
References: <20041220214211.63421.qmail@web26003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <018c01c4e6df$40d6a200$eeab3852@yourpk9x5fuc06>

I am wondering, is there any wizard here to understand who this silly bully is?
Is this (why do I feel like saying: _his /// address?

from England:
hammerword2000 at yahoo.co.uk

and what is this?
20041220214211.63421.qmail at web26003.mail.ukl.yahoo.com

if no one knows I will try and ask some other people, 


______________________

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Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6,
 Issue 42-initial comment only... by gbemi tijani mst
 re WHAT'S POETRY?
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Mon Dec 20 17:09:29 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:09:29 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine
Message-ID: <1d6.329654ea.2ef8a799@cs.com>

Can anyone imagine a magazine so eclectic it contains work by Bales, Grumman, 
and Gwynn?

http://www.melicreview.com/archive/iss24/index.html
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Dec 20 19:09:16 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:09:16 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine
References: <1d6.329654ea.2ef8a799@cs.com>
Message-ID: <01b501c4e6f1$4fbcda20$5bb831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Can anyone imagine a magazine so eclectic it contains work by Bales, Grumman, and Gwynn?

http://www.melicreview.com/archive/iss24/index.html 

But none of us is listed in the poetry section!  (Tad Richards and W.D. Snodgrass--and language poet, Rae Armantrout, are.)

--Bob G.

--Bob G.
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From tad at opus40.org  Mon Dec 20 19:13:12 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:13:12 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine
References: <1d6.329654ea.2ef8a799@cs.com>
Message-ID: <006101c4e6f1$ffa95210$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

And what am I, chopped liver?


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 5:09 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine


  Can anyone imagine a magazine so eclectic it contains work by Bales, Grumman, and Gwynn?

  http://www.melicreview.com/archive/iss24/index.html 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Mon Dec 20 19:25:18 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:25:18 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine
Message-ID: <27.680a8db3.2ef8c76e@cs.com>

Oh shoot!  I didn't even think to look at the real poets!  Viva Tad!

In a message dated 12/20/2004 6:15:37 PM Central Standard Time, 
tad at opus40.org writes: 
> 
> And what am I, chopped liver?
>   
>   
>  Tad Richards
> www.opus40.org
>  
> >> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 
>> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
>> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 5:09 PM
>>  Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine
>>  
>> 
>> Can anyone imagine a magazine so eclectic it contains work by Bales, 
>> Grumman, and Gwynn?
>> 
>> http://www.melicreview.com/archive/iss24/index.html 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
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From kpaul at mallasch.com  Mon Dec 20 20:04:44 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 20:04:44 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] kitty litter-ary
In-Reply-To: <27.680a8db3.2ef8c76e@cs.com>
References: <27.680a8db3.2ef8c76e@cs.com>
Message-ID: <20041220200417.L14933@kpaul.spinweb.net>

http://www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20041219.html

-kpaul



From kpaul at mallasch.com  Mon Dec 20 20:59:06 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 20:59:06 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] google poetry
In-Reply-To: <20041220200417.L14933@kpaul.spinweb.net>
References: <27.680a8db3.2ef8c76e@cs.com>
	<20041220200417.L14933@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <20041220205037.N38568@kpaul.spinweb.net>

is it poetry? eventually?

-kpaul


http://www.bradsucks.net/gizmos/googlepoetry/

what is poetry...

what is poetry for children clothing brands usa
today show curtains
up encore version of the bible verses
restaurant in london underground
railroad history of computers
for dummies series 63
ched cheese cake
decorations for thanksgiving pictures

-------------------------

metrical poetry...

metrical poetry contests india university
of maryland football association
of consulting engineers india limited 2
election results election
results of presidential election returns
day of defeat source sdk
source for sports cars
for sale tax movie

---------------------------

kpaul...

kpaul new orleans hotel and casino on net rail
timetables uk top 40
area code gordon ramsey
county by county election map of africa
masks around the world war 2
hour fitness world war 2
election results of election returns
election results of election



-----------------------

what am i chopped liver?...

what am i chopped liver origin energy australia bureau of statistics
new zealand denmark fireworks
displays unlimited profile
in courage poems about death
penalty shootout game
cheats ps2 console
corner bakery equipment
rentals in florida state university

-------------------

drawing a line in the sand

drawing a line in the sand
lyrics to songs
download accelerator
vision quest mark
twain drivers
licence plate
tectonics plate
rack of lamb diablo
3 studio max and paddy
casey at the bat and body works
cited page disease of the digestive system


--------------------




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec 21 03:36:38 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 09:36:38 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine
References: <1d6.329654ea.2ef8a799@cs.com>
	<006101c4e6f1$ffa95210$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
Message-ID: <00a801c4e738$30bb90c0$83aa3452@yourpk9x5fuc06>

I saw you were there! And also Rae Armantrout, take care you all, anny

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: The Old Mole 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 1:13 AM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine


  And what am I, chopped liver?


  Tad Richards
  www.opus40.org
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 
    To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
    Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 5:09 PM
    Subject: [New-Poetry] A truly eclectic magazine


    Can anyone imagine a magazine so eclectic it contains work by Bales, Grumman, and Gwynn?

    http://www.melicreview.com/archive/iss24/index.html 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------


    _______________________________________________
    New-Poetry mailing list
    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec 21 04:06:56 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 10:06:56 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry James
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><003101c4e6aa$b1320290$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<41C6F570.6E8030CA@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <00f201c4e73c$6c216b40$83aa3452@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Excellent both James, thank you, but particularly for this one:

> As long as you read this poem
> I will be writing it
> . . . .
>
> - from "An Exchange of Gifts," Alden Nowlan
>

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Cervantes" <jvcervantes at earthlink.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 4:53 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry


> >From March 1979
>
> Weary of all who come with words, words but not language
> I make my way to the snow-covered island.
> The untamed has no words.
> The unwritten pages spread out on every side!
> I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow.
> Language but no words.
>
>
> - Thomas Transtromer, trans by Robin Fulton
>
> As long as you read this poem
> I will be writing it
> . . . .
>
> - from "An Exchange of Gifts," Alden Nowlan
>
>
> - Jim
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From jvcervantes at earthlink.net  Tue Dec 21 07:40:10 2004
From: jvcervantes at earthlink.net (James Cervantes)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 05:40:10 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><003101c4e6aa$b1320290$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>
	<41C6F570.6E8030CA@earthlink.net>
	<00b201c4e6b1$49964040$52169c51@Robin>
Message-ID: <41C819AB.270EBB49@earthlink.net>



Robin Hamilton wrote:
> 
> > - Thomas Transtromer, trans by Robin Fulton
> 
> Boy, Jim -- Robin Fulton -- now *there's* a name that goes way back.
> 
> Say what you like against the Scots, even Edinburgh poets like Fulton, we do
> seem to do translation quite often.
> 
>         (The other) Robin
> 
> {Didn't Fulton and D.M.Black intersect in +Scottish International+ in the
> sixties?}

I'd never say anything against the Scots.  I have dim (possibly
non-existent) memories of hearing Robin Fulton and/or D.M.Black read at
an event tangential to the Edinburgh festival in 1967.

- Jim


From amyhappens at yahoo.com  Tue Dec 21 07:51:11 2004
From: amyhappens at yahoo.com (amy king)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 07:51:11 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Tonight - Winter Solstice Reading at CPF Tues.,
	December 21st 
Message-ID: <JMENIAHNFGOCLHLNNIPHKEGLCMAA.amyhappens@yahoo.com>

Dear Friends,

The BROOKLYN RAIL PRESENTS
An evening reading to celebrate the Winter Solstice --

Please join us at Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts for a Winter Solstice celebration
with readings from these highly regarded poets and writers. There will be
drinks, snacks, and lots of atmosphere (Tamara Gonzales' show will be up
with a few added touches).

You are encouraged to wear a funny hat!

6 - 8 PM - Tuesday - December 21, 2004

John Yau
Amy King
Monica de la Torre
Phong Bui
Arthur Bradford


The Egyptian and Persian traditions of celebrating the return of the sun
merged in ancient Rome in a festival to the ancient god of seed-time,
Saturn.

The people gave themselves up to wild joy. The usual order of the year was
suspended:  grudges and quarrels forgotten, wars interrupted or postponed.
Rich and poor were equal, masters served slaves, children headed the family.
Cross-dressing and masquerades, merriment of all kinds prevailed.  A mock
king -- the Lord of Misrule -- was crowned.  Candles and lamps chased away
the spirits of darkness.


 Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts, 13 Jay Street, New York, NY 10013-2848
 Jay Street is two blocks south of Franklin between Greenwich and Hudson St.
 Tel: (212) 925-9424




>



From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Tue Dec 21 08:21:41 2004
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 13:21:41 -0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] What Is Poetry
References: <a05100300bdeb84e7438b@[204.215.200.14]><003101c4e6aa$b1320290$6501a8c0@MoleHQ><41C6F570.6E8030CA@earthlink.net><00b201c4e6b1$49964040$52169c51@Robin>
	<41C819AB.270EBB49@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <000c01c4e760$04d08e70$52169c51@Robin>

> I'd never say anything against the Scots.  I have dim (possibly
> non-existent) memories of hearing Robin Fulton and/or D.M.Black read at
> an event tangential to the Edinburgh festival in 1967.
>
> - Jim

Actually, I might have been sitting within two seats of you!

I too have dim, possibly false, memories of a Fringe reading about then
when -- actually, I think I got this wrong, it *wasn't* Fulton who was
mixed-up with David Black in editing and publishing SI.  Though I think
Fulton did publsh there.

But +Scottish International+ was a severely Edinburgh-based literary
journal.

Anyway the guy who *did* edit SI -- what was his name? -- "read" some
concrete poems -- beautiful!

The first (Official) Festival reading I went to, as a schoolboy, was in the
Festival Hall in 64 -- severely big guns, Hughes and all.  And Snodgrass,
who managed as I remember it to wreck a reading by Stevie Smith by reading
Whitman at length just before she came on.

... and a Fringe reading by Jon Silkin, who actually talked to me
afterwards.

Somehow, the so-called Great Albert Hall Poetry Incarnation Readings didn't
manage to outlast the sixties.

                Robin

(I think, in 67, I'd have remembered hearing D.M.Black read, as I'd reviewed
"The Red Judge" the year before.

Met him in London, years later.  Really nice guy.)

R.




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Dec 21 10:54:10 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 10:54:10 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] May Swenson
Message-ID: <111.3fef7fae.2ef9a122@cs.com>

Typescript of May Swenson's Iconographs.

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/engl748a/iconographs.pdf
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Dec 21 10:40:22 2004
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 10:40:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Auto-pen saga
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEFCJJAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


Rummy's auto-pen saga, for some reason
or other, put me in mind of this--

Mini-sonnet:    For the Families

     "Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss 
      or Mr and Mrs----:  
     Words cannot express 

      the deep personal
      grief I experienced 
     when your husband,

     son, father or brother 
     was killed, wounded,
     or reported missing 

     in action."

	--on a found text (by Joseph Heller)


--Halvard Johnson


Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard



From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 21 12:44:07 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 12:44:07 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] PSA chapbook contest deadline 12/22...
Message-ID: <20.3ab1730b.2ef9bae7@aol.com>

PSA chapbook contest deadline 12/22...
http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa-chapbook.html#guide
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From elemenope at icubed.com  Tue Dec 21 01:32:39 2004
From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:32:39 +0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the Ancient
 Tradition of Marcus Bales
Message-ID: <a05100307bded73cd69e5@[204.215.201.8]>

Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.



>    Christmas Poem

>    TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS,
>    HE LIVED ALL ALONE,
>    IN A ONE BEDROOM HOUSE MADE OF
>    PLASTER AND STONE.
>
>    I HAD COME DOWN THE CHIMNEY
>    WITH PRESENTS TO GIVE,
>    AND TO SEE JUST WHO
>    IN THIS HOME DID LIVE.
>
>    I LOOKED ALL ABOUT,
>    A STRANGE SIGHT I DID SEE,
>    NO TINSEL, NO PRESENTS,
>    NOT EVEN A TREE.
>
>    NO STOCKING BY MANTLE,
>    JUST BOOTS FILLED WITH SAND,
>    ON THE WALL HUNG PICTURES
>    OF FAR DISTANT LANDS.
>
>    WITH MEDALS AND BADGES,
>    AWARDS OF ALL KINDS,
>    A SOBER THOUGHT
>    CAME THROUGH MY MIND.
>
>    FOR THIS HOUSE WAS DIFFERENT,
>    IT WAS DARK AND DREARY,
>    I FOUND THE HOME OF A SOLDIER,
>    ONCE I COULD SEE CLEARLY.
>
>    THE SOLDIER LAY SLEEPING,
>    SILENT, ALONE,
>    CURLED UP ON THE FLOOR
>    IN THIS ONE BEDROOM HOME.
>
>    THE FACE WAS SO GENTLE,
>    THE ROOM IN SUCH DISORDER,
>    NOT HOW I PICTURED
>    A UNITED STATES SOLDIER.
>
>    WAS THIS THE HERO
>    OF WHOM I'D JUST READ?
>    CURLED UP ON A PONCHO,
>    THE FLOOR FOR A BED?
>
>    I REALIZED THE FAMILIES
>    THAT I SAW THIS NIGHT,
>    OWED THEIR LIVES TO THESE SOLDIERS
>    WHO WERE WILLING TO FIGHT.
>
>    SOON ROUND THE WORLD,
>    THE CHILDREN WOULD PLAY,
>    AND GROWNUPS WOULD CELEBRATE
>    A BRIGHT CHRISTMAS DAY.
>
>    THEY ALL ENJOYED FREEDOM
>    EACH MONTH OF THE YEAR,
>    BECAUSE OF THE SOLDIERS,
>    LIKE THE ONE LYING HERE.
>
>    I COULDN'T HELP WONDER
>    HOW MANY LAY ALONE,
>    ON A COLD CHRISTMAS EVE
>    IN A LAND FAR FROM HOME.
>
>    THE VERY THOUGHT
>    BROUGHT A TEAR TO MY EYE,
>    I DROPPED TO MY KNEES
>   AND STARTED TO CRY.
>
>    THE SOLDIER AWAKENED
>    AND I HEARD A ROUGH VOICE,
>    "SANTA DON'T CRY,
>    THIS LIFE IS MY CHOICE;
>
>    I FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,
>    I DON'T ASK FOR MORE,
>    MY LIFE IS MY GOD,
>    MY COUNTRY, MY CORPS."
>
>    THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER
>    AND DRIFTED TO SLEEP,
>    I COULDN'T CONTROL IT,
>    I CONTINUED TO WEEP.
>
>    I KEPT WATCH FOR HOURS,
>    SO SILENT AND STILL
>    AND WE BOTH SHIVERED
>    FROM THE COLD NIGHT'S CHILL.
>
>    I DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE
>    ON THAT COLD, DARK, NIGHT,
>    THIS GUARDIAN OF HONOR
>    SO WILLING TO FIGHT.
>
>    THEN THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER,
>    WITH A VOICE SOFT AND PURE,
>    WHISPERED, "CARRY ON SANTA,
>    IT'S CHRISTMAS DAY, ALL IS SECURE."
>
>    ONE LOOK AT MY WATCH,
>    AND I KNEW HE WAS RIGHT.
>    "MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FRIEND,
>    AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT."


			Author:	Anonymous U.S. Soldier
		      at his station, now, circa 2004.



-- 


-- 
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Tue Dec 21 16:12:22 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:12:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the Ancient
	Tradition of Marcus Bales
In-Reply-To: <a05100307bded73cd69e5@[204.215.201.8]>
Message-ID: <41C84B66.272.1DA8807@localhost>

On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
> Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.

Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it 
poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter 
and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.

Marcus





From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec 21 16:35:42 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:35:42 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
References: <41C84B66.272.1DA8807@localhost>
Message-ID: <00ab01c4e7a5$06007590$4aee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Sorry Marcus,

I missed out a lot of mails lately. That is maybe why I cannot follow this.
Richard Dillon praises one of your works and you answer him that he cannot
understand anything about scansion, meter and rhyme. Am I right?

Hoping to be wrong,

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
AncientTradition of Marcus Bales


> On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
> > Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.
>
> Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
> poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter
> and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>




From marcus at designerglass.com  Tue Dec 21 16:40:58 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:40:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in
	the	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
In-Reply-To: <00ab01c4e7a5$06007590$4aee3652@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <41C8521A.12762.1F4B67B@localhost>

On 21 Dec 2004 at 22:35, Anny Ballardini wrote:
> Sorry Marcus,
> I missed out a lot of mails lately. That is maybe why I cannot follow
> this. Richard Dillon praises one of your works and you answer him that
> he cannot understand anything about scansion, meter and rhyme. Am I
> right?
> Hoping to be wrong,

Good god. You don't think I wrote that crap, do you?

Marcus







From tad at opus40.org  Tue Dec 21 17:19:56 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:19:56 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
References: <41C84B66.272.1DA8807@localhost>
Message-ID: <002701c4e7ab$36aeb660$6501a8c0@MoleHQ>

Marcus  - I was a little unclear on Richard's note. I was hoping you hadn't 
written that. The scansion was atrocious.


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the 
AncientTradition of Marcus Bales


> On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
>> Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.
>
> Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
> poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter
> and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
> 




From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 21 17:20:42 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:20:42 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
Message-ID: <1eb.30bc23e5.2ef9fbba@aol.com>

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508955/
 
Short Poems Suggest Chaucer Sometimes Broke Conventions of Poetry
 
English professor William Quinn will present his paper, ?Chaucer as the 
Father of Free Verse,? during the Modern Language Association convention being held 
from Dec. 27-30 in Philadelphia.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Dec 21 18:24:25 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 18:24:25 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
Message-ID: <15.3aa317d6.2efa0aa9@cs.com>

After "Emily Dickinson and the Muse of Masturbation" anything is possible at 
the MLA.  Wait till John Leo gets hold of this guy's paper!
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From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 21 20:20:38 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:20:38 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
Message-ID: <8c.1cb0972a.2efa25e6@aol.com>

In a message dated 12/21/2004 6:25:12 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:

> John Leo 

Who is he? I'm on the outside
looking in.
Finnegan
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From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 21 20:25:10 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:25:10 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Freely Formal and Formally Free
Message-ID: <ba.67ac8cb1.2efa26f6@aol.com>

It must be in the air...

