An offlist friend, a superb poet, responded to the "translation" of Milton, thus:
_____Hardy said the function of poetry is not to record convictions but impressions, and these are all the things carried by the implications, tone, and subtleties of language, the "best words in the best order." The rendering of Paradise Lost would lose those impressions.
This is at the heart of Auden's overly misquoted line about poetry making nothing happen, because the whole quote is
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying where executives Would never want to tamper; it flows south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. _____ ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
