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Unread 11-20-2006, 06:07 PM
Quincy Lehr's Avatar
Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
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Maryann--

I think you have a point, but where you see it as useful (poetic electroshock, if you will), I don't, necessarily. It's rather like Surrealist-style automatic writing: it can jolt some things loose, but even Breton edited on the sly. Same thing with using a form like the villanelle in such a way. It's flying blind, seeing what will come. Which is okay... so long as, unless one gets extremely lucky, one simply sets it aside and strip-mines it later for the bits that don't suck.

(Before anyone gets their dander up, let me point out that I have a hefty file of failed poems, labelled "detritus," that I raid for scraps all the time.)

Quincy
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