> Place: Hill-Stead Museum, 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, CT 06032 
> Time: January 9, 2005, 10-5 pm 
> Contact: Alison Meyers, 860.677.4787 ext 110; meyersa at hillstead.org 
> Poet Susan Kinsolving to Give Workshop at Hill-Stead Museum 
> Acclaimed poet Susan Kinsolving will present "Freely Formal and Formally
> Free," a writing workshop, at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT, on
> Sunday, January 9, 2005, 10 am - 5 pm.  She is the author of two volumes
> of poetry, The White Eyelash and Dailies &Rushes, a finalist for the
> National Book Critics Circle Award.  Workshop participants will explore
> form and content through written exercises, discussion and critique.
> The workshop runs 10 am - 5 pm, and begins with a reading by Kinsolving.
> To more information and to register, call Joy Pachla at 860.677.4787 ext
> 111.  Workshop fee is $75 for museum members, $90 for non-members.
> Registration is limited to 15.  Browse www.hillstead.org
> <file:///\\www.hillstead.org>  for more information. 
>  
> Susan Kinsolving's collection, Dailies &Rushes, was hailed as a
> remarkable debut by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street,
> Journal, Vanity Fair and others. She is the recipient of several
> fellowships, most recently from The Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation of
> Switzerland. The Glimmerglass Opera commissioned her lyrics for a
> cantata, and her poem "Dance Steps" was presented in a televised
> ceremony to the Queen of the Netherlands and later performed by the
> Baroque Choral Guild in four Italian cities. She performed in
> Hill-Stead's Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in 2000. She has taught
> poetry at California Institute of the Arts, Chautauqua Institute,
> Willard Correctional Institution and the University of Connecticut.
> 
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> 

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From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 21 20:28:38 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:28:38 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Tupelo Press wishes you a wondrous holiday season
Message-ID: <1d7.32b5f1b7.2efa27c6@aol.com>

You Better Not Shout

Tupelo Press wishes you a wondrous holiday season and 
a new year overflowing with the enchantments of the written word.


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P.O. Box 539 
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USA 

Visit Tupelo Press on the web (http://www.tupelopress.org/) 

Tel: 802-366-8185, Fax: 802-362-1883

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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec 22 01:34:40 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 01:34:40 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
Message-ID: <e0.9566875.2efa6f80@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/21/2004 7:21:42 PM Central Standard Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes: 
> 
> In a message dated 12/21/2004 6:25:12 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:
> 
> >> John Leo 
> 
> 
> Who is he? I'm on the outside
> looking in.
> Finnegan
 US News and World Report columnist who always checks in on the MLA.
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From elemenope at icubed.com  Wed Dec 22 00:12:34 2004
From: elemenope at icubed.com (ELEMENOPE Productions)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:12:34 +0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6, Issue 45
In-Reply-To: <200412221700.iBMH05Am003266@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
References: <200412221700.iBMH05Am003266@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <a05100302bdeeafac316b@[204.215.201.13]>

Anny,

Read through the entire poem.  It is clear that the author is a 
soldier, not me, not Bales.

The message:

"Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales."

is a statement, a direct address, for Mr. Bales.  "Hey, Marcus, the 
following poem is written, or attempts to be written, in quatrains, 
in iambs, etc.

The arrogance of these people is the thing that is appalling, plus 
their lack of humor, plus, of course, their unpatriotism.  They are 
arrogant because they read and speak glibly. And thus they behave 
badly.

As to Bales' sneer that people who write lineated prose cannot or 
will be unable to write metrical verse, or don't bother to, or 
whatever, I don't see how the trooper's poem qualifies as lineated 
prose.  As to whether I am writing "prose" or whatever elsewhere in 
my poetry, and it is this which Bales is sneering at, I can only 
surmise.  His baleful, hateful attitude makes discussion impossible, 
as Bob Grumman has thoroughly demonstrated over the past several 
years.

Marcus Bales drove to Pittsburgh several years ago and attended my 
poetry reading at the Friends Meeting House.  He stood in bib 
overalls in the back of the room.  I remember him well.  But he will 
never admit that he made this visit.

As to the Rodent's intervention in the interplay, as is typical of 
such rats, he is a sycophant.  Sycophants are many times bullies and 
cowards who would never say in the flesh what they would launch from 
the safety of their computer.

Anyway,  the points the Soldier's Night Before Christmas poem as 
example of traditional versification raises are not addressed by 
these respondents.  They just sneer.

Richard




>Send New-Poetry mailing list submissions to
>	new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>
>To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>	http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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>
>You can reach the person managing the list at
>	new-poetry-owner at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>
>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>than "Re: Contents of New-Poetry digest..."
>
>
>Today's Topics:
>
>    1. PSA chapbook contest deadline 12/22... (JforJames at aol.com)
>    2. Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the Ancient Tradition of
>       Marcus Bales (ELEMENOPE Productions)
>    3. Re: Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the Ancient	Tradition
>       of Marcus Bales (Marcus Bales)
>    4. Re: Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the	AncientTradition
>       of Marcus Bales (Anny Ballardini)
>    5. Re: Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in	the	AncientTradition
>       of Marcus Bales (Marcus Bales)
>    6. Re: Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the	AncientTradition
>       of Marcus Bales (The Old Mole)
>    7. Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse (JforJames at aol.com)
>    8. Re: Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
>    9. Re: Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse (JforJames at aol.com)
>   10. Freely Formal and Formally Free (JforJames at aol.com)
>   11. Tupelo Press wishes you a wondrous holiday season
>       (JforJames at aol.com)
>   12. Re: Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 12:44:07 EST
>From: JforJames at aol.com
>Subject: [New-Poetry] PSA chapbook contest deadline 12/22...
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <20.3ab1730b.2ef9bae7 at aol.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>PSA chapbook contest deadline 12/22...
>http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa-chapbook.html#guide
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>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 2
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:32:39 +0800
>From: ELEMENOPE Productions <elemenope at icubed.com>
>Subject: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the Ancient
>	Tradition of Marcus Bales
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <a05100307bded73cd69e5@[204.215.201.8]>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.
>
>
>
>>     Christmas Poem
>
>>     TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS,
>>     HE LIVED ALL ALONE,
>>     IN A ONE BEDROOM HOUSE MADE OF
>>     PLASTER AND STONE.
>>
>>     I HAD COME DOWN THE CHIMNEY
>>     WITH PRESENTS TO GIVE,
>>     AND TO SEE JUST WHO
>>     IN THIS HOME DID LIVE.
>>
>>     I LOOKED ALL ABOUT,
>>     A STRANGE SIGHT I DID SEE,
>>     NO TINSEL, NO PRESENTS,
>>     NOT EVEN A TREE.
>>
>>     NO STOCKING BY MANTLE,
>>     JUST BOOTS FILLED WITH SAND,
>>     ON THE WALL HUNG PICTURES
>>     OF FAR DISTANT LANDS.
>>
>>     WITH MEDALS AND BADGES,
>>     AWARDS OF ALL KINDS,
>>     A SOBER THOUGHT
>>     CAME THROUGH MY MIND.
>>
>>     FOR THIS HOUSE WAS DIFFERENT,
>>     IT WAS DARK AND DREARY,
>>     I FOUND THE HOME OF A SOLDIER,
>>     ONCE I COULD SEE CLEARLY.
>  >
>>     THE SOLDIER LAY SLEEPING,
>>     SILENT, ALONE,
>>     CURLED UP ON THE FLOOR
>>     IN THIS ONE BEDROOM HOME.
>>
>>     THE FACE WAS SO GENTLE,
>>     THE ROOM IN SUCH DISORDER,
>>     NOT HOW I PICTURED
>>     A UNITED STATES SOLDIER.
>>
>>     WAS THIS THE HERO
>>     OF WHOM I'D JUST READ?
>>     CURLED UP ON A PONCHO,
>>     THE FLOOR FOR A BED?
>>
>>     I REALIZED THE FAMILIES
>>     THAT I SAW THIS NIGHT,
>>     OWED THEIR LIVES TO THESE SOLDIERS
>>     WHO WERE WILLING TO FIGHT.
>>
>>     SOON ROUND THE WORLD,
>>     THE CHILDREN WOULD PLAY,
>>     AND GROWNUPS WOULD CELEBRATE
>>     A BRIGHT CHRISTMAS DAY.
>>
>>     THEY ALL ENJOYED FREEDOM
>>     EACH MONTH OF THE YEAR,
>>     BECAUSE OF THE SOLDIERS,
>>     LIKE THE ONE LYING HERE.
>>
>>     I COULDN'T HELP WONDER
>>     HOW MANY LAY ALONE,
>>     ON A COLD CHRISTMAS EVE
>>     IN A LAND FAR FROM HOME.
>>
>>     THE VERY THOUGHT
>>     BROUGHT A TEAR TO MY EYE,
>>     I DROPPED TO MY KNEES
>>    AND STARTED TO CRY.
>>
>>     THE SOLDIER AWAKENED
>>     AND I HEARD A ROUGH VOICE,
>>     "SANTA DON'T CRY,
>>     THIS LIFE IS MY CHOICE;
>>
>>     I FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,
>>     I DON'T ASK FOR MORE,
>>     MY LIFE IS MY GOD,
>>     MY COUNTRY, MY CORPS."
>>
>>     THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER
>>     AND DRIFTED TO SLEEP,
>>     I COULDN'T CONTROL IT,
>>     I CONTINUED TO WEEP.
>>
>>     I KEPT WATCH FOR HOURS,
>>     SO SILENT AND STILL
>>     AND WE BOTH SHIVERED
>>     FROM THE COLD NIGHT'S CHILL.
>>
>>     I DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE
>>     ON THAT COLD, DARK, NIGHT,
>>     THIS GUARDIAN OF HONOR
>>     SO WILLING TO FIGHT.
>>
>>     THEN THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER,
>>     WITH A VOICE SOFT AND PURE,
>>     WHISPERED, "CARRY ON SANTA,
>>     IT'S CHRISTMAS DAY, ALL IS SECURE."
>>
>>     ONE LOOK AT MY WATCH,
>>     AND I KNEW HE WAS RIGHT.
>>     "MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FRIEND,
>>     AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT."
>
>
>			Author:	Anonymous U.S. Soldier
>		      at his station, now, circa 2004.
>
>
>
>--
>
>
>--
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 3
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:12:22 -0500
>From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
>	Ancient	Tradition of Marcus Bales
>To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;	Views"
>	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Message-ID: <41C84B66.272.1DA8807 at localhost>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
>>  Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.
>
>Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
>poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter
>and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
>
>Marcus
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 4
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:35:42 +0100
>From: "Anny Ballardini" <anny.ballardini at tin.it>
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
>	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
>To: <marcus at designerglass.com>, "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News
>	&amp;	Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Message-ID: <00ab01c4e7a5$06007590$4aee3652 at yourpk9x5fuc06>
>Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>Sorry Marcus,
>
>I missed out a lot of mails lately. That is maybe why I cannot follow this.
>Richard Dillon praises one of your works and you answer him that he cannot
>understand anything about scansion, meter and rhyme. Am I right?
>
>Hoping to be wrong,
>
>Anny Ballardini
>http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
>http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
>The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
>admirers.
>Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
>To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 10:12 PM
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
>AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
>
>
>>  On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
>>  > Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.
>>
>>  Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
>  > poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter
>>  and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
>>
>>  Marcus
>>
>>
>>
>>  _______________________________________________
>>  New-Poetry mailing list
>>  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 5
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:40:58 -0500
>From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in	the
>	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
>To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;	Views"
>	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Message-ID: <41C8521A.12762.1F4B67B at localhost>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>On 21 Dec 2004 at 22:35, Anny Ballardini wrote:
>>  Sorry Marcus,
>>  I missed out a lot of mails lately. That is maybe why I cannot follow
>>  this. Richard Dillon praises one of your works and you answer him that
>>  he cannot understand anything about scansion, meter and rhyme. Am I
>>  right?
>>  Hoping to be wrong,
>
>Good god. You don't think I wrote that crap, do you?
>
>Marcus
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 6
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:19:56 -0500
>From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
>	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
>To: <marcus at designerglass.com>, "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News
>	&amp;	Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Message-ID: <002701c4e7ab$36aeb660$6501a8c0 at MoleHQ>
>Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>	reply-type=original
>
>Marcus  - I was a little unclear on Richard's note. I was hoping you hadn't
>written that. The scansion was atrocious.
>
>
>Tad Richards
>www.opus40.org
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
>To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 4:12 PM
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
>AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
>
>
>>  On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
>>>  Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales.
>>
>>  Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
>>  poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter
>>  and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
>>
>>  Marcus
>>
>>
>>
>>  _______________________________________________
>>  New-Poetry mailing list
>>  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>>  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 7
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:20:42 EST
>From: JforJames at aol.com
>Subject: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <1eb.30bc23e5.2ef9fbba at aol.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508955/
>
>Short Poems Suggest Chaucer Sometimes Broke Conventions of Poetry
>
>English professor William Quinn will present his paper, ???Chaucer as the
>Father of Free Verse,??? during the Modern Language Association 
>convention being held
>from Dec. 27-30 in Philadelphia.
>-------------- next part --------------
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 8
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 18:24:25 EST
>From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <15.3aa317d6.2efa0aa9 at cs.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>After "Emily Dickinson and the Muse of Masturbation" anything is possible at
>the MLA.  Wait till John Leo gets hold of this guy's paper!
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 9
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:20:38 EST
>From: JforJames at aol.com
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <8c.1cb0972a.2efa25e6 at aol.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>In a message dated 12/21/2004 6:25:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:
>
>>  John Leo
>
>Who is he? I'm on the outside
>looking in.
>Finnegan
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 10
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:25:10 EST
>From: JforJames at aol.com
>Subject: [New-Poetry] Freely Formal and Formally Free
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <ba.67ac8cb1.2efa26f6 at aol.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>It must be in the air...
>
>>  Place: Hill-Stead Museum, 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, CT 06032
>>  Time: January 9, 2005, 10-5 pm
>>  Contact: Alison Meyers, 860.677.4787 ext 110; meyersa at hillstead.org
>>  Poet Susan Kinsolving to Give Workshop at Hill-Stead Museum
>>  Acclaimed poet Susan Kinsolving will present "Freely Formal and Formally
>>  Free," a writing workshop, at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT, on
>>  Sunday, January 9, 2005, 10 am - 5 pm.  She is the author of two volumes
>>  of poetry, The White Eyelash and Dailies &Rushes, a finalist for the
>>  National Book Critics Circle Award.  Workshop participants will explore
>>  form and content through written exercises, discussion and critique.
>>  The workshop runs 10 am - 5 pm, and begins with a reading by Kinsolving.
>>  To more information and to register, call Joy Pachla at 860.677.4787 ext
>>  111.  Workshop fee is $75 for museum members, $90 for non-members.
>>  Registration is limited to 15.  Browse www.hillstead.org
>>  <file:///\\www.hillstead.org>  for more information.
>> 
>>  Susan Kinsolving's collection, Dailies &Rushes, was hailed as a
>>  remarkable debut by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street,
>>  Journal, Vanity Fair and others. She is the recipient of several
>>  fellowships, most recently from The Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation of
>>  Switzerland. The Glimmerglass Opera commissioned her lyrics for a
>>  cantata, and her poem "Dance Steps" was presented in a televised
>>  ceremony to the Queen of the Netherlands and later performed by the
>>  Baroque Choral Guild in four Italian cities. She performed in
>>  Hill-Stead's Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in 2000. She has taught
>>  poetry at California Institute of the Arts, Chautauqua Institute,
>>  Willard Correctional Institution and the University of Connecticut.
>>
>>
>>
>>  [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>
>
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 11
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:28:38 EST
>From: JforJames at aol.com
>Subject: [New-Poetry] Tupelo Press wishes you a wondrous holiday
>	season
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <1d7.32b5f1b7.2efa27c6 at aol.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>You Better Not Shout
>
>Tupelo Press wishes you a wondrous holiday season and
>a new year overflowing with the enchantments of the written word.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--
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>
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>
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>Sagan, The Women's Review of Books)
>poems that win awards, by a writer who weaves her words carefully into a wise
>and affecting embroidery that celebrates the senses.
>
>30% off! Sale price $10.50
>
>Offer good through Valentine's Day (February 14) 2005
>
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>
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>7 PM
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>End of Nature, called "a lovely and penetrating look into the thickets
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>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>Tupelo Press
>P.O. Box 539
>Dorset, VT 05251
>USA
>
>Visit Tupelo Press on the web (http://www.tupelopress.org/)
>
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>
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 12
>Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 01:34:40 EST
>From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Message-ID: <e0.9566875.2efa6f80 at cs.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>In a message dated 12/21/2004 7:21:42 PM Central Standard Time,
>JforJames at aol.com writes:
>>
>>  In a message dated 12/21/2004 6:25:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>>  Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:
>>
>>  >> John Leo
>>
>>
>>  Who is he? I'm on the outside
>>  looking in.
>>  Finnegan
>  US News and World Report columnist who always checks in on the MLA.
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>------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>
>End of New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6, Issue 45
>*****************************************


-- 



From dbarone at sjc.edu  Wed Dec 22 14:20:24 2004
From: dbarone at sjc.edu (Barone, Dennis)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:20:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] recommendation
Message-ID: <954A5413620E074797298540927621C59815E1@sjcexchange.SJC.EDU>


Might I suggest the interview in the winter 2004 online issue of rain taxi (www.raintaxi.com).  Some of it discusses the nature of the prose poem and that fits in with some current discussion here.  -- Dennis
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 22 14:28:11 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:28:11 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
In-Reply-To: <a05100302bdeeafac316b@[204.215.201.13]>
References: <200412221700.iBMH05Am003266@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <41C9847B.11682.70243B@localhost>

On 22 Dec 2004 at 13:12, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
> Read through the entire poem.  It is clear that the author is a 
> soldier, not me, not Bales.
> The message:
> "Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus Bales."
> is a statement, a direct address, for Mr. Bales.  "Hey, Marcus, the
> following poem is written, or attempts to be written, in quatrains, in
> iambs, etc.

No, Richard, when you say it's perfect, you're not qualifying it in 
any way -- so your "attempts to be written" is straightforwardly 
false.
 
> The arrogance of these people is the thing that is appalling, plus
> their lack of humor, plus, of course, their unpatriotism.  They are
> arrogant because they read and speak glibly. And thus they behave
> badly.

