[New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 28, Issue 25

[Roger Day]

My background is in engineering, science and navigation. I am
self-taught in poetry, poetics, and the all the rest of the stuff -
indeed, the books I bought were self-designed to fill the gaps in my
knowledge. Reccommendations here and there, an unsystematic view of
What It Takes To Be A Poet. So, a right hodge-podge of stuff, none of
it systematic. A deeper reading? Well I tried and probably missed by a
good country-mile.  A lot of the books I bought, I bought because I
felt that I lacked something, that I was always missing something,
that I felt that I could not construct sentences properly, my
self-doubts about being a writer, about writing in general. My
collection of books - and my forays into French and German - was
designed  to over-come these things, that I would become better by
reading everything, by learning other languages. They're a list of
aspirations, a bolster against self-doubt, a marker of self-doubt.
What I really wanted - and what books couldn't give - was for someone
to pat me on the head and say, there, you can write. But, at some
stage I said, fuck that for a game of soldiers and started to sell the
greater part of my books on Amazon[1].

The books I listed were the books that remain: they are the books that
have been useful to me, books that I think might be useful to me in
the future. So, the Princeton Poetics book has proven useful to me
when I've discussed things in these forums. It was the first poetics
book I owned, and it's still the main one I turn to. As to the Cassell
book, I like Jonathon Green's writing. I own an old Partridge
dictionary of slang: when I went to buy a new slang book, I was drawn
to the Cassell rather than the Partridge. Who *knows* what mysterious
forces draw one to a book; I have not regretted the decision though. I
love some of the books that remain, and I'm finding it harder and
harder to part with some of them, the sentimentality attached to them.

I also picked up something I hadn't really counted on - a love of
French and German. The mind-altering way another language has as it
settles into your mind. That was certainly something I'd not counted
on.

When I looked at the background of the OED, it seemed to me to be some
kind of Imperialist project. I wanted to say something about the
parting of American English from English English. Chambers uses the
term British English, but I don't find that useful either. But I
ramble ...

Yahoo Unserious
[1] If anyone is interested, B/C me and I'll send you the full list,
Cut some sort of deal, sans amazon.

On 10/28/06, Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> From: David Baratier
>
> <<
>  A number of amateurs are wishing recognition by mentioning singular books
> rather than lay out some indication that they are serious readers but I have
> thoroughly enjoyed it.
> >>
>
> Um ... Another way of putting it would be that two different kinds of lists
> are appearing, one with pertinent texts, and the other with
> interesting-texts-on-my-shelves.  (There might be a less kind way of
> describing the latter which, while interesting, can degenerate into a "my
> bookshelf is longer/more interesting/more esorteric than yours" game.)
>
> I concur over the dangers of simply naming a text without explanation or
> qualification, but what worries me more is a sometimes dangerous lack of
> specificity, which may simply reflect an assumption that "everyone knows"
> what is being referred to.
>
> Thus (forgive me Roger <g>), both Roger Day and I listed the (N)PEPP, but
> I'd want to say that it's fairly crucial to get the 1993 edition or later,
> with the articles on metrics revised or added to by T.V.F.Brogan.  I could
> make the case as to why that book (the only one I mentioned, though I'd
> agree with most of the rest of Roger's list) and why that edition, but ...
> Roger?   <gg>
>
> So far, I think the best suggestion by miles was Helen Ruggerie's, of a
> blank book, closely followed by dave bircumshaw's, if he ever wrote it.  I'd
> chuck in here, partly because it's a book I've just just discovered, partly
> because it has easily the best short article on Sapphics that I've ever
> encountered [and the one caveat I had was that the article doesn't
> distinguish between the two lines within Sapphics written in English, the
> so-called English Sapphics, basically stemming from Isaac Watts' "Day of
> Judgement", and those which turn back directly to Latin or Greek, usually
> Horace].  Also at least one member of this list is represented there.  And
> there's the piece by Fred Nims on writing a poem entirely (although he uses
> a different name, doesn't everyone? it's a code-word, as New Formalists have
> one name for it, a classicist like Frederick Nims uses another, and I call
> it <following Joseph Maloff> the Lesser Ionic Ascending Foot) in X  X  /  /.
> Boy, that was a class act, was +An Exaltation of Forms+!
>
> I have it on order, mostly because I couldn't work out how to steal it from
> the friend whose copy I was reading.  Almost makes me want to try again with
> Annie Finch's own book on metrics.  Almost.
>
> Slang dictionaries.  Again, I think Roger mentioned this, and specified
> Jonathan Green's +Cassell Dictionary of Slang+.  I'd agree, if you can have
> only one dictionary of slang, but I'd be interested to know why Roger picked
> that (as I would have done too) rather than the only other possible choice,
> the Beale/Partridge +Dictionary of Slang+.
>
> Then there's the OED.  (Hi, Bob!)  "Which OED?" isn't as silly a question as
> it sounds, since I've found apparently reputable personages use that set of
> intitials to, as it turned out,  jeezuz wept refer to the Concise Oxford
> English Dictionary.  Not that I'd ever think that was what Bob was doing, oh
> no indeedy, no nay never not even on a month of Sundays.  Hm ... ?  <g>
>
> But Roger suggested either the SOED (oh, well, no one's perfect) or the
> microreduced one.  There are two problems here, and one resolved
> issue.  The current microreduced OED does at least print OED2, and there's
> a major change between OED1 and OED2, much larger than anything that happens
> later.  And of course then we get into the baroque Oxford system of
> numbering the bloody things, crossed with some incompetent programming.
> OED2 was followed by OED2(3) on CD [which is the one I use], which was
> reissued as OED3 *after what is now OED4 started appearing.  Except the CD
> of OED3 has an interesting little habit of refusing to install on some
> systems, and causing problems sometimes when it does, which can be ...
> annoying.
>
> So I'd specifically recommend OED2(3) on CD, rather than either OED3 or the
> microreduced edition, both of which are for almost all purposes identical
> with it in content.  Except that Roger, being younger than some of us,
> doesn't feel on his pulse the way one's eyes degenerate with age, so that
> even with a magnifying glass ...  So my original microreduced OED now
> resides, whether happily or not, with yet another member of this list.
>
> And there are, simply, things that you can find out using the [Advanced]
> search faciltites of an electronic version of the OED which aren't possible
> with a hard copy.  As certain other members of this list who shall remain
> nameless, contributing to a thread started by Mark Weiss on poetryetc
> soliciting insight into the origins of "skinflint" will discover soon. Ha!
> Enough to make you skin a fox, and I intend to take Great Delight in
> [belatedly] demonstrating this.  {Be afraid, Christopher, be very, very
> afraid ... }
>
> Then there's the OED4, in one sense the latest in a line stretching back to
> the original Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, or what is now known
> as OED1, which doesn't exist as a single text -- d'oh! -- but as an ongoing
> online project.  But given Oxford's record on slang and contemporary usage,
> both in the OED itself and the Oxford Dictionary of Slang, I wouldn't trust
> that if *they paid *me to use it.  (I bet they even manage to get it wrong
> on gonzo journalism.)  A four volume re-edition of Patridge is due out in
> the next year or so, which ought to be a bit better, judging from past
> history.
>
> Anyway, just a few random thoughts.
>
> Robin
>
>
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