[New-Poetry] Help with fuzzy memory?

[David Graham]

Probably thinking of Wm. Matthews's classic essay, "Dull Subjects,"  
about which I've certainly posted here multiply.

Here's the relevant bit:

  I suspect the earliest compilers of a Subject Index to Poetry would  
find their major headings both borderless and few. To forestall such  
fruitless labors, I hereby offer a short but comprehensive summary of  
subjects for lyric poetry.

1.            I went out into the woods today amid it made me feel,  
you know, sort of religious.
2.            We’re not getting any younger.
3.            It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or  
(b) with you, honey.
4.            Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of  
happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent  
amid on we know not what.


One could, I suppose if one were possessed of a mania for  
condensation and categorization, offer a single ur-plot for lyric  
poetry and indeed for all imaginative literature, amid if so, one  
could do worse than the following four—word sentence, a plot summary  
of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby amid Dorothy Lamour film, The Road to  
Bali: “Amorous gorilla pursues Hope.”

--Wm. Matthews, fr. "Dull Subjects"


On Dec 8, 2006, at 11:15 AM, opus40-01 at opus40.org wrote:

>
> There's a gag about the subject matter of contemporary poetry, and  
> one part of it is something about going for a walk and feeling, you  
> know, all at one with the universe.
>
> Anyone know what I'm talking about? Can anyone give me the whole  
> thing?
>
> Tad
>
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> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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