What people are you talking about, the soldier who can't write well 
is arrogant, glib, and unpatriotic, and lacks humor? That's a lot to 
infer from one bad poem, Richard.
 
> As to Bales' sneer that people who write lineated prose cannot or will
> be unable to write metrical verse, or don't bother to, or whatever, I
> don't see how the trooper's poem qualifies as lineated prose.<

It doesn't -- but your work does, and it is to that that I referred 
in response to your claim that the soldier's work was "perfect". If 
you think that's "perfect" then that's evidence of your own inability 
to understand what's going on in meter.

>  As to
> whether I am writing "prose" or whatever elsewhere in my poetry, and
> it is this which Bales is sneering at, I can only surmise.  His
> baleful, hateful attitude makes discussion impossible, as Bob Grumman
> has thoroughly demonstrated over the past several years.<

My attitude is to debunk the junk thinking that people such as you 
and Grumman put forward. Of course you think that's hateful and 
baleful -- the victims of debunking always do. 

> Marcus Bales drove to Pittsburgh several years ago and attended my
> poetry reading at the Friends Meeting House.  He stood in bib overalls
> in the back of the room.  I remember him well.  But he will never
> admit that he made this visit.<

Well, first I was certainly not in bib overalls! I didn't dress up 
for the occasion, but I had on pants and a polot shirt, and though I 
sat in the back of the room, I did sit. So far Richard has all his 
claims wrong, including that he remembers it "well", though he's 
right I was there. I've never denied I was there, though, and don't 
have any notion why Richard thinks I did -- or would.

> Anyway,  the points the Soldier's Night Before Christmas poem as
> example of traditional versification raises are not addressed by these
> respondents.  They just sneer.

Well, look at it -- what's not to sneer at? It's terrible. The 
scansion is horrible, and both the matter and the means are 
sentimental goop. That soldiers stand between their civil societies 
and that society's enemies is undeniable, and many good poems have 
been written about the sacrifices they make, and how they make them --
 but this is not one of those poems. Don't make the mistake of 
thinking that because I sneer at the poem I sneer at the soldiers, 
Richard, any more than because I sneer at your poems I sneer at you. 
As I've said to Grumman many times, the essence of civil discussion 
is the requirement, and the ability, of the participants to not 
interpret disagreement with their views as personal attacks. Grumman 
has so far always said he and his opinions are one and the same, and 
it appears you may agree with him. That only means that he's not 
willing or committed to having a civil discussion. Are you?

Marcus


> >>     Christmas Poem
> >       Anon

> >>     TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS,
> >>     HE LIVED ALL ALONE,
> >>     IN A ONE BEDROOM HOUSE MADE OF
> >>     PLASTER AND STONE.
> >>
> >>     I HAD COME DOWN THE CHIMNEY
> >>     WITH PRESENTS TO GIVE,
> >>     AND TO SEE JUST WHO
> >>     IN THIS HOME DID LIVE.
> >>
> >>     I LOOKED ALL ABOUT,
> >>     A STRANGE SIGHT I DID SEE,
> >>     NO TINSEL, NO PRESENTS,
> >>     NOT EVEN A TREE.
> >>
> >>     NO STOCKING BY MANTLE,
> >>     JUST BOOTS FILLED WITH SAND,
> >>     ON THE WALL HUNG PICTURES
> >>     OF FAR DISTANT LANDS.
> >>
> >>     WITH MEDALS AND BADGES,
> >>     AWARDS OF ALL KINDS,
> >>     A SOBER THOUGHT
> >>     CAME THROUGH MY MIND.
> >>
> >>     FOR THIS HOUSE WAS DIFFERENT,
> >>     IT WAS DARK AND DREARY,
> >>     I FOUND THE HOME OF A SOLDIER,
> >>     ONCE I COULD SEE CLEARLY.
> >  >
> >>     THE SOLDIER LAY SLEEPING,
> >>     SILENT, ALONE,
> >>     CURLED UP ON THE FLOOR
> >>     IN THIS ONE BEDROOM HOME.
> >>
> >>     THE FACE WAS SO GENTLE,
> >>     THE ROOM IN SUCH DISORDER,
> >>     NOT HOW I PICTURED
> >>     A UNITED STATES SOLDIER.
> >>
> >>     WAS THIS THE HERO
> >>     OF WHOM I'D JUST READ?
> >>     CURLED UP ON A PONCHO,
> >>     THE FLOOR FOR A BED?
> >>
> >>     I REALIZED THE FAMILIES
> >>     THAT I SAW THIS NIGHT,
> >>     OWED THEIR LIVES TO THESE SOLDIERS
> >>     WHO WERE WILLING TO FIGHT.
> >>
> >>     SOON ROUND THE WORLD,
> >>     THE CHILDREN WOULD PLAY,
> >>     AND GROWNUPS WOULD CELEBRATE
> >>     A BRIGHT CHRISTMAS DAY.
> >>
> >>     THEY ALL ENJOYED FREEDOM
> >>     EACH MONTH OF THE YEAR,
> >>     BECAUSE OF THE SOLDIERS,
> >>     LIKE THE ONE LYING HERE.
> >>
> >>     I COULDN'T HELP WONDER
> >>     HOW MANY LAY ALONE,
> >>     ON A COLD CHRISTMAS EVE
> >>     IN A LAND FAR FROM HOME.
> >>
> >>     THE VERY THOUGHT
> >>     BROUGHT A TEAR TO MY EYE,
> >>     I DROPPED TO MY KNEES
> >>    AND STARTED TO CRY.
> >>
> >>     THE SOLDIER AWAKENED
> >>     AND I HEARD A ROUGH VOICE,
> >>     "SANTA DON'T CRY,
> >>     THIS LIFE IS MY CHOICE;
> >>
> >>     I FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,
> >>     I DON'T ASK FOR MORE,
> >>     MY LIFE IS MY GOD,
> >>     MY COUNTRY, MY CORPS."
> >>
> >>     THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER
> >>     AND DRIFTED TO SLEEP,
> >>     I COULDN'T CONTROL IT,
> >>     I CONTINUED TO WEEP.
> >>
> >>     I KEPT WATCH FOR HOURS,
> >>     SO SILENT AND STILL
> >>     AND WE BOTH SHIVERED
> >>     FROM THE COLD NIGHT'S CHILL.
> >>
> >>     I DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE
> >>     ON THAT COLD, DARK, NIGHT,
> >>     THIS GUARDIAN OF HONOR
> >>     SO WILLING TO FIGHT.
> >>
> >>     THEN THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER,
> >>     WITH A VOICE SOFT AND PURE,
> >>     WHISPERED, "CARRY ON SANTA,
> >>     IT'S CHRISTMAS DAY, ALL IS SECURE."
> >>
> >>     ONE LOOK AT MY WATCH,
> >>     AND I KNEW HE WAS RIGHT.
> >>     "MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FRIEND,
> >>     AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT."
> >
> >
> >			Author:	Anonymous U.S. Soldier
> >		      at his station, now, circa 2004.
> >
> >
> >
> >--
> >
> >
> >--
> >-------------- next part --------------
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> >URL: 
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> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 3
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:12:22 -0500
> >From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
> >	Ancient	Tradition of Marcus Bales To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary
> >Poetry News &amp;	Views" 	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID:
> ><41C84B66.272.1DA8807 at localhost> Content-Type: text/plain;
> >charset=US-ASCII
> >
> >On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
> >>  Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus
> >>  Bales.
> >
> >Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
> >poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter
> >and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
> >
> >Marcus
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 4
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:35:42 +0100
> >From: "Anny Ballardini" <anny.ballardini at tin.it>
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
> >	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales To: <marcus at designerglass.com>,
> >"NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News 	&amp;	Views"
> ><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID:
> ><00ab01c4e7a5$06007590$4aee3652 at yourpk9x5fuc06> Content-Type:
> >text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> >Sorry Marcus,
> >
> >I missed out a lot of mails lately. That is maybe why I cannot follow
> >this. Richard Dillon praises one of your works and you answer him
> >that he cannot understand anything about scansion, meter and rhyme.
> >Am I right?
> >
> >Hoping to be wrong,
> >
> >Anny Ballardini
> >http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
> >http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> >The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather
> >admirers. Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
> >
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
> >To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
> ><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> >Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 10:12 PM
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
> >AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
> >
> >
> >>  On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
> >>  > Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus
> >>  > Bales.
> >>
> >>  Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
> >  > poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous
> >  > meter
> >>  and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
> >>
> >>  Marcus
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  _______________________________________________
> >>  New-Poetry mailing list
> >>  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >>  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 5
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:40:58 -0500
> >From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in	the
> >	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry
> >News &amp;	Views" 	<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID:
> ><41C8521A.12762.1F4B67B at localhost> Content-Type: text/plain;
> >charset=US-ASCII
> >
> >On 21 Dec 2004 at 22:35, Anny Ballardini wrote:
> >>  Sorry Marcus,
> >>  I missed out a lot of mails lately. That is maybe why I cannot
> >>  follow this. Richard Dillon praises one of your works and you
> >>  answer him that he cannot understand anything about scansion,
> >>  meter and rhyme. Am I right? Hoping to be wrong,
> >
> >Good god. You don't think I wrote that crap, do you?
> >
> >Marcus
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 6
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:19:56 -0500
> >From: "The Old Mole" <tad at opus40.org>
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
> >	AncientTradition of Marcus Bales To: <marcus at designerglass.com>,
> >"NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News 	&amp;	Views"
> ><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID:
> ><002701c4e7ab$36aeb660$6501a8c0 at MoleHQ> Content-Type: text/plain;
> >format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; 	reply-type=original
> >
> >Marcus  - I was a little unclear on Richard's note. I was hoping you
> >hadn't written that. The scansion was atrocious.
> >
> >
> >Tad Richards
> >www.opus40.org
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
> >To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views"
> ><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> >Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 4:12 PM
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Santa Sings an Xmas Poem Metered in the
> >AncientTradition of Marcus Bales
> >
> >
> >>  On 21 Dec 2004 at 14:32, ELEMENOPE Productions wrote:
> >>>  Perfect scansion, perfect quatrains, perfect perfect, Marcus
> >>>  Bales.
> >>
> >>  Just more evidence that people who write lineate prose and call it
> >>  poetry can't even recognize bad work when there are numerous meter
> >>  and scansion and rhyme problems. Too bad.
> >>
> >>  Marcus
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  _______________________________________________
> >>  New-Poetry mailing list
> >>  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >>  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 7
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:20:42 EST
> >From: JforJames at aol.com
> >Subject: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
> >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >Message-ID: <1eb.30bc23e5.2ef9fbba at aol.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> >
> >http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508955/
> >
> >Short Poems Suggest Chaucer Sometimes Broke Conventions of Poetry
> >
> >English professor William Quinn will present his paper, ???Chaucer as
> >the Father of Free Verse,??? during the Modern Language Association
> >convention being held from Dec. 27-30 in Philadelphia. --------------
> >next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL:
> >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20041221/cd10
> >5506/attachment-0001.html
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 8
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 18:24:25 EST
> >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
> >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >Message-ID: <15.3aa317d6.2efa0aa9 at cs.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> >After "Emily Dickinson and the Muse of Masturbation" anything is
> >possible at the MLA.  Wait till John Leo gets hold of this guy's
> >paper! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was
> >scrubbed... URL:
> >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20041221/5141
> >e33a/attachment-0001.html
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 9
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:20:38 EST
> >From: JforJames at aol.com
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
> >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >Message-ID: <8c.1cb0972a.2efa25e6 at aol.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> >In a message dated 12/21/2004 6:25:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> >Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:
> >
> >>  John Leo
> >
> >Who is he? I'm on the outside
> >looking in.
> >Finnegan
> >-------------- next part --------------
> >An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> >URL: 
> >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20041221/b65c
> >502f/attachment-0001.html
> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 10
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:25:10 EST
> >From: JforJames at aol.com
> >Subject: [New-Poetry] Freely Formal and Formally Free
> >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >Message-ID: <ba.67ac8cb1.2efa26f6 at aol.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> >It must be in the air...
> >
> >>  Place: Hill-Stead Museum, 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, CT 06032
> >>  Time: January 9, 2005, 10-5 pm Contact: Alison Meyers,
> >>  860.677.4787 ext 110; meyersa at hillstead.org Poet Susan Kinsolving
> >>  to Give Workshop at Hill-Stead Museum Acclaimed poet Susan
> >>  Kinsolving will present "Freely Formal and Formally Free," a
> >>  writing workshop, at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT, on Sunday,
> >>  January 9, 2005, 10 am - 5 pm.  She is the author of two volumes
> >>  of poetry, The White Eyelash and Dailies &Rushes, a finalist for
> >>  the National Book Critics Circle Award.  Workshop participants
> >>  will explore form and content through written exercises,
> >>  discussion and critique. The workshop runs 10 am - 5 pm, and
> >>  begins with a reading by Kinsolving. To more information and to
> >>  register, call Joy Pachla at 860.677.4787 ext 111.  Workshop fee
> >>  is $75 for museum members, $90 for non-members. Registration is
> >>  limited to 15.  Browse www.hillstead.org
> >>  <file:///\\www.hillstead.org>  for more information.
> >> 
> >>  Susan Kinsolving's collection, Dailies &Rushes, was hailed as a
> >>  remarkable debut by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall
> >>  Street, Journal, Vanity Fair and others. She is the recipient of
> >>  several fellowships, most recently from The Ledig-Rowohlt
> >>  Foundation of Switzerland. The Glimmerglass Opera commissioned her
> >>  lyrics for a cantata, and her poem "Dance Steps" was presented in
> >>  a televised ceremony to the Queen of the Netherlands and later
> >>  performed by the Baroque Choral Guild in four Italian cities. She
> >>  performed in Hill-Stead's Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in 2000.
> >>  She has taught poetry at California Institute of the Arts,
> >>  Chautauqua Institute, Willard Correctional Institution and the
> >>  University of Connecticut.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >>
> >
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> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 11
> >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:28:38 EST
> >From: JforJames at aol.com
> >Subject: [New-Poetry] Tupelo Press wishes you a wondrous holiday
> >	season To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Message-ID:
> ><1d7.32b5f1b7.2efa27c6 at aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain;
> >charset="us-ascii"
> >
> >You Better Not Shout
> >
> >Tupelo Press wishes you a wondrous holiday season and
> >a new year overflowing with the enchantments of the written word.
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >--------- -- The Perfect Gift for New Year's cheer, for sweet
> >Valentine's Day, or for any day Miracle Fruit by Aimee
> >Nezhukumatathil
> >
> >ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of The Year!
> >
> >Give a gift of poetry any time, especially poems that are insightful
> >and fun, "poems that deal not just with culture but also with
> >language," (Miriam Sagan, The Women's Review of Books) poems that win
> >awards, by a writer who weaves her words carefully into a wise and
> >affecting embroidery that celebrates the senses.
> >
> >30% off! Sale price $10.50
> >
> >Offer good through Valentine's Day (February 14) 2005
> >
> >www.tupelopress.org
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >--------- -- On Saturday, January 8th, 2005 Find The Way Home
> >
> >at a new 'home' for book lovers...
> >
> >Tupelo Press and McNally Robinson Booksellers invite you to celebrate
> >the NYC book launch of Bibi Wein's compelling chronicle.
> >
> >SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 2005
> >7 PM
> >The Way Home Book Launch
> >McNally Robinson
> >Prince Street between Mulberry &Lafayette
> >New York, NY
> >Telephone: 212-274-1160
> >Contact: Susan Williamson
> >Email: srw at tupelopressva.org
> >FREE
> >Sip some wine and explore a wonderful new addition to the New York
> >city independent book store scene and the book Bill McKibben, author
> >of The End of Nature, called "a lovely and penetrating look into the
> >thickets of the Adirondack woods and the human heart."
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >--------- -- Tupelo Press P.O. Box 539 Dorset, VT 05251 USA
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> >Visit Tupelo Press on the web (http://www.tupelopress.org/)
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> >Tel: 802-366-8185, Fax: 802-362-1883
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> >You received this email because you showed interest in Tupelo Press.
> >Your email information will never be sold or traded by Tupelo Press.
> >To unsubscribe, email info at tupelopress.org with "REMOVE" in the
> >subject line. We are sorry for any inconvenience this email may have
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> >
> >------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 12
> >Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 01:34:40 EST
> >From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com
> >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Chaucer as the Father of Free Verse
> >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> >Message-ID: <e0.9566875.2efa6f80 at cs.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> >In a message dated 12/21/2004 7:21:42 PM Central Standard Time,
> >JforJames at aol.com writes:
> >>
> >>  In a message dated 12/21/2004 6:25:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> >>  Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:
> >>
> >>  >> John Leo
> >>
> >>
> >>  Who is he? I'm on the outside
> >>  looking in.
> >>  Finnegan
> >  US News and World Report columnist who always checks in on the MLA.
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> >End of New-Poetry Digest, Vol 6, Issue 45
> >*****************************************
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 






From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Wed Dec 22 15:20:38 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 12:20:38 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
Message-ID: <20041222202038.32717.qmail@web52608.mail.yahoo.com>

I'm putting together a (last minute) Christmas gift
for my wife; I'm trying to make a small chapbook of
romantic poems by others to give to her--poems that
remind me of her and why we're still in love (forgive
me; I've been married only 4 years!)

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a
good romantic poem--posting it gets you extra points.

Specifically, I'm thinking of a poem by Howard Nemerov
that addresses how imperfect the beloved is...anyone
know what I'm talking about?

Thanks and Merry Christmas,

Jeff

=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 22 15:33:11 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:33:11 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
References: <200412221700.iBMH05Am003266@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
	<41C9847B.11682.70243B@localhost>
Message-ID: <00e601c4e865$88f4ebf0$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

 Grumman
> has so far always said he and his opinions are one and the same, and
> it appears you may agree with him. That only means that he's not
> willing or committed to having a civil discussion.

Whereas Marcus pretends to believe that when he said I pretended to have 
used an inversion as an attempted joke even though I have several times 
declared that I absolutely DID use an inversion as an attempted joke that he 
is not accusing me (uncivilly and personally) of being a liar.  I can admit 
to being uncivil; he can't.  That's because I'm interested in ascertaining 
truth, not in being what he considers well-behaved, whereas he is out to 
destroy any view he doesn't agree with, by any means except too-overt 
uncivility.

