Archive for the ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Category
Entry 1314 — Just-Spring
Sunday, December 29th, 2013
It crossed my mind earlier today that a flair for the use of fresh language might be the most important attribute of a superior poet. Certainly E. E. Cummings had it, which is why he rates so high with me. In particular, I think the invention of new words or phrases, or the use of a word in a way it was never before used, like Cummings’s melding of “just” and “spring” in his famous poem about the balloonman, is about the most important thing a superior poet can do. Hopkins and Dylan Thomas are two others I quickly think of who did this. If I were fading out, I’d try to find examples, and mention more poets of fresh language. I might even come up with a Grummaniacal name for them.
For now, I just say that one way of recognizing mediocrity in a poet is his total conventionality of word-choice and use. You can recognize the subj-mediocrity by his used of dead poeticisms.
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Entry 735 — Another Long Division Poem Finished
Friday, May 11th, 2012
It’s my “Tribute to the Arts & Humanities.” For a while I had great expectations for it; I especially liked the way my quotient came out. But I am not too satisfied with the lettering of either my dividend or the text uder it. They seem to me barely adequate, if that. If there were a good cheap graphic designer in Port Charlotte, I’d hire him to improve them. It’s not a bad poem, though–and straight-forward: the only help an engagent may need is knowing that “counter, original, spare, strange” is from Gerard Manley Hopkins–so I’m hoping it can pick up a few fans from among the sub-congnoscenti. Make that, “pre-cogniscenti.”
(Apologies: once again I posted this as “private,” having forgotten to tag it “public.” I generally keep my entries “private” so no one can see them but I until I’m satisfied with them, at which time I hit a button that makes them “public.” Ridiculously often I forget to do this, as was the case this time. No big deal, just one more reminder to me, as if I need it, that I’m a moron.)
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