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  #31  
Unread 09-17-2017, 12:26 PM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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Wonderful, Walter! I hear it. And those harmonies at the beginning of the 2nd movement are like chocolate mousse. And I love the Borges. TY.
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  #32  
Unread 09-17-2017, 02:44 PM
Mark Blaeuer Mark Blaeuer is offline
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Michael and Walter--

Very cool observations, I love it. Thanks.

Mark
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  #33  
Unread 09-19-2017, 05:54 AM
Brian Allgar Brian Allgar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale View Post
What we have at funerals (Hamlet's baked meats) is seen to be far more important than the corpse ...
Although at cannibal funerals, the baked meats and the corpse are one and the same.
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  #34  
Unread 09-19-2017, 01:33 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Brian, go to your room immediately without supper and finish up that double-spaced three-page report that was due on my desk last week explaining why the elements of water, fire, air and dirt explain the History of Modern Chemistry better than the inferior table of dozens of raw liquids, solids and gases that the sitting (2017) Archbishop of Canterbury used in his secular employment before enthronement.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 09-19-2017 at 01:36 PM.
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  #35  
Unread 09-22-2017, 12:22 PM
James Brancheau James Brancheau is offline
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Excellent topic, Max. I'm sure I'm repeating myself, but it is the number one reason I post. And I used to view this as a simply technical matter. But I think it's a pretty core factor in what makes, or doesn't make something poetry. I like to allow a poem enough room to breathe possibilities. And it's also how a poet wants to address the reader--as someone more intimate, or are you doing roughly the equivalent of making a speech/giving a talk (not that those are always mutually exclusive)? I prefer the former, but obviously this can be a barrier to understanding. And, generally, I like poems that take unexpected leaps. It's the gaps that can make all the difference. I tend to do at least one of the above and then float the poem out there, see what happens. In my view, they are all essential risks. My quarter cent.

JB

Added: And, in many cases, probably not everyone should understand your poem (just like probably not everyone should like your poem).

Last edited by James Brancheau; 09-22-2017 at 12:36 PM.
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  #36  
Unread 09-23-2017, 10:28 AM
Max Goodman Max Goodman is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by James Brancheau View Post
I like to allow a poem enough room to breathe possibilities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Ferris View Post
I like indeterminacy of meaning but not obscurity.
Are these entirely in the mind of the beholder? Are there things a poem can do or avoid doing to breathe possibilities (a lovely term), to push itself toward indeterminacy rather than obscurity?
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  #37  
Unread 09-23-2017, 10:45 AM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by James Brancheau View Post
And, in many cases, probably not everyone should understand your poem (just like probably not everyone should like your poem).
This. A universally loved work is a bad poem; an entirely comprehensible one, ho hum.
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  #38  
Unread 09-23-2017, 11:24 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Max: Are there things a poem can do or avoid doing to breathe possibilities (a lovely term), to push itself toward indeterminacy rather than obscurity?

I was just teaching Rimbaud's "Au Cabaret-Vert", which ends on a ray of sunlight turning the poet's beer foam to gold. This is at once a painterly touch and a nod to alchemy, and that's a way to breathe possibilities without being obscure, which the poem isn't, particularly. I think here of Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity.
Here's Rimbaud:

Au Cabaret-Vert

cinq heures du soir

Depuis huit jours, j'avais déchiré mes bottines
Aux cailloux des chemins. J'entrais à Charleroi.
− Au Cabaret-Vert : je demandai des tartines
De beurre et du jambon qui fût à moitié froid.

Bienheureux, j'allongeai les jambes sous la table
Verte : je contemplai les sujets très naïfs
De la tapisserie. − Et ce fut adorable,
Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs,

− Celle-là, ce n'est pas un baiser qui l'épeure ! −
Rieuse, m'apporta des tartines de beurre,
Du jambon tiède, dans un plat colorié,

Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d'une gousse
D'ail, − et m'emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse
Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.



http://abardel.free.fr/petite_anthologie/au_cabaret.htm

Googling for the French, I found a Cabaret-Vert Hotel in Cambodia. Rimbaud would have liked that.

Last edited by John Isbell; 09-23-2017 at 11:27 AM.
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  #39  
Unread 09-23-2017, 11:55 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Quote:
A universally loved work is a bad poem
I can't agree with this, Andrew
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  #40  
Unread 09-23-2017, 12:07 PM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Fair enough, Mark. I'm not sure any poem that's worth anything is universally loved. Every great poem I can think of has detractors, even prominent ones. But perhaps there's no such thing as the platonic, universally beloved work in the first place.

For instance, Voltaire, Dryden, and George Bernard Shaw all had serious issues with Shakespeare, Dryden going so far as to revise and recast the originals at times to "improve" them.
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