--Bob G. 




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec 22 15:43:42 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:43:42 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
Message-ID: <84.3b695f49.2efb367e@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/22/2004 2:21:17 PM Central Standard Time, 
jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com writes: 
> Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a
> good romantic poem--posting it gets you extra points.
> 
> Specifically, I'm thinking of a poem by Howard Nemerov
> that addresses how imperfect the beloved is...anyone
> know what I'm talking about?
> 
> Thanks and Merry Christmas,
> 
> Jeff
It's by John Nims.

http://205.180.85.40/w/pc.cgi?mid=55443&sid=10231
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From Thom424 at aol.com  Wed Dec 22 15:49:22 2004
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:49:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
Message-ID: <12C8C0A3.3A97E151.001A46F6@aol.com>

Jeff,

I've always been fond of this one. If it's not too much a disclosure, perhaps you can share the table-of-contents of your chapbook once it's completed?

Thom Tmmaro
Moorhead, MN

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LOVE SONG: I AND THOU

?Alan Dugan


Nothing is plumb, level or square:
????the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
????any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
????dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
????I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
????for myself, the floors
for myself, and got 
????hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
????at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
????Oh I spat rage's nails
into the frame-up of my work:
????It held. It settled plumb.
level, solid, square and true
????for that one great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
????skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
????but I planned it I sawed it
I nailed it and I
????will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
??to the left-hand cross-piece but
I can't do everything myself.
??I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.



From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 22 15:57:09 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:57:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
In-Reply-To: <00e601c4e865$88f4ebf0$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C99955.6490.C1765F@localhost>

Marcus Bales wrote:
>  Grumman
> > has so far always said he and his opinions are one and the same, and
> > it appears you may agree with him. That only means that he's not
> > willing or committed to having a civil discussion.

On 22 Dec 2004 at 15:33, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Whereas Marcus pretends to believe that when he said I pretended to
> have used an inversion as an attempted joke even though I have several
> times declared that I absolutely DID use an inversion as an attempted
> joke that he is not accusing me (uncivilly and personally) of being a
> liar.<

I'm pointing out that you contradict yourself. You choose to think of 
it as you being a liar. I can't help that. In a civil discussion, 
when someone accurately points out a contradiction in what you say, 
the normal thing to do is to change your mind about one or the other 
of the sides of the contradiction. But you, you bewail that you're 
being personally atttacked when nothing of the sort is taking place. 

> I can admit to being uncivil; he can't.  That's because I'm
> interested in ascertaining truth, not in being what he considers
> well-behaved, whereas he is out to destroy any view he doesn't agree
> with, by any means except too-overt uncivility.<

I'm uncivil in verse and poetry, where it may do some good by being 
memorable. I am indeed out to destroy any view I don't agree with, 
unless it turns out that I'm mistaken about it being in error, which 
happens occasionally. When it does, I'm the second to say I was 
wrong. Unfortunately for Bob, his views are so odd and so poorly 
presented and then so ill-argued for that he's never been able to 
persuade me that I've been wrong about his opinions. 

None of which addresses Richard's assertions about that terrible poem 
he posted by the anonymous soldier. Do you think it's perfect, Bob, 
as Richard does? 

Marcus





From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 22 16:00:59 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:00:59 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
In-Reply-To: <20041222202038.32717.qmail@web52608.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <41C99A3B.22935.C4F61C@localhost>



On 22 Dec 2004 at 12:20, Jeff Newberry wrote:

> I'm putting together a (last minute) Christmas gift
> for my wife; I'm trying to make a small chapbook of
> romantic poems by others to give to her--poems that
> remind me of her and why we're still in love (forgive
> me; I've been married only 4 years!)

The Silken Tent
Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one?s going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.






From MillB at aol.com  Wed Dec 22 16:10:53 2004
From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:10:53 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
Message-ID: <145.3ba31418.2efb3cdd@aol.com>

Jeff,
 
First off, VERY romantic idea. . .Here is one of my favorites of all  time.  
I do not know if it will be a good fit for you, though!
 
Merry Christmas
 
Mill
 
You cannot go wrong with Neruda.
 
    THE INFINTE ONE

Do you see these hands? They have  measured                
the earth, they have separated
minerals and cereals,
they have  made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the  seas and rivers,
and yet,
when they move over you,
little  one,
grain of wheat, swallow,
they can not encompass you,
they  are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest or fly in your  breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the  light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with  immensity than the sea and its branches    
and you are  white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that  territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking,  walking,
I shall spend my life.
LA INFINITA

Ves estas manos? Han medido
la tierra, han  separado
los minerales y los cereales, 
han hecho la paz y la  guerra,
han derribado las distancias
de todos los mares y r?os, 
y sin  embargo
cuando te recorren
a ti, peque?a, 
grano de trigo, alondra,  
no alcanzan a abarcarte, 
se cansan alcanzando 
las palomas  gemelas
que reposan o vuelan en tu pecho, 
recorren las distancias de tus  piernas,
se enrollan en la luz de tu cintura.
Para m? eres tesoro m?s  cargado 
de inmensidad que el mar y sus racimos
y eres blanca y azul y  extensa como 
la tierra en la vendimia.
En ese territorio,
de tus pies  a tu frente,
andando, andando, andando,
me pasar? la vida.


And this one is nice too (also Neruda)
I CRAVE YOUR MOUTH...

I crave your mouth, your voice, your  hair. 
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. 
Bread does not  nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day 
I hunt for the liquid measure of your  steps. 

I hunger for your sleek laugh, 
your hands the color of a  savage harvest, 
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, 
I want  to eat your skin like a whole almond. 

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring  in your lovely body, 
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, 
I want to  eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, 

and I pace around hungry,  sniffing the twilight, 
hunting for you, for your hot heart, 
Like a puma  in the barrens of Quitratue.


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From MillB at aol.com  Wed Dec 22 16:20:44 2004
From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:20:44 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request--Take Two
Message-ID: <cf.1e9d3124.2efb3f2c@aol.com>

You could also go "traditional."  Here are two (pasted below).   There is 
another that comes to mind, I think Lord Byron or John  Donne (where the narrator 
romantically describes the wonderful-ness of his  lover's "messy state," 
unkept hair, etc...I must be getting old, though, since  the name of the poem 
escapes me.  Anyone out there know the poem of which I  speak?
 
She Walks in Beauty  
SHE walks in beauty like the night  
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,  
And all that's best of dark and bright  
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;  
Thus mellowed to the tender light  
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.  
One ray the more, one shade the less  
Had half impaired the nameless grace  
Which waves in every raven tress  
Or softly lightens o'er her face,  
Where thoughts serenely sweet express  
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.  
And on that cheek and o'er that brow  
So soft, so calm yet eloquent,  
The smiles that win, the tints that glow  
But tell of days in goodness spent  
A mind at peace with all below,  
A heart whose love is innocent.  

Lord Byron, (George Gordon)


 
    Andrew Marvell. 1621?1678    357. To His Coy Mistress      HAD we but 
world enough, and time,   This coyness, Lady, were no crime   We would sit down 
and think which way   To walk and pass our long love's day.   Thou by the 
Indian Ganges' side 5  Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide   Of Humber would 
complain. I would   Love you ten years before the Flood,   And you should, if you 
please, refuse   Till the conversion of the Jews. 10  My vegetable love should 
grow   Vaster than empires, and more slow;   An hundred years should go to 
praise   Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;   Two hundred to adore each breast, 
15  But thirty thousand to the rest;   An age at least to every part,   And 
the last age should show your heart.   For, Lady, you deserve this state,   Nor 
would I love at lower rate. 20  But at my back I always hear   Time's wing?d 
chariot hurrying near;   And yonder all before us lie   Deserts of vast 
eternity.   Thy beauty shall no more be found, 25  Nor, in thy marble vault, shall 
sound   My echoing song: then worms shall try   That long preserved virginity,   
And your quaint honour turn to dust,   And into ashes all my lust: 30  The 
grave 's a fine and private place,   But none, I think, do there embrace.   Now 
therefore, while the youthful hue   Sits on thy skin like morning dew,   And 
while thy willing soul transpires 35  At every pore with instant fires,   Now 
let us sport us while we may,   And now, like amorous birds of prey,   Rather 
at once our time devour   Than languish in his slow-chapt power. 40  Let us 
roll all our strength and all   Our sweetness up into one ball,   And tear our 
pleasures with rough strife   Thorough the iron gates of life:   Thus, though we 
cannot make our sun 45  Stand still, yet we will make him run. 
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 22 16:25:29 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:25:29 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
References: <41C99955.6490.C1765F@localhost>
Message-ID: <00f901c4e86c$c2fb7d30$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>


> None of which addresses Richard's assertions about that terrible poem
> he posted by the anonymous soldier. Do you think it's perfect, Bob,
> as Richard does?
>
> Marcus

I'll answer that if you will tell me why you are not calling me a liar when 
you say that I am pretending that I did not do something that I said I did 
not do.  "Pretend" does not mean "to contradict oneself."  It means, among 
other things, "to make false assertions."





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 22 16:30:37 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:30:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
References: <41C99A3B.22935.C4F61C@localhost>
Message-ID: <011f01c4e86d$7b13a1e0$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> The Silken Tent
> Robert Frost
>
> She is as in a field a silken tent
> At midday when a sunny summer breeze
> Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
> So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
> And its supporting central cedar pole,
> That is its pinnacle to heavenward
> And signifies the sureness of the soul,
> Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
> But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
> By countless silken ties of love and thought
> To everything on earth the compass round,
> And only by one's going slightly taut
> In the capriciousness of summer air
> Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Is "the compass round," which contains both an inversion and a poeticism to 
force the meter right ("round" for "around") good meter, Marcus? 




From debra at debradicembre.com  Wed Dec 22 16:55:29 2004
From: debra at debradicembre.com (Debra Dicembre)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 08:55:29 +1100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
References: <20041222202038.32717.qmail@web52608.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <001701c4e870$f58b1310$0301010a@debraxerl89a65>

The Confirmation



Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.

I in my mind had waited for this long,

Seeing the false and searching for the true,

Then found you as a traveler finds a place

Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong

Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,

What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,

A well of water in a country dry,

Or anything that's honest and good, an eye

That makes the whole world bright. Your open

  heart,

Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,

The first good world, the blossom, the blowing

  seed,

The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering

  sea,

Not beautiful or rare in every part,

But like yourself, as they were meant to be.



.................................................................Edwin Muir,
Scottish, 1887-1959



Best of the season all,

Debra Dicembre

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Newberry" <jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com>
To: "Poetry News and Reviews" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 7:20 AM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request


> I'm putting together a (last minute) Christmas gift
> for my wife; I'm trying to make a small chapbook of
> romantic poems by others to give to her--poems that
> remind me of her and why we're still in love (forgive
> me; I've been married only 4 years!)
>
> Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a
> good romantic poem--posting it gets you extra points.
>
> Specifically, I'm thinking of a poem by Howard Nemerov
> that addresses how imperfect the beloved is...anyone
> know what I'm talking about?
>
> Thanks and Merry Christmas,
>
> Jeff
>
> =====
> Jeff Newberry
>
> "Sometimes it's not so easy,
> especially when your only friend
> talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
> and you do just the same as him."
> --Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
> http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 22 17:20:03 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:20:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
In-Reply-To: <00f901c4e86c$c2fb7d30$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41C9ACC3.5652.10D5BA3@localhost>

Marcus wrote:
> > None of which addresses Richard's assertions about that terrible
> > poem he posted by the anonymous soldier. Do you think it's perfect,
> > Bob, as Richard does?

Bob wrote: 
> I'll answer that if you will tell me why you are not calling me a liar
> when you say that I am pretending that I did not do something that I
> said I did not do.  "Pretend" does not mean "to contradict oneself." 
> It means, among other things, "to make false assertions."

Because it is only "among other things" that it means "to make false 
assertions", Bob. I'm a little sensitive about this because on 
another list I've been roundly castigated for using the word 
"disingenuous" to describe the kind of disingenuousness I see you 
using here: rhetorical trickery meant to avoid discussion on the 
merits of an issue, and to divert time and energy into tedious 
discussions of side-issues. So I'm casting about, a little, to try to 
find other ways to say that I think you're deliberately using 
rhetorical trickery to divert attention from the main issues you 
suspect you may not be able to defend adequately.

I think you're pretending that you were making a joke in response to 
the assertion that your quatrain wasn't correct meter because your 
first assertion was that it was indeed correct meter. It was only 
after it started to be made pretty clear that your quatrain was not 
in correct meter that you brought up the joke defense. It's clearly a 
second line of defense, and not what you intended in the first place 
because you used it as a second line of defense after your assertion 
that the meter was correct in and of itself was strongly challenged.

But that you're pretending it's a joke doesn't necessarily make you a 
liar -- I meant it as that you're employing rhetorical trickery to 
try to avoid facing the strong challenge to your assertion that your 
meter was correct, and the equally strong challenge to your assertion 
in the poem that it is easy to write in meter. 

Oddly, if you insist that you may take what I say however you please 
in order to try to make me look uncivil by your assertion I'm calling 
you a liar when I challenge your assertion that you intended the 
meter inversion as a joke, then if you fail to take my word for how I 
meant to use "pretend", then you're calling _me_ a liar -- and that's 
why it is essential to civil discussion that the participants NOT 
take disagreements with their views to be personal attacks, because 
there is just no end to it.

Marcus











From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 22 17:22:19 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:22:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request--Take Two
In-Reply-To: <cf.1e9d3124.2efb3f2c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <41C9AD4B.28777.10F6EAC@localhost>

On 22 Dec 2004 at 16:20, MillB at aol.com wrote:
> You could also go "traditional." Here are two (pasted below). There is
> another that comes to mind, I think Lord Byron or John Donne(where the
> narrator romantically describes the wonderful-ness of his lover's
> "messy state," unkept hair, etc...I must be getting old, though, since
> the name of the poem escapes me. Anyone out there know the poem of
> which I speak?

Delight in Disorder
Robert Herrick 

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part. 






From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 22 17:25:56 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:25:56 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request, another
In-Reply-To: <001701c4e870$f58b1310$0301010a@debraxerl89a65>
Message-ID: <41C9AE24.31819.112BD48@localhost>

He wishes for the cloths of heaven
William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, 
Enwrought with golden and silver light, 
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
Of night and light and the half-light, 
I would spread the cloths under your feet: 
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; 
I have spread my dreams under your feet; 
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams. 






From grahamd at ripon.edu  Wed Dec 22 17:38:49 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:38:49 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
In-Reply-To: <20041222202038.32717.qmail@web52608.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <BDEF5398.E28C%grahamd@ripon.edu>

on 12/22/04 2:20 PM, Jeff Newberry at jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com wrote:

> Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a
> good romantic poem--posting it gets you extra points.
> 
> Specifically, I'm thinking of a poem by Howard Nemerov
> that addresses how imperfect the beloved is...anyone
> know what I'm talking about?


Here's another that's about the imperfect beloved:

To Dorothy

You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
And a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
Of a windy night, it brushes the wall
And sweeps away the day till we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true:
"Things that are lost are all equal."
But it isn't true. If I lost you,
The air wouldn't move, nor the tree grow.
Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet wouldn't be yours. If I lost you,
I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep.


--Marvin Bell


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec 22 17:55:53 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:55:53 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
Message-ID: <1c7.21cdfae0.2efb5579@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/22/2004 3:31:11 PM Central Standard Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: 
> 
> X-INFO: INVALID TO LINE
> >The Silken Tent
> >Robert Frost
> >
> >She is as in a field a silken tent
> >At midday when a sunny summer breeze
> >Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
> >So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
> >And its supporting central cedar pole,
> >That is its pinnacle to heavenward
> >And signifies the sureness of the soul,
> >Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
> >But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
> >By countless silken ties of love and thought
> >To everything on earth the compass round,
> >And only by one's going slightly taut
> >In the capriciousness of summer air
> >Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
> 
> Is "the compass round," which contains both an inversion and a poeticism to 
> force the meter right ("round" for "around") good meter, Marcus? 
> 
> 
It's the same as saying, " . . . the bases round."
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From marcus at designerglass.com  Wed Dec 22 21:15:51 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:15:51 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
In-Reply-To: <001701c4e870$f58b1310$0301010a@debraxerl89a65>
Message-ID: <41C9E407.26558.1BF1D7@localhost>

On 22 Dec 2004 at 16:30, Bob Grumman wrote:

> > The Silken Tent
> > Robert Frost
> >
> > She is as in a field a silken tent
> > At midday when a sunny summer breeze
> > Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
> > So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
> > And its supporting central cedar pole,
> > That is its pinnacle to heavenward
> > And signifies the sureness of the soul,
> > Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
> > But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
> > By countless silken ties of love and thought
> > To everything on earth the compass round,
> > And only by one's going slightly taut
> > In the capriciousness of summer air
> > Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
> 
> Is "the compass round," which contains both an inversion and a
> poeticism to force the meter right ("round" for "around") good 
meter,
> Marcus? 

I think its fault, to the extent that it has a fault, is more in the 
cliche range, Bob. I've heard it said casually among sailors (sailing 
sailors, not motor sailors) on the Chesapeake. Given that it's a tent 
with guy lines that box the compass or go the compass round I'm not 
sure it's a poeticism at all. The inversion is in the commoner phrase 
that I take it Frost is quoting or using here to a particular effect, 
and is not, I think, Frost's inversion. 

Marcus





From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 22 21:55:10 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:55:10 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
References: <41C9ACC3.5652.10D5BA3@localhost>
Message-ID: <018101c4e89a$d199c620$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Bob wrote:
>> I'll answer that if you will tell me why you are not calling me a liar
>> when you say that I am pretending that I did not do something that I
>> said I did not do.  "Pretend" does not mean "to contradict oneself."
>> It means, among other things, "to make false assertions."
>
> Because it is only "among other things" that it means "to make false
> assertions", Bob.

What else could it mean here?

>I'm a little sensitive about this because on
> another list I've been roundly castigated for using the word
> "disingenuous" to describe the kind of disingenuousness I see you
> using here: rhetorical trickery meant to avoid discussion on the
> merits of an issue, and to divert time and energy into tedious
> discussions of side-issues. So I'm casting about, a little, to try to
> find other ways to say that I think you're deliberately using
> rhetorical trickery to divert attention from the main issues you
> suspect you may not be able to defend adequately.

