[New-Poetry] terror dactyls

[Anny Ballardini]

>From the little I know I have always noticed the tendency by the Italians to see the British as a barbarous race, still nowadays; while on Americans they literally "lay a piteous veil" words said yesterday by a chemistry professor at a public teachers' meeting. Logically it embraces much more than poetry, say social trends and such. Whatever.
If on the other hand you have a haggard English or American living here, they would undoubtedly deny what I said, as it already happened over and over again on lists. That is not my problem. This is what I have recorded at school and around the several places.

They even showed that Shakespeare was Italian! And let me add another nasty remark that I am inventing right now but I am sure it does not entirely come out of my mind, an Italian who did not know how to write since his sonnets For Gracious Sake, are they sonnets?

  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2008 6:13 PM


  In a message dated 4/6/2008 11:49:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time, halvard at earthlink.net writes:
    Also, btw, my guess is that the so-called rules came after the poems, not before.
    But actually those "rules" are merely descriptive of how some poems/sonnets/etc.
    are written. 
  Perhaps in part true, Hal. But I speculate the first poem that was to be a sonnet had at least the bare
  bones behind of plan behind its making, self-imposed guidelines established by its first maker. Likely it was an influential maker/artist who first laid out a few 'sonnets' and then others followed suit, copying the form/template so to speak. 

  We know from his own testimony that Billy Collins invented his paradelle by laying down some arbitrary rules for its construction. It wasn't arrived at over time by critical consensus. Though many other forms 
  were not initiated as a joke as the paradelle was, I'd bet the were arrived at in similar fashion.
  Maybe the historical record is in tatters and largely oral, but certainly 'the sonnet's history' has been studied in depth. Is there a 'first sonnet' and who were its first immitators? Where are the irregulars of this list's formalist brain trust? Answers please.

  What are the forms that have died out? The extinct species.Surely a few didn't make it over the long haul?

  Finnegan



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