[lit-ideas] Re: Poetry x 2 = Sabbatical
- From: "Stan Spiegel" <writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 01:46:17 -0400
Lawrence said:
>> Perhaps there is nothing you want to learn from Merwin.<<
Mike replied:
No, I just want to use him for my Spiritual Sexual needs.
"Spiritual sexual needs."
Now there's a package of needs I've never considered. Do I have them too? Or
are they only available to Southerners? What do they consist of, Mike? Would
you elaborate?
Ah! Are you talking about intercourse with God?
Stan Spiegel
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Geary
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 11:17 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Poetry x 2 = Sabbatical
LH:
>>I'm not sufficiently interested in it to buy a bio of Merwin (if a bio
exists).<<
I don't know of any bio of Merwin. There's this at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._S._Merwin You can try John Burt, I suppose he
still belongs to Kramer's little list.
>>You like some of Merwin's poetry but are content with what you get out of
it. Perhaps there is no temptation to try and write like Merwin.<<
No, I've never been tempted to try to write like Merwin. I write ditties and
doggerel, not poetry.
>>Perhaps you are so set in your ways that no other poet can interfere with
your writing style.<<
Well, I do aspire to write like Ogden Nash and Calvin Trillin. I don't have
the talent for serious writing, but I can spin funny rhymes sometimes to poke
fun at people and ideas. No poetry there, just fun and games.
>> Perhaps there is nothing you want to learn from Merwin.<<
No, I just want to use him for my Spiritual Sexual needs.
>> I read a bio of him long ago, but perhaps more has been discovered.
Perhaps the new one will be more insightful. Unfortunately nothing is likely
to make his poetry more interesting.<<
I've never read the biography of any poet. I read the Bell Jar by Plath, but
that doesn't count. In fact, I can't remember reading a biography of any one
in any field ever. Biographies just don't interest me. I'm too busy with my
own life to spend my precious time of reading about some dead celebrity. But I
know many people who read nothing but biographies. Go figure.
>>Dream Songs has been seen as being influenced by Whitman's "Song of
Myself." <<
Seen by whom? That seems quite a stretch to me. Unless you mean that they
both wrote poetry.
>>What we sophisticated like are victims. Someone needs to be a victim to be
the subject of something serious -- a nice drug problem, being haunted by the
CIA or FBI, being pursued, framed, misrepresented, hopeless, hounded, haunted,
or buried alive. Well I have seen that, or think I have seen that, and don't
like it. <<
Well, I'm not sure how this fits into our theme, but if you say so, I'm not
going to argue. The theme I thought was the need to know what the poet
intended for any valid interpretation. I responded by telling you what a poem
means to me and admitting that I'm not sure what the poet intended and argued
that to me, at least, it was irrelevant what the poet meant in writing it. My
argument, I insisted, does not claim to invalidate any other theory of poetry
interpretation, all approaches, I claim, are valid and equal before the world.
You still disagree with my thesis, so I guess we'll just have to agree to
disagree.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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