[New-Poetry] Toads

[David Graham]

On Jul 2, 2007, at 3:16 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
> I'm skeptical.  The phrase "literalists of the imagination" Moore  
> ascribes to Yeats, but not the toads.  She was typically very  
> scrupulous about acknowledging her borrowings.
>
> The Yeats is from *Ideas of Good and Evil*:  "The limitation of his  
> view was from the very intensity of his vision; he was a too  
> literal realist of imagination, as others are of nature...."  He's  
> discussing Blake's illustrations of Dante.
>
> I could easily be wrong, but note that Moore puts the toads passage  
> in quotes.
>
> --Bob G.
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 From Representative Poetry Online:

imaginary gardens with real toads in them: in some editions, Moore  
places quotation marks around these words, but their source is  
unknown. Possibly Moore had in mind "the garden front of Toad Hall"  
in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (New York: C. Scribner's  
sons, 1907; 1913 copy at del F Fisher Rare Book Library), a  
children's book with real poems in it. Cf. Grahame's account of Toad  
of Toad Hall: "During luncheon -- which was excellent, of course, as  
everything at Toad Hall always was -- the Toad simply let himself go.  
Disregarding the Rat, he proceeded to play upon the inexperienced  
Mole as on a harp. Naturally a voluble animal, and always mastered by  
his imagination, he painted the prospects of the trip and the joys of  
the open life and the roadside in such glowing colours that the Mole  
could hardly sit in his chair for excitement"
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1488.html
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========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

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