I say that I don't use rhetorical trickery to avoid anything.  You will find 
some way of saying that when I say that I'm not telling the truth that you 
can pretend is not an accusation of  lying, I'm sure.

> I think you're pretending that you were making a joke in response to
> the assertion that your quatrain wasn't correct meter because your
> first assertion was that it was indeed correct meter. It was only
> after it started to be made pretty clear that your quatrain was not
> in correct meter that you brought up the joke defense.

It was in correct meter.  An inversion does not make a line in meter not in 
meter.

It's clearly a
> second line of defense, and not what you intended in the first place
> because you used it as a second line of defense after your assertion
> that the meter was correct in and of itself was strongly challenged.

It wasn't challenged at all, it was only subjected to an assertion that that 
I was wrong.

> But that you're pretending it's a joke doesn't necessarily make you a
> liar -- I meant it as that you're employing rhetorical trickery to
> try to avoid facing the strong challenge to your assertion that your
> meter was correct, and the equally strong challenge to your assertion
> in the poem that it is easy to write in meter.

Rhetorical trickery is not lying when it is a false statement?


> Oddly, if you insist that you may take what I say however you please
> in order to try to make me look uncivil by your assertion I'm calling
> you a liar when I challenge your assertion that you intended the
> meter inversion as a joke, then if you fail to take my word for how I
> meant to use "pretend", then you're calling _me_ a liar -- and that's
> why it is essential to civil discussion that the participants NOT
> take disagreements with their views to be personal attacks, because
> there is just no end to it.
>
> Marcus

Not with you as one of the participants. 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 22 21:57:19 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:57:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
References: <41C9ACC3.5652.10D5BA3@localhost>
Message-ID: <01a801c4e89b$1eb94610$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

I forgot to answer as I said I would if you answered my question, although I 
don't feel you answered it so much as slinked around it, Marcus.  I do not 
think Richard was correct to call the soldier's poem perfect in meter.

--Bob G.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Bales" <marcus at designerglass.com>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem


> Marcus wrote:
>> > None of which addresses Richard's assertions about that terrible
>> > poem he posted by the anonymous soldier. Do you think it's perfect,
>> > Bob, as Richard does?
>
> Bob wrote:
>> I'll answer that if you will tell me why you are not calling me a liar
>> when you say that I am pretending that I did not do something that I
>> said I did not do.  "Pretend" does not mean "to contradict oneself."
>> It means, among other things, "to make false assertions."
>
> Because it is only "among other things" that it means "to make false
> assertions", Bob. I'm a little sensitive about this because on
> another list I've been roundly castigated for using the word
> "disingenuous" to describe the kind of disingenuousness I see you
> using here: rhetorical trickery meant to avoid discussion on the
> merits of an issue, and to divert time and energy into tedious
> discussions of side-issues. So I'm casting about, a little, to try to
> find other ways to say that I think you're deliberately using
> rhetorical trickery to divert attention from the main issues you
> suspect you may not be able to defend adequately.
>
> I think you're pretending that you were making a joke in response to
> the assertion that your quatrain wasn't correct meter because your
> first assertion was that it was indeed correct meter. It was only
> after it started to be made pretty clear that your quatrain was not
> in correct meter that you brought up the joke defense. It's clearly a
> second line of defense, and not what you intended in the first place
> because you used it as a second line of defense after your assertion
> that the meter was correct in and of itself was strongly challenged.
>
> But that you're pretending it's a joke doesn't necessarily make you a
> liar -- I meant it as that you're employing rhetorical trickery to
> try to avoid facing the strong challenge to your assertion that your
> meter was correct, and the equally strong challenge to your assertion
> in the poem that it is easy to write in meter.
>
> Oddly, if you insist that you may take what I say however you please
> in order to try to make me look uncivil by your assertion I'm calling
> you a liar when I challenge your assertion that you intended the
> meter inversion as a joke, then if you fail to take my word for how I
> meant to use "pretend", then you're calling _me_ a liar -- and that's
> why it is essential to civil discussion that the participants NOT
> take disagreements with their views to be personal attacks, because
> there is just no end to it.
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Dec 22 22:02:40 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 22:02:40 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
References: <1c7.21cdfae0.2efb5579@cs.com>
Message-ID: <01cf01c4e89b$dd7c6af0$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

>The Silken Tent
>Robert Frost
>
>She is as in a field a silken tent
>At midday when a sunny summer breeze
>Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
>So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
>And its supporting central cedar pole,
>That is its pinnacle to heavenward
>And signifies the sureness of the soul,
>Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
>But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
>By countless silken ties of love and thought
>To everything on earth the compass round,
>And only by one's going slightly taut
>In the capriciousness of summer air
>Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Is "the compass round," which contains both an inversion and a poeticism to 
force the meter right ("round" for "around") good meter, Marcus? 


>It's the same as saying, " . . . the bases round." 

Which seems to me to have the same fault, but Bales says "the compass round" is correct usage, which I accept.  I assume the same is true with "the bases round," which is new to me.

--Bob G.
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From barry.spacks at verizon.net  Wed Dec 22 22:25:58 2004
From: barry.spacks at verizon.net (Barry Spacks)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 19:25:58 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] for Jeff's project, if he'll have it
In-Reply-To: <200412222219.iBMMJ2Al004976@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041222191956.00c0b368@incoming.verizon.net>


>
>MillB wrote:
>
>You cannot go wrong with Neruda.
>
           AFTER NERUDA

I want to sense your arrival
as the water glass gleams
in its long waiting...
and hear your approaching voice
in a crystal trance
like the tang of olives.

I'd kiss your belly
the way the Emperor
yields all of Spain to the Infidels,
touch your columns and smiles
as the monkeys gloat
over breadfruit.

Is this why
you seek to dissolve
like an island kingdom,
perilous ferry ride
sailing dreamers of you
into mist?

Here at this distance
what can I do
but invent you?
You sing your siren-song
while Corsica bathes
in cool midnight.

I'd wade your watercress brooks,
loll on your mountains of water.
This is not you
but my truths and tellings of you
like drops of blood on the thought
now piercing your heart.

                 -- Barry Spacks
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From kpaul at mallasch.com  Wed Dec 22 22:32:24 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 22:32:24 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] for Jeff's project, if he'll have it
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20041222191956.00c0b368@incoming.verizon.net>
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20041222191956.00c0b368@incoming.verizon.net>
Message-ID: <20041222223203.Y80204@kpaul.spinweb.net>

this is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-WCW



On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Barry Spacks wrote:

>
>> 
>> MillB wrote:
>> 
>> You cannot go wrong with Neruda.
>> 
>          AFTER NERUDA
>
> I want to sense your arrival
> as the water glass gleams
> in its long waiting...
> and hear your approaching voice
> in a crystal trance
> like the tang of olives.
>
> I'd kiss your belly
> the way the Emperor
> yields all of Spain to the Infidels,
> touch your columns and smiles
> as the monkeys gloat
> over breadfruit.
>
> Is this why
> you seek to dissolve
> like an island kingdom,
> perilous ferry ride
> sailing dreamers of you
> into mist?
>
> Here at this distance
> what can I do
> but invent you?
> You sing your siren-song
> while Corsica bathes
> in cool midnight.
>
> I'd wade your watercress brooks,
> loll on your mountains of water.
> This is not you
> but my truths and tellings of you
> like drops of blood on the thought
> now piercing your heart.
>
>                -- Barry Spacks
>


From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Dec 22 22:55:49 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 22:55:49 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] for Jeff's project, if he'll have it
Message-ID: <e0.96a383e.2efb9bc5@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/22/2004 9:26:25 PM Central Standard Time, 
barry.spacks at verizon.net writes: 
> You cannot go wrong with Neruda.
He's like a thin slice of smoked gouda.
    He has a good head
    And tastes well on fresh bread.
You might as well question the Buddha.
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From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Wed Dec 22 23:17:14 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 20:17:14 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] for Jeff's project, if he'll have it
In-Reply-To: <e0.96a383e.2efb9bc5@cs.com>
Message-ID: <20041223041714.82608.qmail@web52601.mail.yahoo.com>

Thanks to everyone for your wonderful ideas.

I'll try to post up the TOC, if you want.  Just know
that a good section of the chapbook is actually little
paragraphs written by friends of my wife--just best
wishes and so forth.

But, part 2 is poetry, including two written by yours
truly:  "Pantoum on a Line by Weldon Kees" and "Love
Letters."

I've not posted much of my poetry here because I feel
so much like an amateur.  But, I'd be happy to post up
the table of contents.

Thanks for the great ideas.  Sam--how on earth was I
thinking Nemerov?  When you said "Nims," I remembered
the poem.

Merry Christmas, again.

Jeff

=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good. 
http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec 23 08:07:35 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 14:07:35 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Xmas
Message-ID: <012001c4e8f0$605a1d10$35e83652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

For my New Poetrists (I hope the image gets through) 
otherwise just a Happiest for All What you Wish,

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 23 08:53:05 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 08:53:05 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] for Jeff's project, if he'll have it
In-Reply-To: <e0.96a383e.2efb9bc5@cs.com>
Message-ID: <41CA8771.3640.31AD95@localhost>

> barry.spacks at verizon.net writes: 
>     You cannot go wrong with Neruda.
> 
On 22 Dec 2004 at 22:55, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:
> He's like a thin slice of smoked gouda.
>  He has a good head
>  And tastes well on fresh bread.
> You might as well question the Buddha.

That's just what I'd do with the Buddha --
A poet has gotta be true ta
The code that requires
The truth from its lyres:
If the Buddha is shrewd, I'll be shrewder.





From marcus at designerglass.com  Thu Dec 23 09:45:38 2004
From: marcus at designerglass.com (Marcus Bales)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 09:45:38 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Richard Dillon and the Soldier's Christmas Poem
In-Reply-To: <018101c4e89a$d199c620$a9b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <41CA93C2.5265.61CAAB@localhost>

> > Bob wrote:
> >> I'll answer that if you will tell me why you are not calling me 
a
> >> liar when you say that I am pretending that I did not do 
something
> >> that I said I did not do.  "Pretend" does not mean "to 
contradict
> >> oneself." It means, among other things, "to make false 
assertions."

Marcus wrote:
> > Because it is only "among other things" that it means "to make 
false
> > assertions", Bob.
 
On 22 Dec 2004 at 21:55, Bob Grumman wrote:
> What else could it mean here?

It means, here, that I think you're saying it was a joke as a second 
line of rhetorical defense after your assertion that your meter was 
"correct". Your first line of defense is that your meter is correct; 
your second line is, if it's not correct, then it was a joke. But it 
couldn't have been a joke if you say it's correct, you see, because 
if it's correct, then what's funny about it? It's only even 
potentially funny if you did it on purpose -- and it's clear you 
didn't do it on purpose for two reasons: first, because you initially 
defended the practice as "correct" and, only after a couple people 
pretty well-known for expertise in correct meter disagreed with you 
did you fall back on claiming that you meant it as a joke.

But inversions of words to get to meter are simply not funny in 
serious verse (and you were trying for serious, not comic), and they 
are especially not funny in light or comic verse. The writer who 
inverts words to get a meter or a rhyme in light or comic verse is 
inept. Light or comic verse has got to be better done than heavy or 
serious verse because part of the charm is the lightness of touch 
inherent in NOT hitting that awkwardly splayed pose that the word 
inversion technique requires. To invert words to get a rhyme is an 
admission that that's as funny as you can be, at least at that point 
in the poem, and it's not funny at all unless you make it funny for 
reasons other than the mere word inversion. Let me modestly refer you 
to my own poem in which I inverted words to say it shouldn't be done, 
and to show why it shouldn't be done -- that at least has a modicum 
of wit. But to simply invert words to get a rhyme or to make a line 
scan is witless -- and not funny at all.

Marcus wrote:
> ... I think you're deliberately using
> > rhetorical trickery to divert attention from the main issues you
> > suspect you may not be able to defend adequately.

Bob wrote: 
> I say that I don't use rhetorical trickery to avoid anything. ...<<

Well, then, quit trying to justify your word inversion in various 
ways, and let's talk about why writing in meter is a good deal more 
than merely the counting of stressed and unstressed syllables.
 
Bob wrote:
> It was in correct meter.  An inversion does not make a line in 
meter
> not in meter.<

Yes, Bob, it does make the line not in meter -- because writing in 
meter requires a good deal more than merely getting the stresses in 
the right place; you also have to obey the rules of regular grammar 
and syntax, and make sense, and, if you mean to make a joke, you have 
to be actually funny, too. It's hard to do -- and if you look around 
you'll see just how hard it is to do. You couldn't do it -- at least 
not at first try. Not only that, but you seem to think that you did 
do it, even though the experts at doing it have told you you didn't. 
That you think that you wrote in correct meter tells everyone who 
knows anything about writing in correct meter that you know nothing 
about what it means to write in correct meter. You exploded your 
assertion that it's easy to do by doing it badly. Now, if you meant 
to write badly to show that it's not easy to do while you claimed 
that it was easy, THAT might be funny. But in order to make the claim 
that you wrote badly you have to give the reader some reason to 
believe you can write well -- and you didn't. So I don't believe that 
you wrote badly on purpose. I think you wrote badly because you 
couldn't write well in that form.

Bob wrote:
> It wasn't challenged at all, it was only subjected to an assertion
> that that I was wrong.

Well, that's what a challenge IS, Bob -- an assertion that you had it 
wrong. You may want to claim that your claim was rebutted but not 
refuted, but that kind of careful distinction is not the kind of 
thing you characteristically do. Instead, you take any disagreement 
with your opinion to be a personal attack on you, and flail away 
angrily about how you've been attacked, instead of addressing the 
issues on their merits.
 
Bob wrote:
> Rhetorical trickery is not lying when it is a false statement?<<

That's right -- in the context of a civil discussion where the 
presumption is that the participants are willing and able to 
distinguish their selves from their opinions, it is bad form indeed 
to assume that the other person is operating in bad faith, is willing 
simply to lie. So the civil thing to do is to point out that there is 
a contradiction, and the civil thing to do in response is to address 
that assertion. You can say it's not a contradiction at all, and try 
to show that in the context the contradiction is apparent rather than 
real, and give reasons why; you can say the logic your interlocutor 
used to come to a contradiction is flawed, and that means there's no 
contradiction at all; you can accept that there is a contradiction 
and try to show why there are other reasons in larger contexts why 
the contradiction should be allowed to stand in this context; you can 
accept that there is a contradiction, and reformulate one or both of 
the contradictory assertions; there are lots of paths away from 
"You're a liar!" or "You're calling me a liar!", if you want to take 
one of them.

Marcus






From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 23 13:47:38 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 13:47:38 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Will Some Authority Decide For Me
References: <41CA93C2.5265.61CAAB@localhost>
Message-ID: <00f901c4e91f$e0ca0350$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

If it is really true that

"The man went up the street to find a cab"

is in meter but

"the cab to street a man went find the up"

is not.  I always thought meter consisted of regular beats produced by a 
text, a certain number to a line, regardless of the text's contents (so long 
as it was verbal), the way "bark" rhymes with "flark," regardless of the 
fact that "flark" is not, as of this writing, a "real" word.

--Bob G. 




From mandolin at mac.com  Thu Dec 23 14:00:32 2004
From: mandolin at mac.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 14:00:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Will Some Authority Decide For Me
In-Reply-To: <00f901c4e91f$e0ca0350$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <41CA93C2.5265.61CAAB@localhost>
	<00f901c4e91f$e0ca0350$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <EB79EB73-5514-11D9-8913-000A95E985A4@mac.com>


On Dec 23, 2004, at 1:47 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:

> If it is really true that
>
> "The man went up the street to find a cab"
>
> is in meter but
>
> "the cab to street a man went find the up"
>
> is not.  I always thought meter consisted of regular beats produced by 
> a text, a certain number to a line, regardless of the text's contents 
> (so long as it was verbal), the way "bark" rhymes with "flark," 
> regardless of the fact that "flark" is not, as of this writing, a 
> "real" word.
>
> --Bob G.
>
> ___________

I ain't no authority, Bob, but I'd say it's not possible to decide 
whether a set of syllables is in meter without a context which reveals 
the author's metrical intentions of lack of them. As Kent Johnson 
pointed out a week or so ago, it's easy for English to fall into 
scannable iambics -- and I'd add that acknowledging a set of words to 
be scannable is not the same as saying that it's in meter. Chapter 23 
of Oliver Twist begins "The night was bitter cold."  That's obviously 
scannable and, I think, just as obviously not iambic trimeter. Both of 
your lines are scannable; either of your lines might be metrical.

Words rhyme or not (oh, but what of slant rhyme, analyzed rhyme, and 
the rest of the zoo?), and sets of words are scannable or not. Meter 
happens in poems, jingles, doggerel,  and songs.

Mike S.



From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Dec 23 14:19:37 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 14:19:37 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Moria
Message-ID: <7a.6952e708.2efc7449@aol.com>

http://www.moriapoetry.com/

The next issue of _moria_ (www.moriapoetry.com) is online.  It contains
poetry, theory articles, and reviews by:

bill lavender   jordan stempleman
eric elshtain   thomas fink
tracey gagne'   diana magallon
jennifer chapis neil oney
guatam verma    shin yu pai
sally ann mcintyre
william james austin
bruna mori              michael lohr
van g garett.

As usual I'm looking for poetry, theory articles, and reviews for future
issues.  I am especially interested in receiving more theory articles on
"experiemental" poetry for the next issue.

Bill Allegrezza (alegr5 at attglobal.net)
www.moriapoetry.com
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From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 23 16:08:41 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 16:08:41 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Will Some Authority Decide For Me
References: <41CA93C2.5265.61CAAB@localhost><00f901c4e91f$e0ca0350$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<EB79EB73-5514-11D9-8913-000A95E985A4@mac.com>
Message-ID: <011701c4e933$94a7b800$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> On Dec 23, 2004, at 1:47 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>> If it is really true that
>>
>> "The man went up the street to find a cab"
>>
>> is in meter but
>>
>> "the cab to street a man went find the up"
>>
>> is not.  I always thought meter consisted of regular beats produced by a 
>> text, a certain number to a line, regardless of the text's contents (so 
>> long as it was verbal), the way "bark" rhymes with "flark," regardless of 
>> the fact that "flark" is not, as of this writing, a "real" word.
>>
>> --Bob G.
>>
>> ___________
>
> I ain't no authority, Bob, but I'd say it's not possible to decide whether 
> a set of syllables is in meter without a context which reveals the 
> author's metrical intentions of lack of them. As Kent Johnson pointed out 
> a week or so ago, it's easy for English to fall into scannable iambics --  
> and I'd add that acknowledging a set of words to be scannable is not the 
> same as saying that it's in meter. Chapter 23 of Oliver Twist begins "The 
> night was bitter cold."  That's obviously scannable and, I think, just as 
> obviously not iambic trimeter. Both of your lines are scannable; either of 
> your lines might be metrical.
>
> Words rhyme or not (oh, but what of slant rhyme, analyzed rhyme, and the 
> rest of the zoo?), and sets of words are scannable or not. Meter happens 
> in poems, jingles, doggerel,  and songs.
>
> Mike S.

