[Maryann Corbett]

Lately I've been paying more attention to the endnote pages in other people's collections. Obviously I'm doing this for selfish reasons: I'm trying to figure out whether to add notes to the collection I've been sending out (and sending, and sending.....)

Certainly notes make sense if it's unlikely that the general reader would know something. For example, I appreciate being told that certain words in the poem are from a plaque on a certain statue in a certain place, like the notes in Patrick Hicks's This London. I'm helped by biographical information like the material in Ned Balbo's The Trials of Edgar Poe.... But I don't need (for example) to have Latin commonplaces translated, or to have explanations of Jewish holidays such as Jehanne Dubrow provides, so I wonder if other readers do. On the other hand, I noticed when I was reading on Thursday that people of student age seemed not to be getting a number of the references, and I don't want to leave them in the dark.

So: whether or not to translate common phrases? explain landmarks in Saint Paul? tell where literary allusions are pointing? and so on.

My question for you all is this: In notes, is there such a thing as too much, particularly from the publisher's point of view?

[Richard Meyer]

Maryann:

It's not easy to know these days what sort of information may be considered common knowledge or to know if a particular allusion will be recognized. Perhaps this has always been a stumbling block for writers, but some social critics seem to think the well of common knowledge has gone woefully dry in recent times. I taught high school English and humanities for 32 years, and I used to shudder at how many of my students frequently drew a complete blank when what I thought was a common reference came up in reading or discussion. And I was teaching mostly college-bound seniors.

I suppose a writer needs to find a balance between overkill with endnotes and no notes at all. For example, if a foreign language expression can be located in a good dictionary (summum bonum or joie de vivre), then I see no need to include a note in order to compensate for the reader's lack of knowledge, or worse for his laziness in refusing to look up the expression.

All of us have gaps in our knowledge and understanding. Being a good reader requires a certain amount of work. Nonetheless, I'm irritated as a reader if a writer drops a line or passage from another language into his work and expects that I should be fluent in ancient Greek or medieval French or modern German.

Richard

[Ann Drysdale]

I used end-notes for the first time in my most recent collection and was happy with the device because it did away with the dreaded footnotes. I invented a rule of thumb - if the reader needs to know something before they read the poem, use an epigraph, if there's something that might merely puzzle them and they care enough to follow it up - let them have slightly more generous notes at the end. For example, a poem that was written to be sung to a particular hymn tune had this specified under the title, but the weird conceit that fed a poem about G. de Nerval's lobster was tucked away at the end, along with the confirmation that I was indeed suggesting that "Dover Beach" may have been written under the influence of post-coital tristesse.

I like the idea that the readers can choose whether they need a note. The poet does not appear to be presuming them ignorant or suggesting that there are things they really ought to know.

I look forward to reading others' views.

[John Whitworth]

Oh, I always put the notes at the top of the poem. And I love notes. I put them in whenever I can. Sometimes they are only tangentially relevant, but I'm a note groupie and I'm proud of my notes. Why would I let them languish at the end of the book where they might very well be overlooked?
Possibly, well just possibly, I have TOO MANY notes, but that makes up for all those poetry books where poems, so elliptical they appear to be written in Linear B, stand naked before us and dare us to make sense of them.

[Catherine Chandler]

As a reader, I appreciate a "Notes" page. Two great examples that come to mind are the "Some Notes" page at the end of Hapax by Alicia Stallings and in Richard Wilbur's Collected Poems 1943-2004 - (notes for six sections). There should be a balance and a logic to notes, not over-done, never trying to "explicate" the poem. I dislike footnotes in poetry books.

[Gregory Dowling]

There are cases where the notes are more intriguing than the poems. This happens occasionally with Amy Clampitt, I think.

[Orwn Acra]

You can go the T. S. Eliot way and have the notes complicate things even further.

[I'm generally against endnotes. The poem should sit in its own mystery, I think.]

[Jayne Osborn]

Maryann,

I've read many poems in my time that have left me thinking "Smart-arse" (sorry!) because they refer to something way out of my sphere of knowledge. It can come across as pretentiousness on the part of the poet.

I agree with Richard who said:

I'm irritated as a reader if a writer drops a line or passage from another language into his work and expects that I should be fluent in ancient Greek or medieval French or modern German.

Mind you, it can go the other way and poets can also insult their readers' intelligence by assuming they don't know stuff. I once went to hear a fairly well-known female British poet who began her reading of a poem by asking the audience if we'd heard of Corfu, and another poem was prefaced with, "Have any of you ever been to the east coast of America?" At the interval a number of us walked out, one man telling her that he had a subsequent engagement!

A balance is needed, as Catherine said, and footnotes etc. can always be ignored if 'Yes, I knew that' applies.

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks, folks. Interesting variety of opinions here, including the PM professing dislike of endnotes per se. So I'm just as uncertain as ever, but I think I'm going to supply a few brief endnotes anyway.

[John Whitworth]

I've never been either to Corfu or the East Coast of America, though I do know they exist. However, I have been to Mousehole, Bogshole and Corstorphine and I bet few of you can say that, or even pronounce them.

And that would make an excellent note. I shall just have to write the poem that goes with it.