Comments on: Experience, Figuration, the Avant-Garde, My Grouse

By: Ange

Ange — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:19:26 +0000

Henry, I’m not against abstraction per se, just non-figurative abstraction.
This blog is clarifying at least one thing for me — I am more a product of 1926 than 2007. God, what an admission!
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:47:57 +0000

I can’t resist giving you Bunting’s famous advice to poets:
I SUGGEST
1. Compose aloud; poetry is a sound.
2. Vary rhythm enough to stir the emotion you want but not so as to lose impetus.
3. Use spoken words and syntax.
4. Fear adjective; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
5. Jettison ornament gaily but keep shape
Put your poem away till you forget it, then:
6. Cut out every word you dare.
7. Do it again a week later, and again.
Never explain – your reader is as smart as you.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:05:59 +0000

I really like this post, & the excerpt from Christopher Middleton (& not just because I hail from the land of Minnesota Vikings). But I think the poem by Bunting actually reinforces your remarks on the problems with discursiveness, rather than illustrating the values of experiential-figurative language. Reading this seaside moan, I feel bombarded with abstract nouns – overwhelmed by foamy generalities. It leaves me cold, like the North Sea.
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By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:55:29 +0000

And, not coincidentally, Bunting gave entire lectures on– and compared his own late style to– the ornamentation and calligraphic style of the Lindisfarne Gospels…
My favorite among Bunting’s short poems, by the way, is this late one. And the first sentence has always made sense to me.
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