It seems to me you're saying meter is text that's acanable and cut up into 
lines.  What would make  "the cab to street a man went find the up," as a 
single line in a lineated text of similar lines, not meter?

--Bob 




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 23 16:17:44 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 16:17:44 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Will Some Authority Decide For Me
References: <41CA93C2.5265.61CAAB@localhost>
	<00f901c4e91f$e0ca0350$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <014b01c4e934$d8647550$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

Apologies for some kind of weird cross-posting that my computer has been 
doing without my knowledge.  This, I hope, will be the last post I intend 
for New-Poetry that goes elsewhere.

--Bob G. 




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Thu Dec 23 16:33:10 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:33:10 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
References: <1c7.21cdfae0.2efb5579@cs.com>
Message-ID: <043901c4e937$0099f7a0$35e83652@yourpk9x5fuc06>

SEA VIOLET

The white violet
is scented on its stalk,
the sea-violet
fragile as agate,
lies fronting all the wind
among the torn shells
on the sand-bank,

The greater blue violets
flutter on the hill,
but who would change for these
who would change for these
one root of the white sort?

Violet
your grasp is frail
on the edge of the sand-hill,
but you catch the light-
frost, a star edges with its fire.

(1916) H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Thu Dec 23 16:36:44 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 16:36:44 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Will Some Authority Decide For Me
Message-ID: <1a6.2de53992.2efc946c@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/23/2004 3:11:04 PM Central Standard Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: 
> 
> It seems to me you're saying meter is text that's acanable and cut up into 
> lines.  What would make  "the cab to street a man went find the up," as a 
> single line in a lineated text of similar lines, not meter?
> 
> --Bob 
If the other lines have ten syllables, then the meter would at least be 
decasyllabic.  If the lines also scanned as mostly iambic, with some variations, 
inversions, etc., it would also be iambic pentameter.  cummings often writes 
pretty regular iambic pentameter with the same kind of grammatical dislocations 
as the example above.  He also does this in accentuals, as in the case of 
"anyone lived in a pretty how town."
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From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu  Thu Dec 23 18:31:49 2004
From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (Richard Wilsnack)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 17:31:49 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Request
In-Reply-To: <20041222202038.32717.qmail@web52608.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20041223172637.01ca2b70@medicine.nodak.edu>

Jeff,

I hope that this is not too late to add to your chapbook.

Richard W. Wilsnack
rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu

       Somewhere I have never travelled

      somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
      any experience, your eyes have their silence:
      in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
      or which i cannot touch because they are too near

      your slightest look easily will unclose me
      though i have closed myself as fingers,
      you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
      (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

      or if your wish be to close me, I and
      my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
      as when the heart of this flower imagines
      the snow carefully everywhere descending;

      nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
      the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
      compels me with the colour of its countries,
      rendering death and forever with each breathing

      (I do not know what it is about you that closes
      and opens; only something in me understands
      the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
      nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

                 e. e. cummings



From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 23 19:28:15 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 19:28:15 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Will Some Authority Decide For Me
References: <1a6.2de53992.2efc946c@cs.com>
Message-ID: <017701c4e94f$88eb59b0$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

In a message dated 12/23/2004 3:11:04 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: 

It seems to me you're saying meter is text that's acanable and cut up into lines.  What would make  "the cab to street a man went find the up," as a 
single line in a lineated text of similar lines, not meter?

--Bob 

  If the other lines have ten syllables, then the meter would at least be decasyllabic.  If the lines also scanned as mostly iambic, with some variations, inversions, etc., it would also be iambic pentameter.  cummings often writes pretty regular iambic pentameter with the same kind of grammatical dislocations as the example above.  He also does this in accentuals, as in the case of "anyone lived in a pretty how town." 
  Thanks, Sam--that's how I understand it.  

  Just to beat another iron of mine, Cummings, according to almost all Cummings authorities (like Norman Friedman) was "Cummings," except for Madison Avenue.

  --Bob G.


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From kpaul at mallasch.com  Thu Dec 23 20:33:31 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 20:33:31 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Will Some Authority Decide For Me
In-Reply-To: <017701c4e94f$88eb59b0$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
References: <1a6.2de53992.2efc946c@cs.com>
	<017701c4e94f$88eb59b0$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
Message-ID: <20041223203131.A47904@kpaul.spinweb.net>

maybe it's 'hidden meter'... only there if you read and reread it, 
overcoming the clunkiness of the rearranged words...

it's almost like when you're reading it for the first time, trying to 
comprehend it - the meter gets lost, like the air let out of a balloon. 
once you reassamble it, though, you as reader give it meter...

-kpaul

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:

> In a message dated 12/23/2004 3:11:04 PM Central Standard Time, bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
>
> It seems to me you're saying meter is text that's acanable and cut up into lines.  What would make  "the cab to street a man went find the up," as a
> single line in a lineated text of similar lines, not meter?
>
> --Bob
>
>  If the other lines have ten syllables, then the meter would at least be decasyllabic.  If the lines also scanned as mostly iambic, with some variations, inversions, etc., it would also be iambic pentameter.  cummings often writes pretty regular iambic pentameter with the same kind of grammatical dislocations as the example above.  He also does this in accentuals, as in the case of "anyone lived in a pretty how town."
>  Thanks, Sam--that's how I understand it.
>
>  Just to beat another iron of mine, Cummings, according to almost all Cummings authorities (like Norman Friedman) was "Cummings," except for Madison Avenue.
>
>  --Bob G.
>
>
>


From kpaul at mallasch.com  Fri Dec 24 00:29:10 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 00:29:10 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Online Readability Test
In-Reply-To: <20041223203131.A47904@kpaul.spinweb.net>
References: <1a6.2de53992.2efc946c@cs.com>
	<017701c4e94f$88eb59b0$74b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>
	<20041223203131.A47904@kpaul.spinweb.net>
Message-ID: <20041224002811.P58088@kpaul.spinweb.net>

http://www.juicystudio.com/fog/index.asp

shows the:

# Gunning-Fog Index
# Flesch Reading Ease
# Flesch-Kincaid grade level

pretty cool, imho. ;)

-kpaul



From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec 25 04:05:30 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 10:05:30 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] forwarding
Message-ID: <003e01c4ea60$e2b7e8c0$b22bb750@yourpk9x5fuc06>

 
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm
The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities 

There are a lot of great freeware programs out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives. 

This is my personal selection of the best of the best.  I've used every single product in this list and find each to be a gem.  Of course other folks may differ but, hey, this is MY selection ;>) 

All these utilities have been featured in past issues of Support Alert newsletter.  More freebies are featured in every new issue. 

In this latest update there are actually 56 utilities but this report will still be called now and forever "the best-ever 46 freeware utilities." Go figure:>) 

In light of the the current malware plague I've re-ordered the list so that the first four products are security related. 

Note: "Free" in this context means free for non-commercial or home use. Some  products are also free for commercial use but I suggest you check out the licensing details of individual products before making that assumption. 

Last updated November, 2004. 

The Best Freeware List 

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These days all users face a real risk of malicious programs secretly installing themselves on your computer. Anti-virus and anti-spyware products help reduce the chance of infection but you can really enhance your protection by installing WinPatrol, which provides a vital "last ditch" defense layer by telling you when a product is trying to change any of the critical settings on your PC such as the registry and auto-start areas. WinPatrol simply throws up a dialog asking whether you want to allow the change or not. It's simple but highly effective. The only downside is the messages can confuse some inexperienced users. That reservation aside, this is a product that should be on every PC. (785KB)
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Best Free Browser New
Internet Explorer is a great browser but it has become such a target for malicious exploit that it now has become a security risk.  There are several excellent alternatives but my top pick goes to Mozilla FireFox.  It's faster and leaner than Internet Explorer and since the release of version 1PR, it's stable and reliable. It loads a little slower than IE but once running, it zips along at lightning speed. With tabbed browsing and more free extensions than you could ever want, it offers a major upgrade in your browsing experience.  Unlike IE, it's also standards compliant.  FireFox is now my everyday browser though occasionally I have to fire up IE to browse a site designed around IE's non standard features. (4.7MB)  
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http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html 

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GNUWin II is a free software compilation for Windows. This huge suite features dozens of programs including free alternatives to many expensive commercial products.  There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word, OpenOffice for MS Office XP, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, Gzip for WinZIP are dozens more.   Taken collectively this suite provides more than enough software to completely set up a PC without spending a cent on applications or utilities.  The suite is available or CD or you download the 
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http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html 

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There are lots of text editors and Notepad replacements. Some of these aspire to be programming editors while others try to be word processors.  What I love about EditPad is that, unlike the others, it concentrates on simply being a better plain text editor and it succeeds brilliantly.  It has a Notepad like interface combined with tabbed document windows and the ability to open as many documents as you like with no file size limitations. I use it every day for tasks as diverse as writing Support Alert Newsletter to examining my web log files. Some of the latter can be up to 100MB, yet EditPad handles these huge files with ease.  (849KB). http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html 

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http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html 

Best Free Registry Cleaner
To keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use Fix-It utilities This is a commercial product but I must admit that Toni Helenius' Easy Cleaner performs almost as well and is totally free. As a bonus, it will also detect duplicate files and help you clean up temp files to make more disk space. Remember though, as with every Registry cleaner,  to back up your Windows Registry before use. (2.64MB)
http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm

The Best Bookmark Cleaner
AM-DeadLink scans your bookmark file for dead links or duplicate links. When I tried it on my huge favorites file I discovered 17% of my links were dead. I've now got a much leaner set of favorites and the comfort of knowing that the links actually work. (546KB)
http://aignes.com/press/deadlink140.htm 

Best Free Route Tracer 
3D Traceroute  graphically displays  Internet route information. You can use it for technical tasks such as diagnosing slow connections or for general purpose snooping like determining the location and owner of a web site or tracing spammers. (996KB) 
http://www.hlembke.de/prod/3dtraceroute/

The Best Free Screen Capture Utility 
I've used over half a dozen screen-capture utilities and none of them has really satisfied. Until now.  Gadwin screen capture does exactly what I want in the way I want. Further, it avoids the trap of providing lots of useless and confusing features. It's the little things that count like making the hot key PrtSc so I don't have to remember it, and automatically sequentially naming the output files for multiple screen shots. Gadwin will stay on my PC permanently. (976KB) 
http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr

The Best Free Search Bar Updated
Dave's Quick Search Bar is a free utility that gives you the same easy access to Google searches as Google's own search bar but wait, there's more.  It also provides access to the excellent Teoma, FAST and other search engines. Because it resides in your task bar, it's accessible from any application. Comes with a host of other features such as dictionary/thesaurus access and even a calculator. If that's not enough for you, it's totally customizable. A serious second choice is the new Google DeskBar which shares many of the features of Dave's Search Bar but is geared exclusively to Google searches. 
http://www.dqsd.net/  (380KB)
http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/ (452KB)

Best Free Download Accelerator Updated
Star Downloader 1.43 is not only free of charge, it's free of ads, spyware and other undesirable extras packed into most free  download accelerators. On top of that, it is blindingly fast and  has a raft of features including automatic mirror site detection, automatic resumption of failed downloads, download  scheduling, anti-virus integration and more. If you are not yet using a download accelerator, go get this product and start counting the time you save. The faster your internet connection, the more you will gain. Users with slow modem connections will, unfortunately, benefit least. (1.4MB) 
http://www.stardownloader.com 

Best Free Trojan Scanner/Trojan Remover New
Ewido the best of a new crop of anti-Trojan programs. On my recent tests over at www.anti-trojan-software-reviews.com it emerged as was one of the few products that could reliably detect polymorphic and process injecting Trojans that were totally missed by anti-virus products like Norton and AVG. No, it's not as good as TDS-3 or Trojan Hunter but you get what you pay for. You see, the free version of Ewido doesn't have a memory monitor but the on-demand scanner is so good you'll have no complaints. The free version download is actually the same as the paid version but after 14 days the memory monitor becomes non-functional. I recommend all readers download the product and scan their PCs weekly. I suspect you may be surprised at what you will find. I've also included a link to my full Ewido review for those who want to know more about the product prior to downloading.
http://www.ewido.net/en/ (2.2MB)
http://www.anti-trojan-software-reviews.com/review-ewido.htm

Best Free Web Site Ripper New
HTTrack is one impressive product: it's easy to use, has an excellent user interface, offers every feature you could want, is blindingly fast and free of any adware as well.  If you like to download web sites so that you can "browse them offline", this is the product to get. ( 3.23MB) 
http://www.httrack.com/

Best Free DLL Cleaner Updated
Over time most PCs become cluttered up with the unwanted remainders of long deleted programs. DLL Archive is a free utility that will scan your PC for DLLs that are no longer referenced. You can then archive the unwanted programs away or delete them entirely. Archived items can easily be restored to their original location if any problems arise. (227KB) 
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/dllarch.htm

Best Free File Cleaner 
I've tried quite a few commercial products designed to clean unneeded temporary files off your hard disk but must say that the free utility "Empty Temp Folders" ranks with the best. It takes a few minutes to set up but after that, just press a button to recover many megabytes of disk space. (667KB) 
http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp

Best Free Resource Meter
This is cute. TinyResMeter is an itsy-bitsy system monitor. Unlike many other monitors, it doesn't consume a lot of CPU utilization in order to tell you your CPU utilization. In addition to CPU usage, you can optionally monitor cache, RAM, page file and swap file usage, running processes and threads, disk space utilization and a number of other parameters as well. 
Also built-in, is a screen grabber that saves the current screen to disk when you press PrintScreen. How they fit all this into 96KB beats me. I
http://pesoft.fr.st/

Best Free Spam Filter for the Average User Updated
Mailwasher is for most folk, the easiest way of dealing with Spam.  It's a free email preview utility that allows you to check your email on your mail server before you download it to your PC. The advantage of this approach is that you can kill unwanted messages including spam, viruses and large attachments before they get anywhere near your computer. Mailwasher automatically flags for you any messages containing viruses and possible spam which makes for quick and easy identification. It also will send a message back to the spam mail sender saying that their message could not be delivered. Hopefully this will encourage some spammers to take your name off their mailing list.  The free version only handles only one POP email account  but that's sufficient for most users.  If you need multiple account try XTerminator which provides many of the same features of Mailwasher though with a less elegant interface. 
http://www.mailwasher.net ( 1.35MB)
http://www.artplus.hr/adapps/eng/xterminator.htm (1.87MB)

Best Free Spam Filter for Experienced Users Updated
When it comes to effectiveness, POPFile beats the pants off  most other spam filters I've tried. But this effectiveness takes a little time to develop. POPFile is a statistical filter so it has to be trained to recognize your spam from your normal mail.  It takes a week or so before it starts becoming accurate and best results may take a month or more.  POPFile works as a proxy mail server so that means that it can be used with any POP email client. Setup is reasonably straightforward for experienced users but beginners should stick with Mailwasher.  Outlook users should check out SpamBayes, another open source statistical filter that offers an Outlook plug-in that makes it more more convenient to use.
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/old_index.html (4.3MB)
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/  (3.6MB)

Best Free PopUp Stopper Updated Updated
The Proxomitron is not like your average popup stopper. It operates by filtering and transforming all your Web pages on the fly. As a result you can not only stop pop-ups but pop-unders, ads, flash animations, status bar scrollers and just about anything else. Besides, next time you are asked what pop-up stopper you use, you can answer; "why, I use The Proxomitron" and how cool is that. The first link below is to version 4.5, the last and final version of this superb utility. The following two links offer useful setup and usage tips. Note:  For Novice PC users I suggest you try the news Google tool bar rather than The Proxomitron. It's free as well and has  an excellent popup filter built in. It's not as flexible as as The Proxomitron,  but it requires no setup. As a bonus it also makes Google searches easier. 
http://computercops.biz/files/ProxN45.exe
http://accs-net.com/smallfish/prox.htm
http://www.sankey.ws/proxomitron.html
http://toolbar.google.com/

Best Free Sticky Notes Utility  New
Some people hate these programs others swear they can't work effectively without them. I used to be in the first category but with so many things on my plate these days, I'm slowly being converted.  The function that I find really useful is the reminder that pops up at a designated time and date. I use it for simple things like "put up the latest issue on the web site." ATnotes is a neat implementation that features configurable alarms, resizable windows, variable fonts and a host of other useful features. The product is remarkably similar to the commercial sticky notes utility called, TurboNotes. Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery?  Maybe not. (723KB) 
http://atnotes.fr.st/

Best Free Secure Erase Utility 
Eraser is a free, GNU license utility that will securely erase files, folders or even whole disks from any Windows or DOS PC. Eraser overwrites data area with selectable random data patterns and also wipes data in the paging file, Internet cache, temporary files, Internet cookies, unused disk space and a number of other places where data can secretly lurk.  It handles FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS partitions as well.  Erasing files with high security will always be a difficult and time consuming task and can never offer absolute 100% safety. However Eraser makes the task about as easy as it be, with a security level beyond most conceivable requirements. An impressive package. (2.6MB) 
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ 

Best Free Outlook Express Backup 
This free utility allows you to do a full or selective backup of OE's critical files including mail folders, newsgroups, address book and identity settings. Simple, effective ... neat.  (2.1MB) 
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx 

Best Free Process Viewer New New
PrcView has long been my personal choice but Process Explorer has pushed it aside. The reason? A better display setup coupled with more features and even more information. Process Explorer uses two vertical panes. The top contains all active processes while the second shows either all the handles opened by a selected process or, optimally, a list of DLLs and memory mapped files. A very handy search feature allows you to work backwards from named DLLs or handles to the owning process. A gem. Freeware, 230KB.  
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml 

