http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/10/quick-review-06-even-more-anagrams-from-canada/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:48:08 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/10/quick-review-06-even-more-anagrams-from-canada/#comment-1226 F. David Mencken Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:40:32 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=443#comment-1226 I interviewed Kevin McFadden about his anagram poems back in 2003. There's a lively discussion on the topic of anagrams in poetry here: <a href="http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/recommend.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/recommend.htm</a> But when you say these potential literary dimensions "await our exhaustive comparison," I recall Borges's "Library of Babel" where all combinations of the 23-letter alphabet are made on books of 410 pages. This may be the mathematical equivalent of the monkeys typing for eternity. When all combinations exist, how will we locate anything that is worth reading? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel</a> The poet (if this is poetry, and not mechanical repetition) should engage us somewhere short of exhaustion, no? A library of all those books is a library with no books. F. David Mencken I interviewed Kevin McFadden about his anagram poems back in 2003. There’s a lively discussion on the topic of anagrams in poetry here:
http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/recommend.htm
But when you say these potential literary dimensions “await our exhaustive comparison,” I recall Borges’s “Library of Babel” where all combinations of the 23-letter alphabet are made on books of 410 pages. This may be the mathematical equivalent of the monkeys typing for eternity. When all combinations exist, how will we locate anything that is worth reading?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel
The poet (if this is poetry, and not mechanical repetition) should engage us somewhere short of exhaustion, no? A library of all those books is a library with no books.
F. David Mencken

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