Rose - Cheers. I'm glad to be a part of your thread.
Quincy - Eliot did do well in writing of Donne, and I like his essay on his favourite poet Dante. He was, however, a negligible presence re: his personal views on Whitman, Tennyson, Swinburne, Poe and Blake. I think he moulded his criticism too much to suit his views of where his own work should fall in terms of a progression from the Romantic. In short, it suited his own agenda. He was not the first poet/critic to work in this way and perhaps I generalised against him, but I really do feel that his reliability extends mainly to Dante and the metaphysical poets.
Janet - For some reason, though 'Poems and Ballads' has already been published by Penguin, though you'll have to track a copy out of print, no-one has released a copy of its third series, which is where 'A Forsaken Garden' comes from, along with 'The Complaint of Lisa' and the beautiful 'At a Month's End', which can still be found online in its first draft under the title 'At the End of a Month.' Publishers probably sell less copies of other poets but delete Swinburne reissues faster. This may not be the case eternally, since other poets now part of our lasting canon have went missing for longer than he.
Mike - My favourite composer is Beethoven. I can well understand those who'd lay claim to Mozart, R. Strauss, Bach or Wagner. In fact, I'd personally say that the finest opera ever written was 'Tristan und Isolde', though obviously some would disagree.
I think that personal preference, in a way, can be subjective, since our own sensiblities have to come into play beyond our mere objectivity in how we are met by an artistic presence. I personally can only handle, having read it straight through, around a third of Pound's 'Cantos.' If extremely well edited down, I think it would far outdo 'The Wasteland', but Pound was too mentally unstable then to think of it. It's his poetry in 'Personae' that will prove his lasting monument to twentieth century verse.
Apologies to Rose if it seems I've temporarily hijacked or deviated from the theme of the thread. I'll go and correct my own poems now.
Iain
[This message has been edited by Iain James Robb (edited June 25, 2006).]
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