Best Free Inventory Tool 
AIDA32 is arguably the best system inventorying tools I've used regardless of price.  It will document just about every aspect of your hardware and software configuration. Throw in the fact that it checks out networks, gives memory benchmarks and that it is totally free, and you end up with a product that should be in everyone's toolkit. Download from the link below but remember to download the documentation as well. Corporate users need to register - but there's still no charge. The developer announced in March 2004 that the product has been frozen and there will be no more development. However, as of today, it is still the best in its class.
http://www.sofotex.com/AIDA32-download_L9326.html

Best Free Anti-Scumware Utility  New
There's a scumware  plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a loaded shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered,  unwanted ads pop up on your screen and worse.  SpywareBlaster is not a scanner like SpyBot but rather a stand-alone inoculation program that prevents the initial infection. It provides active protection against more than 1500 products that use ActiveX  based exploits and offers defenses against unwanted cookies as well.  A companion program to SpywareBlaster is SpywareGuard. Again, this is not a scanner like SpyBot. It is a protective program that works like an anti-virus suite by checking programs before they are executed. Both products are well executed, regularly updated and work well with each other and SpyBot.
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html (2.2MB)
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html  (1.96MB)

Best Free Search and Replace Utility Updated
I've been a long time user of Funduc Software's excellent Search and Replace utility, now in version 4. However, I have to admit that after using HandyFile's free Find and Replace program, my loyalties are torn. Granted, it does pretty much the same thing, but it's faster as changes are made in memory rather than by writing to disk. This feature also provides a degree of safety. If you need to do text file replacements over multiple files, I suggest you give this tiny free utility a spin.(361KB) 
http://www.silveragesoftware.com/handytools.html 

Best Free Outliner
I'm not a great fan of outliners - my brain doesn't work that way. Some folks however, swear by them and if that includes you, then you should check out Keynote, an Open Source freeware program that has a dedicated band of followers.  Its major design attribute is its ease of use. Words like "natural" and "seamless" come close to the mark but really don't capture the essence of what is really a great design. What do you do with it? Well to quote the web site "KeyNote is used by screenwriters to draft screenplays, by medical doctors to keep patient databases, by developers to store source code snippets - and to everyone it serves as a place to put all the random pieces of information that have no particular structure of relationship to other data, and do not fit easily in task-specific applications such as word-processors, databases or spreadsheets."  (1.7MB) 
http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html 

Best Free Rename Utility Updated
Lupas Rename 2000 is a small Windows utility that globally renames all the files in a directory and its subdirectories. It can convert names to upper/lower case, change the case of the first letter, add text, left crop, 
right crop and just about anything else you can think of. And unlike DOS based utilities, it will work on hidden files as well. Add in a nice GUI interface, an undo feature, full preview of changes and the fact that it's free and you have a utility that should be in every toolkit. 
http://www.azheavymetal.com/~lupasrename/download.php

Best Free Windows Driver Backup New
I used to recommend WinDriversBackup for this task but it has now, unfortunately, morphed into shareware. However, I can suggest you try WinRet as a replacement. It will not only back up your drivers but also your system registry, program settings and preferences, shortcuts, Favorites, Outlook Express folders, accounts and message filters as well. As a bonus, it allows you to tweak some of your system settings. I didn't try the latter but can report that the driver backup and restore worked well. It's not quite as simple to use as WindriversBackup but, then again, it has much more functionality. (227KB)
http://winret.sourceforge.net/

Best Free Digital Image Utility 
Irfanview is a free multimedia viewer and editor that supports a huge range of file formats. Each new version seems to add more capabilities but to me, its most powerful features are its speed and its batch processing capability.  If you want to resize sets of digital images for the web or for transmission by email, Irfanview is the best free solution available.  It's also a mighty fine image viewer as well. I just can't believe something this good is free. 
http://www.irfanview.com/ 

Best Free File Comparison Utility
WinMerge is a free Windows utility that compares two files and identifies the differences. The differences can then be merged from one file into the other. This is the sort of product that is ideal when you have several different versions of a file and are not sure of how they differ. The product is geared to text files so it won't be much use to you with Word Processing or other complex formatted documents  But for text reports or computer programs, WinMerge is ideal. (514KB) 
http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/ 

Best Free Email Accessory
 As well as my normal POP email account, I have multiple Yahoo webmail accounts. Managing the latter used to be easy until Yahoo started charging to forward webmail to my POP account.  To overcome the problem, I now use a nifty free product called YahooPOPS!  that allows you to collect your Yahoo webmail from within your POP email client such as Outlook or Eudora. I use Outlook and must say YahooPOPS! works seamlessly from within the program.  I just press "Send/Receive" and collect all my email at the one time. One of those rare  programs where you offer a silent "thanks" to the developer every time you use it.   ( 3.7MB)   
http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/ 

Best Free Outlook Accessory 
I hate opening HTML email. Despite multiple layers of protection I just know that one day some cunning new exploit is going to get me.  That's why I'm so enthusiastic about PocketKnife Peek, a small free Outlook add-in that allows you to preview your HTML email as text. 
http://www.xintercept.com/pkpeek.htm 


      (Sponsored Links)

      The Best Windows Backup Software
      At this site sixteen data backup products were reviewed and rated but only one get "editor's choice." 
      http://www.backup-software-reviews.com/

      The Best SpyWare Detector
      If you use Ad-aware or Spybot you will be surprised just how more effectively SpySweeper detects and protects your PC from Adware, Spyware, Trojans and other malicious products. That's why it won the prized "Editor's Choice" award in PC Magazine's massive March 2004 survey of anti-Spyware products. Try the free evaluation copy and see for yourself.Use this link for direct download => 
      http://www.webroot.com/wb/products/spysweeper/index.php?rc=1132 

      The Best Remote Access Software
      Our reviewer had given this product category away as "too slow, tool clumsy and too unreliable" but after reviewing this product he's changed his mind; "at long  last a remote access solution that actually works!  Quite frankly we agree with him, it's an impressive product.  Read the full review here:
      http://www.pcsupportadvisor.com/best_remote_access_software.htm

      The Best Anti-trojan Scanner 
      Most users are not aware that their anti-virus scanner can only provide a moderate level of protection against trojan programs that try and take control of your PC. To really protect your computer, you need a dedicated anti-trojan program. Our editor's have reviewed  every major product on the market and have concluded that two scanners stand head and shoulders above the other contenders.
      http://www.anti-trojan-software-reviews.com
     

The Best Tabbed Internet Explorer Variant
Tabbed IE variants seem to be proliferating wildly and with good reason. The one that I like most is a freeware product called Maxthon (formerlyMyIE2). It works as a small efficient shell that sits over IE. The advantage of this approach is that normal IE plug-ins like the Google toolbar work fine in all the tabbed windows. The longer I use Maxthon the more I like it. In fact, when I go back to the normal IE, it feels painfully cumbersome.  Don't expect a lot of documentation but if you read the FAQ  (see below) you'll have no problems. (1.51MB) 
http://www.maxthon.com/en/index.htm
http://maxthon.cafedeux.com/faq/
http://forum.maxthon.com/forum/index.php

The Best Free Encryption Utility New
This is what the web site says: "dsCrypt is AES/Rijndael file encryption software with simple, multi-file, drag-and-drop operations. It features optimal implementation, performance and  safety measures. dsCrypt uses an advanced encryption algorithm and offers unique options for enhanced security." To that I'll add the fact that it's tiny, easy to use, has open code, employs proven techniques that are essentially unbreakable and comes from a highly reputable source.  In summary, dsCrypt offers the average user everything they want in a secure encryption program  and it's free. That's why I use it myself. (25KB) 
http://freezip.cjb.net/freeware/ 

Best Free Time Correction Utility New
A lot of folks have difficulty getting time correction software to work on their PC. If that's you then you should try Dimension 4, a free utility that gives you the choice of connecting to a time server either by standard TCP protocol or by the more common (and more problem-prone) SNTP protocol. If you haven't yet got a time correction utility, this is the one.  It's free, it's easy to use, and it has every function that you could conceivably want. Because it works from both the command line and Windows, it's ideal for batch files, too. (292KB) 
http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/

Best Free Startup Manager New
Everyone needs a startup program utility so they can exercise control over what third party programs start automatically with Windows. My long time choice has been PC Magazine's Startup Cop but alas, this is no longer freeware - it's now only available if you subscribe to the magazine's software service.  My new choice is Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel. It's small, capable and has powerful features not found in Startup Cop including the ability to edit or add entries.  Unfortunately these same features make it potentially dangerous in the hands of newbies.  That caveat aside, it's a great product. Thanks Mike. (59KB) 
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml 

Best Free File Backup Program New
Karen's Replicator v1.8.10 is a straight-forward backup utility that copies individual files, folders and even entire drives to another location.  The backup can be on another partition, local drive or network drive.  Its key feature is the ability to schedule automatic backups. No, it doesn't support removable media - that kind of feature is for a different class of backup product. The intended use of this product is to make regular automatic backups of critical files. I use it to make hourly backups of the file containing my notes for future issues of my  newsletter.  Simple, effective and free. (1.4MB) 
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

Best Free Data Recovery Utility  New
PC Inspector File Recovery 3 is a free utility that does an impressive job recovering accidentally deleted files or files lost through corruption of the file system. It has some nice features, like the ability to recover files with lost headers, and to recover partitions even when the boot sector has been lost or damaged. It works with the FAT16/FAT32 and NTFS file systems. This is no home written utility - it is a serious product from a reputable German company with a long history in commercial data recovery. PCI is the ideal product for those who want the security of a data recovery program but are not prepared to fork our big bucks for the extra features of high end products. (2.8MB) 
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

Best Free Remote Control Software New
Ultr at VNC is a client/server package that allows remote control of another PC using a TCP/IP connection. It works with Windows W9x/NT/2K/XP and offers all the features you need including auto-configuration, easy user interface, extensive hotkeys and embedded file transfer. Apart from the fact that it's free, its strong suite is its speed. Ultr at VNC must be the fastest remote control package I've ever used.  Just the thing for accessing your home PC while traveling, off-site troubleshooting or general network administration. 
http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/

BEST OF THE REST

These specialist free utilities don't fit into any particular product category but are great products that fill a real need:

Restore Missing Toolbars 
Inexperienced PC users just always seem to be losing their Windows and Internet Explorer toolbars. I've never quite worked out exactly how they do it but they sure manage it somehow. Luckily, this free utility makes recovery a snack. 
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/ToolbarRepair.Exe 

Locate Required DLLs 
This free utility can be a lifesaver. It identifies all the DLL  and OCX  support files required to operate any Windows 32 bit executable file. 
http://linos-software.com:23/Depend.html

Free NFO Viewer 
Many freeware files are distributed with descriptive NFO  and DIZ files as part of the distribution package. These are just plain text files so you can view them with Notepad or other text editor but often the formatting is lost.  Try  this tiny little viewer that's built for the job. It's free and once associated with the NFO and DIZ file types, works seamlessly, a true "install and forget" product. 
http://www.damn.to/software/nfoviewer.html

Lock Down Your Icons 
Sick of Windows moving your icons around on the desktop? Lock them down with this nifty free utility. (400KB) 
http://www.sillysot.com/ 

Monitor Your User's Backup Needs 
BackupWatcher is a free tool that allows LAN administrators to measure the backup requirements of network users.  It does this by monitoring the file churn rate on each PC since last backup. Full reporting facilities are provided that allow problem areas to be easily identified. Quite a neat way of reducing unnecessary backups and ensuring necessary ones are actually carried out. (2.57MB) 
http://bw.rippletech.com/ 

Free Utility Kills Instant Messaging Viruses 
If you use IRC or instant messaging then you should check out SOFTWIN, a company that provides a number of totally free anti-virus utilities than scan all data transfers associated with IM products.  All the utilities make use of the virus signature databases from the BitDefender Professional anti-virus product so signature file updating is simple. There are versions for MSN Messenger, NetMeeting, ICQ, mIRC, and Yahoo! Messenger. 
http://www.bitdefender.com/html/instant_messaging.php

Photoshop Replacement for Nix Updated
Oriens Enhancer is a graphics processing program similar in function to Photoshop and Paintshop. The big difference is that it's free, the others cost big bucks.  But don't think free means limited. On the contrary this product can read more than 40 file formats, has filters, textures and color effects to burn and can even handle layers. On my XP PC it was both fast and reliable though I have known folks with other PC configurations that have had stability problems. (4.05MB)   If you have problems with Oriens, then try  the open source program called "The Gimp."  The latest version is excellent. 
http://www.oriens-solution.com/downloads/oe.htm  (4.05MB)
http://www.gimp.org

Free Utility Stops Browser Hijacking 
There's a browser hijacking plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a loaded shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered or phantom bookmarks added to your favorites. This free monitor will let you know when something's trying to change your settings and pass control back to you. (394KB) 
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/bhblaster.html 

Hides Personal Files from the Boss 
Camouflage is a free utility that will hide your personal or confidential files within another file. The neat thing is that the container file looks and works like a normal file of that format. So, by way of example, you could embed a secret message in a Word file which could be opened by anyone and appear to be just a normal Word file. The intended recipient could use their 
copy of Camouflage to open the file, enter the password and extract the embedded information. This free program is not intended to provide military strength protection but rather a convenient way to sneak information past unnecessarily prying eyes.  Note: It looks like the author's web site is down, however you can download Camouflage from the other links below. (2.65MB) 
http://arxspace.com/Camouflage/
http://camouflage.unfiction.com/
http://webmasterfree.com/software/996.html

Outlook Add-in Gives Email Account Flexibility 
RealAccount is a freeware plug-in for MS Outlook 2002 that allows you to designate a default email account and signature for any Outlook Folder. The program is a late beta but has proved totally stable on my Windows XP Pro PC. Yet another free utility that provides functionality that should have been included in the original product. (338K) 
http://www.realpopup.it/realaccount/ 

Share Bookmarks between Browsers 
BookMarkBridge is a free open source utility that allows you to share and synchronize your bookmarks between several browsers. I've got 3 browsers installed at the moment: IE 6, Mozilla-FireFox and Netscape 4.7.  BookMarkBridge correctly identified and synchronized the first two but it couldn't cope with the old version of Netscape.(2.69MB) 
http://bookmarkbridge.sourceforge.net/

Protect Your Defenses 
Most users are not aware that their anti-virus scanner, firewall, spyware monitor and other defenses can easily be pulled and/or destroyed by trojan horses and other hostile programs.  Process Guard is a unique program that prevents this from happening by protecting each individual defensive program.  Process Guard itself cannot be pulled down because it runs as a kernel level service not a normal application. Process Guard is a commercial product but the demo version rather handily allows you to protect one process (such as your firewall) without time limit.  It's not the simplest program to install but the extra layer of protection makes the effort definitely worthwhile.
http://www.diamondcs.com.au/processguard/ 

Gizmo, November 2004. 


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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sat Dec 25 05:41:25 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 11:41:25 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] forwarding
Message-ID: <003801c4ea6e$48683eb0$b22bb750@yourpk9x5fuc06>

forwarding from Jim Andrews on the Buffalo List, I enjoyed the first link, hope you do as well; it will take longer to go through the other ones: see philosophy, but good to have the reference, 

http://submeta.free.fr is the site of France's Xavier Pehuet. Good Shockwave
interactive audio/visual work here, mainly non-representational, imaging
Lingo-oriented. Select stuff from the three menus at top right. Click the
pieces once they load.

if you're interested in contemporary philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html is an interesting site. For
instance, here are a couple of entries:

Connectionism (sort of 'non representational' AI):
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/connectionism

Mental Representation (though *not necessarily* 'mimetic' of human 'world
views'):
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-representation

ja
http://vispo.com

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 25 11:19:26 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 10:19:26 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Like guests arriving joyfully
Message-ID: <BDF2EF2E.E35D%grahamd@ripon.edu>

In California During the Gulf War


Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,

certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink--
a delicate abundance. They seemed

like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.

To some of us, the dejected landscape consorted well
with our shame and bitterness. Skies ever-blue,
daily sunshine, disgusted us like smile-buttons.

Yet the blossoms, clinging to thin branches
more lightly than birds alert for flight,
lifted the sunken heart

even against its will.
                      But not
as symbols of hope: they were flimsy
as our resistance to the crimes committed

--again, again--in our name; and yes, they return,
year after year, and yes, they briefly shone with serene joy
over against the dark glare

of evil days. They *are*, and their presence
is quietness ineffable--and the bombings *are*, were,
no doubt will be; that quiet, that huge cacophany

simultaneous. No promise was being accorded, the blossoms
were not doves, there was no rainbow. And when it was claimed
the war had ended, it had not ended.

 
--Denise Levertov. *Evening Train*, New Directions, 1992.


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From grahamd at ripon.edu  Sat Dec 25 12:02:18 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 11:02:18 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat
Message-ID: <BDF2F93A.E363%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat

Christmas comes like this: Wise men
unhurried, candles bought on credit (poor price
for calves), warriors face down in wine sleep.
Winds cheat to pull heat from smoke.

Friends sit in chinked cabins, stare out
plastic windows and wait for commodities.
Charlie Blackbird, twenty miles from church
and bar, stabs his fire with flint.

When drunks drain radiators for love
or need, chiefs eat snow and talk of change,
an urge to laugh pounding their ribs.
Elk play games in high country.

Medicine Woman, clay pipe and twist tobacco,
calls each blizzard by name and predicts
five o'clock by spitting at her television.
Children lean into her breath to beg a story:

Something about honor and passion,
warriors back with meat and song,
a peculiar evening star, quick vision of birth.
Blackbird feeds his fire. Outside, a quick 30 below.


