Mark,
Provided we have no illusions that contemporary verse can be restored to its position as a major literary form (in the sense of having a widespread readership outside that of other poets) I think artifice is probably the way to go, but not the artifice of the past, or a pale imitation of it. One advantage that verse has is that its practitioners are generally devoted to high standards, the purity of the wellspring of language, whereas prose has a whole spectrum of standards, from high (though not necessarily convoluted) literary fiction and essays to low journalism and downright mendacity and all the degrees in between, and the word “writing” covers a multitude of sins. But “new” artifice will be a new form of modernism and will bring great satisfaction to practitioners and a few critics, but this sort of verse will not be necessary in the way I feel it was in past centuries, as a more distilled form of thought.
Janet,
Thanks for the compliment, but I am sure someone must have thought of this before. It was just comparing John Donne’s relatively long-winded groping in prose towards “No Man is an Island” that put the idea in my head. Admittedly the sermon contains more examples, more matter, but the LANGUAGE is quite different.
“PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am .”
Well written, of course, but Donne would have been quite capable of compressing this until it squeaked, had he wanted to. But the convention seemed to be that prose should be as windy and convoluted and “grand” as possible -although there was some excuse for a clergyman who had to fill a half hour on Sunday. (Sometimes the workings of the Lord required a certain amount of nifty footwork to put across convincingly) How do we know how good this prose is, or what do we compare it with, as examples of “bad” prose of the period are not usually readily available? Even unliterary, but literate, people wrote extraordinary well in previous centuries and were as adept at concealing their thoughts as at expressing them. I remember reading a letter from a young lady, writing in the eighteenth century in response to a proposal of marriage, and her reply expressed such gratitude and graceful compliments that the poor guy would have had to read it at least three times to realise she was turning him down.
Some return to this, rather than a shift of the chewing-gum to the other side of the mouth and a laconic “Forget it, pal!” might indeed be welcome.
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