James Welch.  *Riding the Earthboy 40*.
Penguin Books




====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sat Dec 25 15:51:27 2004
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 15:51:27 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat
Message-ID: <60.4ba7acfc.2eff2ccf@cs.com>

In a message dated 12/25/2004 11:01:30 AM Central Standard Time, 
grahamd at ripon.edu writes: 
> 
> Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat
> 
> Christmas comes like this: Wise men
> unhurried, candles bought on credit (poor price
> for calves), warriors face down in wine sleep.
> Winds cheat to pull heat from smoke.
> 
> Friends sit in chinked cabins, stare out
> plastic windows and wait for commodities.
> Charlie Blackbird, twenty miles from church
> and bar, stabs his fire with flint.
> 
> When drunks drain radiators for love
> or need, chiefs eat snow and talk of change,
> an urge to laugh pounding their ribs.
> Elk play games in high country.
> 
> Medicine Woman, clay pipe and twist tobacco,
> calls each blizzard by name and predicts
> five o'clock by spitting at her television.
> Children lean into her breath to beg a story:
> 
> Something about honor and passion,
> warriors back with meat and song,
> a peculiar evening star, quick vision of birth.
> Blackbird feeds his fire. Outside, a quick 30 below.
> 
An old favorite.  Thanks for posting it, David.
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From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Sun Dec 26 12:32:56 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 18:32:56 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Culture makes your life longer
Message-ID: <00d301c4eb70$efd71010$14aa3852@yourpk9x5fuc06>

A survey carried out by the Social Medicine Department, University of Ume? in Sweden, and by the Swedish central Office of Statistics of Stockholm, highlights that those who take part in at least 80 cultural events in a year (shows, theater, cinema) fall ill less and live longer, regardless of their income and/or education.

What is most interesting in the survey on the factors that influence man survival carried out by the Swedish university, is that it reached the above mentioned results by chance, disappointing the docs who expected more traditional answers like sports, nutrition, smoke, etc. to the point that we do not have an English version. The Swedish text was translated into Italian and German.



Culture makes your life longer (La cultura ti allunga la vita) was used as a slogan by the South Tyrolean Cultural Office, Italian Language.



Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From tad at opus40.org  Sun Dec 26 13:19:09 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 13:19:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] New in the Rogues' Gallery
In-Reply-To: <00d301c4eb70$efd71010$14aa3852@yourpk9x5fuc06>
References: <00d301c4eb70$efd71010$14aa3852@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <41CF009D.1040306@opus40.org>

New on my poetry portraits page ( www.opus40.org/tadrichards ) - Ted 
Kooser, Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Ann Lauterbach.

Happy New Year to all.



From kpaul at mallasch.com  Sun Dec 26 18:42:23 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 18:42:23 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] (not an) essay on Whitman
In-Reply-To: <41CF009D.1040306@opus40.org>
References: <00d301c4eb70$efd71010$14aa3852@yourpk9x5fuc06>
	<41CF009D.1040306@opus40.org>
Message-ID: <20041226183842.V90442@kpaul.spinweb.net>

warning: some foul language. also, knowing what livejournal is makes it a 
little funnier...

http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen1.jpg

- snip -

Walt Whitman is 90 stories tall, and his adventures are legendary. With 
his blue ox, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman traveled across young America 
and helped the nation grow into the angry powerhouse it is today.

- snip -

i can't tell if it is 'real' or not. that is, whether or not a student 
somewhere actually turned it in for an assignment...

slouching in the back row,
-kpaul
mallasch.com/mug/


From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Mon Dec 27 05:32:22 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:32:22 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] email addresses
Message-ID: <00d201c4ebff$5b013490$eda93852@yourpk9x5fuc06>


If you wish, have a look:
http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=910

you should need any email addresses in the future just ask us  ? All

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From ron.silliman at verizon.net  Mon Dec 27 08:49:57 2004
From: ron.silliman at verizon.net (Ron)
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 08:49:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Silliman's Blog: MLA week
Message-ID: <002e01c4ec1a$f47dda90$6501a8c0@Dell>

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

RECENT TOPICS:

Another great Canadian poet
you haven't heard of ... yet:
Mark Truscott

MLA Off-Site Monster Reading:
Time, Place, Names

Writing poetry in reverse:
a note from Norway

Red Grooms:
A great ruckus
from meticulous craft

The Blake Test:
Poetry, Vispo,
language & time

The role of the blog

Riding writing:
poetry & time -
"snail's trace in the moonlight"

What is character?
Walter Mosley's
Socrates Fortlow

What is the Philly Sound?
Furniture Press' new run
of "book-thingees"

Devin Johnston
& the poetics of stillness

Sociology of the 
"open" reading

Carla Harryman's Open Box:
poetry vs. flash poetry
(Brian Kim Stefans,
failing the Blake Test)

Alcohol & poetry:
Better to read Jack Spicer
than BE Jack Spicer
(on 20 years without a drink)

Jackson Mac Low
1922 - 2004:
seeing, hearing, feeling language
with the most open mind

57 "notable" books of poetry
as chosen by the NY Times
1997 - 2004
listed by publisher

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/




From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Dec 27 18:04:53 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 18:04:53 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Dawn Potter
Message-ID: <24.6724f230.2f01ef15@aol.com>


http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=105689&z=14

Potter's Field 
Monday, December 27, 2004 - Bangor Daily News   

Potter draws inspiration from a range of writers, including a lifelong 
favorite, Dickens, whose books she remembers reading "to rags." The novelist's 
depictions of women inspired the poem "Heroine," which pays tribute to his female 
characters, oft maligned by literary critics. Keats is another touchstone, his 
poetry as well as how he evolved into a great writer. Among contemporaries, 
Potter speaks highly of Kim Addonizio, a San Francisco Bay area poet who "lays 
her heart on the line in her poems."  
    

    
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From tad at opus40.org  Mon Dec 27 23:35:30 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:35:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Missouri Waltz
Message-ID: <41D0E292.2090300@opus40.org>

John Mark Eberhart, in the Kansas City Star, suggests a few 
possibilities for Poet Laureate of Missouri, which, he reminds us, is 
the state which gave us T. S. Eliot and Langston Hughes:


Michelle Boisseau and Robert Stewart, both of whom teach at the 
University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Sherod Santos, who teaches at 
the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Boisseau's deeply thoughtful verse (see /Trembling Air /for most recent 
examples) has earned her the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and an NEA 
fellowship of her own. Stewart, who edits /New Letters/, is the fine 
poet behind /Plumbers /but also a great poetry editor who could be a 
great poetry ambassador. He recently won the Thorpe Menn Award for 
/Outside Language/, his book of essays on the arts. Santos has won the 
Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize and has been nominated in the criticism 
category of the National Book Critics Circle awards for /A Poetry of Two 
Minds/.

There are probably dozens more. Missouri's failure to name a poet 
laureate is not about a lack of talent. It's about a lack of commitment, 
and of vision.




From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Tue Dec 28 12:50:01 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:50:01 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Visual Poetry
Message-ID: <002b01c4ed05$a82e9120$d88e3052@yourpk9x5fuc06>

Call for submissions 
.
Sent to the Buffalo List by Sylvester Pollett
.

Visual Poetry Exhibition: Infinity 2005
Opens at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in March 2005

Seeking Visual Poetry: defined for this exhibition as any form of
artistic creation that uses language (words, letters, punctuation
marks) as its raw material.

The 2005 theme is "Infinity." The deadline for submissions is Feb
1, 2005. For more information about the call, and a downloadable
call for submissions poster, visit

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley/fellows/lit/20045/vispo%20cfp.htm
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley/fellows/lit/2004-5/vispo%20cfp.htm

Send submissions by email attachment to :
http://us.f605.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dudley_literary at yahoo.com

dudley_literary at yahoo.com,

or by snail mail to

Visual Poetry 2005
Dudley Literary Fellows
Dudley House (Lehman Hall), 3rd Floor
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

===============================================
Dudley House Literary Program 2004-5
Jamey Graham and Melissa Shields

Web: Go to http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley and click on the
"Literary" link.

Email: dudley_literary at yahoo.com
Subscribe Newsletter: dudley_literary-subscribe at yahoo.com
Unsubscribe Newsletter: dudley_literary-unsubscribe at yahoo.com

Mailing Address:
Editors of the Dudley Review
Dudley House
Lehman Hall (3rd floor)
Cambridge, MA 02138.
USA.

===============================================



Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com  Tue Dec 28 16:38:01 2004
From: jnewberry1974 at yahoo.com (Jeff Newberry)
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:38:01 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Visual Poetry
In-Reply-To: <002b01c4ed05$a82e9120$d88e3052@yourpk9x5fuc06>
Message-ID: <20041228213801.2527.qmail@web52607.mail.yahoo.com>

Very cool.  Bob, you got your ears on?  (Forgive the
phrase; my father-in-law, the dedicated CBer, has been
here since Christmas . . .)

Jeff Newberry


--- Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at tin.it> wrote:

> Call for submissions 
> .
> Sent to the Buffalo List by Sylvester Pollett
> .
> 
> Visual Poetry Exhibition: Infinity 2005
> Opens at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in March
> 2005
> 
> Seeking Visual Poetry: defined for this exhibition
> as any form of
> artistic creation that uses language (words,
> letters, punctuation
> marks) as its raw material.
> 
> The 2005 theme is "Infinity." The deadline for
> submissions is Feb
> 1, 2005. For more information about the call, and a
> downloadable
> call for submissions poster, visit
> 
>
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley/fellows/lit/20045/vispo%20cfp.htm
>
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley/fellows/lit/2004-5/vispo%20cfp.htm
> 
> Send submissions by email attachment to :
>
http://us.f605.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dudley_literary at yahoo.com
> 
> dudley_literary at yahoo.com,
> 
> or by snail mail to
> 
> Visual Poetry 2005
> Dudley Literary Fellows
> Dudley House (Lehman Hall), 3rd Floor
> Harvard University
> Cambridge, MA 02138
> USA
> 
> ===============================================
> Dudley House Literary Program 2004-5
> Jamey Graham and Melissa Shields
> 
> Web: Go to http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley and
> click on the
> "Literary" link.
> 
> Email: dudley_literary at yahoo.com
> Subscribe Newsletter:
> dudley_literary-subscribe at yahoo.com
> Unsubscribe Newsletter:
> dudley_literary-unsubscribe at yahoo.com
> 
> Mailing Address:
> Editors of the Dudley Review
> Dudley House
> Lehman Hall (3rd floor)
> Cambridge, MA 02138.
> USA.
> 
> ===============================================
> 
> 
> 
> Anny Ballardini
> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the
> soul, not to gather admirers.
> Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


=====
Jeff Newberry
 
"Sometimes it's not so easy,
especially when your only friend
talks, sees, looks and feels like you,
and you do just the same as him."
--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Dec 28 17:33:54 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 17:33:54 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Little Journal for Nearly Every Literary Voice
Message-ID: <1b8.96dd448.2f033952@aol.com>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/27/books/27jour.html?ex=1104901200&en=496beb7e3
6619a84&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1
 
Little Journal for Nearly Every Literary Voice
By FELICIA LEE 
Published: December 27, 2004
 
 
When The Threepenny Review celebrated its 100th issue and 25th year recently, 
the literary quarterly received headlines for that milestone and gave itself 
a big party. After all, 25 years is old for a literary magazine with 9,000 
subscribers, a $200,000 annual budget and no big-money patrons or university 
support. 
 
But here's the surprise: while Threepenny represents the triumph of the 
bookish little guy in the age of publishing giants and gossip magazines, it is a 
behemoth in a landscape crowded with 1,000 literary magazines. That is more than 
at any time in history.
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From wjbat at conncoll.edu  Tue Dec 28 22:41:23 2004
From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin)
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:41:23 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: [crewrt-l] RIP Susan Sontag
Message-ID: <828D4A7C-594B-11D9-8A8E-000A9573C758@conncoll.edu>


 From _Against Interpretation_, 1966:

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely 
reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy 
industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of 
interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture 
whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at 
the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the 
revenge of the intellect upon art.

Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To 
interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up 
a shadow world of "meanings." It is to turn the world into this world. 
("This world"! As if there were any other.)

The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all 
duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we 
have.

--Susan Sontag



-------------------------------------------------------


Wendy Battin        wjbat at conncoll.edu
http://www.upwardcat.com/home.html

The spirit goes on foot.
Chinese





From anny.ballardini at tin.it  Wed Dec 29 15:56:40 2004
From: anny.ballardini at tin.it (Anny Ballardini)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:56:40 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Keeler and Poundstone
Message-ID: <00a801c4ede8$e572fb50$1dae3452@yourpk9x5fuc06>



Keeler's narrative style is no less incredible than his plots. Indeed, the two can scarcely be distinguished, for his writing is essentially all plot. Characterization, description, dialog, and use of language hardly exist in the conventional sense. Every paragraph hits you over the head with new and implausible information. There is little room for anything else.

http://home.williampoundstone.net/Keeler/index.html

And Jim Andrews sent this in:

http://williampoundstone.net/

Keeler is one of the interesting pages.

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com 
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
The aim of the poet is to awaken emotions in the soul, not to gather admirers.
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky

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From kpaul at mallasch.com  Wed Dec 29 23:42:43 2004
From: kpaul at mallasch.com (kpaul mallasch)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 23:42:43 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Compliments! (found Nigerian poem...)
Message-ID: <20041229232829.P51634@kpaul.spinweb.net>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 12:32:21 +0900
From: Oliver Bona <olivebonnfepixesrwv at tiscali.it>
To: Greetings <luap at mallasch.com>
Subject: Compliments!

Dear Sir,
I am Mr. Oliver Bona,
manager of bills/
exchange at the
foreign remit-
tance depart-
ment of a
bank here
in South Africa.

In my 
department,
we
discovered
an abandoned sum of
US
$14,
     700,
         000.
             00
(Fourteen Million,
Seven Hundred Thousand
United State Dollars only)
in an account that belong
-ed
to one of our foreign customers
who died 
along with his entire family,
           on November 1999,
in a ghastly plane crash.

Since we got information about
his death, we
have been
expecting his
next-of-kin to
come over and claim
           his money
because we can not
release it unless
somebody applied 
for it as 
next of kin or
relation to the
de-
ceased as indicated
in our banking guide-
lines. Unfortunately,
nobody has come forward
to claim this money.

It is based on
this that some
officials in my
department
         and I
have decided to
             establish a
cordial business relationship 
with you, 
hence my
contacting
you. We want
you to present
yourself as the
next of kin or
relation of
the deceased,
so that the funds
can be remitted
into your account.

Moreover, we do not
want the money to go
into the government
account as unclaimed
bills. The banking law
        and guidelines here
stipulates that any account
abandoned or is
                 dormant 
for a period of years,
is deemed closed and
all money contained
therein forfeited
to the government
treasury account.

Now,
it is
being
speculated
that the above
sum will be
transferred
into the government
account as an unclaimed
fund on or before the end
of March 2005. The reason for
requesting you to present yourself
as next of kin, is occasioned by the
fact that the deceased (customer) was a
foreigner.

The mode of sharing after a successful transfer
          of the money
          into your account,
                            shall be 75% to my colleagues
and 
I, for 
the role
you will be
expected to play
in this deal, we have
agreed to give you 20% of
the total sum and 5% for any
expenses that may arise in course
               of this transaction.

Therefore, you are
expected to reply
this letter indi-
cating your readi
-ness and interest
to participate in this 
business.

After receiving your reply,
you will be communicated as
regards the necessary steps
to take to conclude this
transaction.

I expect your urgent response
via my private email (oliver1234
@
mail2southafrica.com)
     to enable us conclude
this transaction urgently
without any
hitch.

Please treat this business pro-
posal as strictly confidential
for security 
reasons.

Personal Regards,
Oliver Bona.



From grahamd at ripon.edu  Thu Dec 30 00:00:39 2004
From: grahamd at ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 23:00:39 -0600
Subject: [New-Poetry] Man in Space
Message-ID: <BDF8E797.E4E0%grahamd@ripon.edu>

Man in Space 

All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.

Billy Collins


====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
====================================================




From bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Dec 30 15:14:19 2004
From: bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:14:19 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Visual Poetry
References: <20041228213801.2527.qmail@web52607.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <033601c4eeac$255d3eb0$88b831d0@youro0kwkw9jwc>

> Very cool.  Bob, you got your ears on?  (Forgive the
> phrase; my father-in-law, the dedicated CBer, has been
> here since Christmas . . .)
>
> Jeff Newberry
>
Yeaj--I was out of town for a few days but just got back, turned on the box 
and there it was, from too different people.  Thanks, Anny.  I'll send 
something, for sure.

--Bob G. 




From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Dec 30 17:08:17 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:08:17 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet and editor Peter Davison dies at 76
Message-ID: <8e.1d99c4eb.2f05d651@aol.com>

http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041230/APN/412300634

Thursday, December 30, 2004 
Poet and editor Peter Davison dies at 76
The Associated Press
 
 
BOSTON? Peter Davison, a poetry editor for The Atlantic Monthly magazine and 
two publishing houses who became a poet himself, has died. He was 76.
 
Davison, a central figure in Boston's literary and publishing circles for 
almost 50 years, died yesterday in his Boston apartment of pancreatic cancer, The 
Boston Globe reported.
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From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Dec 31 19:16:56 2004
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 19:16:56 EST
Subject: [New-Poetry] Thought for a New Year
Message-ID: <9f.5577cf65.2f0745f8@aol.com>

The 1975 Nobel Prize address of Eugenio Montale
"Is Poetry Still Possible?"

I had thought of giving this title to my brief address: Can poetry survive in 
the world of mass communications?  Many wonder about this, but on serious 
reflection the answer cam only be in the affirmative. If by poetry we mean 
so-called belles lettres, 
it is clear that worldwide production will continue to increase out of all 
proportion. If on the other hand we limit ourselves to poetry that rejects with  
horror the label of product, poetry which arises as if by miracle and seems 
to fix an entire epoch and an entire linguistic and cultural situation, then it 
is necessary to say that there is no possibility poetry will die.
 

The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale
Ecco Press, 1982
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From tad at opus40.org  Fri Dec 31 20:21:24 2004
From: tad at opus40.org (The Old Mole)
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 20:21:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Thought for a New Year
References: <9f.5577cf65.2f0745f8@aol.com>
Message-ID: <001c01c4efa0$3dbcdd90$6801a8c0@MoleHQ>

Jim - what a beautiful sentiment for the New Year.


Tad Richards
www.opus40.org
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 7:16 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Thought for a New Year


  The 1975 Nobel Prize address of Eugenio Montale
  "Is Poetry Still Possible?"

  I had thought of giving this title to my brief address: Can poetry survive in the world of mass communications?  Many wonder about this, but on serious reflection the answer cam only be in the affirmative. If by poetry we mean so-called belles lettres, 
  it is clear that worldwide production will continue to increase out of all proportion. If on the other hand we limit ourselves to poetry that rejects with  horror the label of product, poetry which arises as if by miracle and seems to fix an entire epoch and an entire linguistic and cultural situation, then it is necessary to say that there is no possibility poetry will die.


  The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale
  Ecco Press, 1982



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